Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 259
August 2, 2013
3 Ways to Live the Ultimate Romance
I watch you in the kitchen, slicing up a pie, summer evening sloping gold across your face.
How do you know the moment when you love someone the most?
I used to think it was that wild moment of crazy grace when you asked for forever on Reesor’s sideroad and I laughed the wonder of yes.
But then the babies came with the contractions and I really did think it had to be then — you telling me afterwards that you thought your arms would be all bruised, but I’d never’d guessed, you smiling through every one as I gripped you tight, you looking right in my eyes and nodding that we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us.
Your whole life has spoken this to me, again, every time when it comes again, everything hard and tight.
Then the day my heart was shattered and you wore your “My Wife Rocks” t-shirt even though the style wasn’t really what farmers wear, and you winked whenever you caught my eye, and I thought that was then when my heart burned deepest amber — the way even your look cradled me gentle.
And now I wonder if there never is one singular moment enflamed with the very most love —
but real love is when you live the daily faithfulness of making whole decades of minutes tell the truth about the glorious gospel.
Your days have done this.
You have told me the truth about who Christ is, how He dies to self and gives when there’s nothing left and gives up what is His and gives to those who don’t deserve, so they can have more, and I have seen Christ in you, the way you live, the way you make your life about laying down.
There are no standing lovers: the only way to love is to lay down.
Lay down plans.
Lay down agendas.
Lay down self.
Love is always the laying down.
This is how to make love out of a marriage: Love lays down it’s own wants to lift up the will of another.
Love lets go of its plans — to hold on to a person.
This is the passion of Christ.
Ours is the romanced universe. For God so loved, He gave….
A good marriage isn’t about reliving a good movie, but reliving the Good News.
Nothing is more attractive than sacrifice.
You there in the kitchen, all aflame, you make me know it again –
how marriage is two people who keep kindling and igniting in a thousand little ways, grace sparks flying high and everywhere.
When you come and grin, serve me a wedge of rhubarb heaped with ice cream, I watch how it all melts quickly on a summer night in the heat of a holy burn.
My heart running all straight into yours…
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A Love Story That Mirrors the Ultimate Romance:
{I’ve watched again and again…. Consider pausing the music by clicking on the speaker icon in the bottom of the left hand margin?}
A good marriage isn’t about reliving a good movie, but reliving the Good News.
Related Marriage Encouragement:
3 Marriage Habits Every Marriage Needs to Fall 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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
August 1, 2013
How to Make August Amazing: The Real Science of Happy
{Just through Friday, save 50%off One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are @ Christianbook.com}
Just hit 1000 gifts in my journal! It is transforming my thinking … my being! {Jill S}
Thank you for making the Joy Dare Collection of monthly gift available to print. I keep the current month next to my phone at work. It helps me through the day to keep focused on things I am grateful to God for. {Melonie G}
I have 1003 blessings on paper! This habit has really worked a huge change in my heart and has opened my eyes even more to God’s grace and his multiple undeserved blessings. God has captured me with His cords of love. {Gloria J.}
I am a teacher in an inner-city school in Grand Rapids, MI. This year we journaled everyday things that we were thankful for! My students looked forward to this everyday! Can you believe it??!! 7,274 gifts!!! I teach 3rd grade! Most of them are either 8 or 9 years old. If I got busy and forgot this part of the morning, they were sure to let me know. If I had a substitute teacher for the day, I did double the next! {Renee C.}
The Real Science of Happy:
{While neither of these first two are perfect framings, with explicit worthy focus on Christ, the Giver and the Gift — they nonetheless make the heart about explode:}
{Consider pausing the music by clicking on the speaker icon in the bottom of the left hand margin?}
The Happy Experiment:
How to Make Today the Best Day:
Always, Regardless:
1. The Facts on the Certainty of His Command:
In every thing give thanks:
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
2. The Facts on the Science of Happy:
Keep a gratitude list and 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.” ….
Related: 15 Ways to Raise More Grateful Kids
How to Count Gifts?
~ Print out August’s Joy Dare {or the whole year (thus far) 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 00 and enter to win a Nikon D90 camera
~ Check out the free #1000gifts App … for iPhone or iPad… the new (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. And more fun things to come. Free! Happy August!
~ 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 new numbered journal
–
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 (everyday we post 3 prompts of what gifts you could look for #JOYDARE!) ... and come the end of the year and counting 1000 gifts (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…
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 31, 2013
The 1 Mantra that Everybody, Every Family & Every Kid Needs
We need folks who love wrestling with hard questions about young people, pinning down practical answers for parents like us. Given how many parents are heartbroken by their kids’ drift from Jesus, I’m thrilled that Kara Powell and the team at the Fuller Youth Institute equip parents and kids to live out the lifelong faith they need. Kara cares deeply about research, but she cares even more about translating that research into real, down-to-earth ideas for families—starting with her own. Kara says their Sticky Faith research has changed the way she and her husband parent every day — and it’s changing the way we are parenting our six kids here… Her guest post here today on the farm’s front porch is this crazy grace gift to every one of us, man, woman and child, down here in the trenches:
Purple ballpoint pens.
On last year’s “back to school” supply list for my kids, they were the straw that broke this Mama camel’s back.
When I was a teenager, I only needed two school supplies: paper and a handful of pencils.
Now my kids’ school says they need a thumb drive. Plus a protractor. Not just pencils but a certain brand of No. 2 pencils. It’s not a list for the faint of heart.
After 45 minutes at Target, our shopping cart was 90% full but our supply list was only 70% crossed off.
That meant more visits to school supply stores and websites.
More miles and hours that I didn’t have.
As my three kids hopped in our minivan in the parking lot, I asked a question I have asked so many times I find myself repeating it even when only adults are in the car: “Is everybody buckled?”
Two of my kids answered.
The third was already buried in a book.
Our unsuccessful search for purple ballpoint pens had pushed me too far. So I growled at my daughter, “KRISTA, ARE YOU BUCKLED?”
The tone of voice, the tension in my hands as I grabbed the steering wheel, the tight forehead. I was 180 degrees from the mom I want to be.
That night our family started a new dinnertime tradition.
Since our kids could talk, we’ve shared our day’s “highs” and “lows” around the kitchen table. Based on our team’s research at the Fuller Youth Institute, our family added a question: What mistake did you make today?
Study after study indicates that almost half of kids from great families will drift from God and the church after high school.
As we have examined 500 youth group graduates to see how families and churches can build a faith that lasts—or what we call “Sticky Faith”—it’s become clear that most kids equate faith with a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”.
When (note I said when and not if) young people fail to live up to those behaviors, they run from God and the church—just when they need both the most.
Because of our Sticky Faith research, our family is hoping that talking (and laughing) about our mistakes will make our home a safe place to confess our sins and celebrate the grace that erases them all.
If I were flawless, I would need no Savior.
If my kids were perfect, there would be no Easter.
Instead, we need to be reminded of six words that have become a mantra in our family:
Jesus is bigger than any mistake.
Perhaps like me, you’re haunted by mistakes from the summer.
The kids didn’t read as much as you had planned.
The house is not as organized as you had hoped.
Your family vacation wasn’t as off-the-charts memorable as you had dreamed.
Maybe your regrets are even more substantial.
Jesus is bigger than those mistakes too.
Last August over dinner I looked Krista in the eye, apologized for my tone of voice in the Target parking lot, and received her forgiveness.
Every night since, I capture the opportunity at dinner to ask forgiveness from those I care about the most.
It’s our way to remember the Jesus who is bigger than all of our mistakes.
Kara Powell works with the super sharp team at the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and is a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. She was humbled and honored—not to mention downright surprised—to be recently named by Christianity Today as one of “50 Women to Watch.” Kara’s the first to say that her jobs as a researcher, writer, and team leader are a piece of chocolate cake compared with her role as Mama to three great and “verbal” kids.
Kara is the author or co-author of a number of books including Sticky Faith, a resource used by so a whole revolution of families, including ours, to help give kids the most priceless gift of all—the treasure of lifelong faith. Five Star Read for any parent.
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 29, 2013
How to Live Through Anything: The Fish Principle
When I get to her door, it’s after 6:30 and dawn’s breaking rays down rows of the cornfields and I’m already late.
Mama’s got a note on her front door that reads in a black scrawl, “Welcome! Come on round. We’re out on the back deck!”
Every other Saturday we meet when dawn breaks the day open. We bring Bibles.
We are four, one Linda, who is my mama and her name means beautiful and she really is.
And one Annette, one Anne, one Ann, three with one name meaning grace and the Trinity really is and I am the deep dirty Ann who has to bathe her stains long in His Grace.
Mama’s got plates of sliced oranges laid out, strawberries, raisin bread toasted.
Her tea pot there in its cozy. Their Bibles are all laid open. The air is cool this early, the sky quiet clear. A cardinal heralds the sun from the tip of the spruce tree at the fence. I nod embarrassed, always the last, and mama pours my tea and the steam wraps itself up and around the cool, warming fresh morning.
“John 21,” Annette winks her welcome, points to her page and I find the passage.
Ah, yes, this passage — the Scriptures about Jesus at dawn and the disciples at sea with their nets and He’s already got the fire kindled and He beckons, “Come and have breakfast.” I smile. Mama’s got breakfast out at dawn! Our own feast! Mama clasps her hands, laughs.
We read the passage four times. Once lingering. Once listening. Once lifting voice to pray the words. Last time: to live it.
Annette says she wants the passionate abandon for Jesus that jumps out of the boat like Peter, plunges straight into water as soon as he sees Him, and did he do it because he thought he might walk on water again?
Mama keeps returning to the three times Jesus asks “Do you truly love me?” and she says that all week she’s been working through feelings of rejection and it’s been hard and it hurts and yes, betrayal, and what does it really mean to feed Christ’s sheep today and she has to figure that if that’s the way we show we really do love Him.
Anne, the other one with the fanciful “e” and curling hair, she’s thinking about Peter with a battered faith who says I’m outta here, I’m going fishing, and a Jesus who won’t let Him go, who wants him to build His church even when he’s betrayed Him three times and that’s a kind of love she needs right now.
Then Mama turns to me, “And for you, Ann? How is He shaping you through this passage?”
The sun’s warmer now on our faces, higher over the corn behind Mama’s house. A robin’s singing with the cardinal.
“Well, there’s the fact He asks us to trust him when it feels like we’ve been in a long night and caught nothing and will we trust Him, do what He says, when He asks the unconventional of us: “Throw your net on the right side of the boat”….
And there’s this: … the wild love waiting for us at the end of dark, empty nights of the soul — the kind of love that has breakfast waiting for us on the beach, the fish and bread all ready for us… but really… and this is what I keep coming back to,” I glance around anxious at their faces and I run on excited, “I keep coming back to this:
Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore.
It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn.
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?”
They knew it was the Lord.
I look up. They look blank.
I try again. “It was full of large fish — 153!”
Mama nods slowly… waiting for the epiphany to strike. Annette’s smiling politely. Anne’s fingering the corner of her page, re-reading the text.
I just blurt it out: “Someone had counted the fish!”
Peter, the failure, the reject, the broken, he had counted fish.
Now they all smile, nod politely. My cheeks are hot. I distract with reaching for my cup of tea, swig back a long gulp, and sputter out something about it getting that time and maybe it’s time to close in prayer?
We go around the circle and the sun’s sure now, strong, and we each pray passionate for the woman to the right of us, for her bruises and for her dark night and for her longings and that she might be fed, her nets full to overflowing in the morning and that we would each really love Jesus.
We squeeze hands with the final Amen.
And for a moment, we all sit still and silent in the sun. I close my eyes, listen to the world waking. The light feels healing. The robin keeps singing. A back door closes down the street. I can hear a car start.
“Well, you’d all better get back to families!” Mama’s gathering plates off the deck table. We carry in teacups from the back deck, wander in through her house for our shoes.
And there it is on Mama’s kitchen table. Stacks of photographs, pictures scattered, laying there in open books.
Us three Anns pause on our way through.
Mama sets the teapot on the counter. “Yes, forgive the piles. All week, I’ve been sorting out the years. Filing them into albums.”
I scan my history — my Mama’s. I hurt inside.
A child abused. A wife replaced. A mother broken.
Annette leans over, points to a black and white image of a little girl holding a doll, her mother’s hand.
“Who is this?”
“That’s me — ” Mama smiles. Annette’s eyes grow big, picks it up for a closer look at time.
There are photos of Mama a toddler, her sitting on her father’s lap, a color-tinted photograph of her mother, Mama’s first Christmas with my father, his gold-band hand resting on her shoulder.
Photos of me sleeping on Dad’s chest, my first steps, my Dad holding me brand new in the heat of an August dusk. Mama looks so young. Her whole life is laid out across the table on kodak paper.
Anne points to one a white-blonde girl with sky blue eyes playing in a cardboard box. “And this?”
“Aimee.”
Mama says her name quiet and holy, name of my younger sister who was killed before Mama’s eyes.
I want to find the door, run away home. I want to pick up the photo of Aimee and me and Mama sitting on the orange flowered couch with my brother, my Dad and I want to go back and make it right, make it all hold. My parent’s marriage. My sister’s life. Us.
Mama picks up the picture for me, of us all. Holds it so I can see. Dad’s smiling.
I remember when Mama had long hair like that, dark and thick and wavy, under a kerchief. When they were married and we were all together and I remember Aimee’s giggle and her alive.
“Yes… “ she traces faces… says the words more to another time than to us right here. “Now you can see why I’ve been working through rejection.”
I swallow hard. When we can’t say it and we just want to run away, Jesus asks our question for us, again and again, “Do you truly love me?”
Anne nods understanding towards Mama and Mama looks across the table, asks in this wounded whisper, “What do you do with all this?” It’s her life.
We are silent.
And then it comes, and I murmur it quiet:
“You count fish?”
Mama turns to me and I reach for snapshot of John and Aimee and I playing in the sandbox and I say it slow.
“You pull in your life and you see that though you felt ripped open —- the net actually didn’t tear.
That there’s grace in your net.
And you actually count them.
You make sure you count the fish. So you don’t have to ask who it is – You know it is the Lord.” I feel the lump in my throat ebbing.
“You count every single grace that He gave through the long dark night, and you see that there are more than 153. Far more than 153. It’s a feast!” I look up. Mama’s looking at me.
“You count fish….” she nods.
And clasps her hands and laughs lovely and soft and long and she is beautiful. The epiphany strikes: “You just keep always counting the fish!”
It’s when you count blessings — you see Who can be counted on.
It’s when you count the ways He loves, that your life multiplies joy.
It’s a life that counts blessings — that discovers it’s yielding more than it seems.
“The secret to joy — is to keep seeking God where you doubt He is.” {excerpted from One Thousand Gifts }
Us four stand around a table picking up photos and the pain from the past.
And we’ve lingered over Scripture so long that now we’ll live it and we are disciples counting the blessings hauled in by a life.
I hold one picture long.
And I count it twice.
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
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
from the archives
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 26, 2013
Good Links: Sharing the Happy, Good & Wonderful
from our instagram feed this week and where we are right now, out in the fields:
Let the harvest begin. In every way possible. #TheFarmerAndHisWife
I read it aloud at the dinner table… which was the starting point of a very profound conversation. Absolute Must-Read.
If you only read one thing on the internet this week…. make it this.
How our choices can inspire and compel those around us
Real Inspiration for Education
“
“It’s the relationships that you build over the years that is the most important thing in life.
Everything else is just an illusion.”
Unforgettable.
Have watched this several times in the last few months. Never get over it.
It’s sort of the way to live a life:
“The world sends us garbage. We send back music.”
{turn off music by clicking the speaker icon in the bottom corner of the left margin}
Everything is Incredible… Never stop dreaming. Trying. Never. Heartbreaking beautiful.
Just that, this weekend, good friends–
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well.
Become the gift.
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 25, 2013
When Your Spirit Hungers: How to Be Done With Worry
We are created with a Spirit Hunger that longs for God. Is it possible to turn worry into belief, and heartache into the rhythm of intimate prayer? In her book and Bible study, Spirit Hunger, author and speaker Gari Meacham came to the stark realization that her prayer life and belief needed to match. Her guest post today on the farm porch is grace…
I have slept in the same t-shirt for over twenty-three years.
It’s a shirt my baseball playing husband wore when he played for the Kansas City Royals.
At the time my son was an infant—he now has a college diploma hanging on his wall, and I feel like I’m finally breaking this shirt in.
I’ve been known to sleep in it, jog in it, and some days spend the entire day in it. A part of me chooses cozy over presentable, easy over effort. I love this shirt, but I’m always hoping I don’t see anyone when I’m wearing it.
Sometimes I think I wear my belief in God like a bathrobe or soft jammies.
Although I may be comfortable in my pj’s, I’m not my best in them.
When it comes to faith, I have to get out of my jammies and believe.
Deep within my desire to believe is a Holy Tension that tugs towards fear, doubt, and worry.
This tension has led me to some stifling places where worry snuffs out prayer.
The Spirit Hunger within me longs to trust, but I masquerade instead. I pretend pray-realizing that what I think is prayer, is really worry with a few God words at the beginning and end:
“Dear Father, worry, worry, worry, worry…In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
What I often whisper as prayer is a sliver of faith wrapped in a blanket of panic.
Worry restates negative trust in fearful outcomes.
It’s the belief that what I dread will be the outcome of what I pray.
What if we get traded or reassigned?
(We moved forty-seven times in our first ten years of marriage in pro-ball!)
What if our marriage falters in the wake of temptation or deceit?
What if our kids suffer or struggle in ways I can’t intervene?
What if we can’t make it financially?
The tension of what if creates a drama in my head so intense I could put Hollywood to shame.
When I was raising teenagers my friends and I would joke that we could have our kids from the front door to the grave in about fourteen seconds. As they would leave for school each morning or for a night out with friends, I would shout, “Jesus loves you! Make good choices!”
Essentially I was saying “If you get hurt or anything happens to you, I don’t know if I can bear it—so be really smart and careful, or I’ll fall apart!” I spent many a night “worry praying” my way through the hours until my kids were safely back in their beds, sensing that worry is like a rocking chair—it consumes a lot of energy and takes us nowhere.
An author I love says “It’s not only wrong to worry, it’s infidelity.
Because worrying means we don’t think God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it’s never anything else that worries us.”
I’ve pondered and played with this statement, and firmly decided “No more cheating on God…”
Standing at the intersection of belief or worry – of trust or a fretting snub – I’ve vowed to pray.
I pray breakthrough prayers when life beats me into a compliant daze. Like Hannah on the steps of the temple, I cry out to the God who rebuilds shattered reality.
I pray vision prayers when my sight is blurry and unfocused-seeing black and gray instead of yellow and white.
I pray defining prayers as I beg for God’s clarity in the midst of paralysis. His “Get up, take up your mat, and walk…” when I feel like I’m destined to crawl.
Jesus’ invitation to ask, seek, and knock is far more interesting. So with determined resolve:
I’ll ask instead of worry…
I’ll seek instead of fret…
I’ll knock instead of run…
And don’t look for me in my pajamas. I’m wearing a new faith, sewn from the threads of a holy tension that gave way to faith.
~ guest post by Gari Meacham … {photos by this farm girl}
Gari Meacham is a mother, writer, speaker, and baseball wife.
Her passion for the Word of God has made her a popular speaker throughout the country. Through the authenticity of her life stories –marriage to a professional athlete, struggles with food bondage, and a father who was a quadriplegic– she invites readers to a heart cry of prayer and belief.
Check out her book Spirit Hunger — each page provides a clear path towards matching our heart cries — leading away from crumbs and counterfeit to a real hungering for God.
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 23, 2013
A Prayer for All the World’s Sons {In Honor of the #RoyalBaby}
Lord, let there still be a few good men.
Sure, in the end, there’s a small chance we’d like no rings through nostrils or studs through tongues or ivory plugs through earlobes —
but the only mattering part is that he’s pierced by Your love, marked by grace, run through with mercy and one untiring sense of humor. A world tilted as wild as this one needs a little bit more of that.
May he always know True North.
And the way to the laundry basket and the stove and wide open big sky.
Please, Lord, please — only a minimal number of broken bones and emergency rooms?
But always a heart bit tender and broken so Your love and light can leak out. May the good lines in the books and the movies always make him liquid a bit, the way poetry can water the hard and forgotten places.
When there are guys trying to score, may he remember that real men win by going last and putting others first.
May he be one of the real men who are dead to all ladders, who always go lower, to the least and the lonely and the lost. Everyday.
May he love babies toes and old ladies and loud laughing and unlikely underdogs and Jesus.
Make him one of the Real Men braving the Truth — Because if Christ is The Truth — then where there is Truth, there is Christ, and why ever be afraid of the Truth?
To continue reading, I’m over here at (in)Courage today and I’d love to connect with you…
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 22, 2013
{A Letter to Kate} 7 Ways to Labor & Deliver Your Best Life
Dear Kate:
So. They say you’ve gone into labor today?
I’m not sure if anyone ever mentioned it, but there’s this wild law of the universe: a mother’s labor and delivery never ends, and you never stop having to remember to breathe.
Let’s just be upfront: This can be a hard thing.
I once had a two and a half year old who climbed up a forty foot ladder on the side of a building.
One December, we all spiked fevers and had a collective tummy upheaval within 10 minutes of each other and it lasted 3 days. The baby was 8 days old. It was 5 days before Christmas. The house temperature fell to 58F and I had to get a fire started when fever burned through the bones and I couldn’t stand up and the baby kept crying and there wasn’t a clean sheet left in the house. Mothers can cry without a sound.
Then there was that night one of the teenagers stood at our door and hardly spoke so I could hear things I didn’t want to, and I laid awake afterward and I don’t know how air kept getting to my lungs. Mothers know that miracles are everyday things.
So — what you’re doing right now in labor and delivery, what they teach you in those childbirth classes? Yeah — Breathe. It’s how life works. It’s the way beauty is always born —
Breathe in: Lord, I receive what you give.
Breathe out: Lord, I give thanks for what you give.
That’s it right there.
That’s the prayer for people who can’t remember to breathe, the prayer for when you think you might hyperventilate, the prayer when you can’t remember what comes next — just these 7-8 syllables that perfectly settle into the rhythm of breathing.
It’s the syllables of sanctuary, a surrender to His sovereignty.
It’s the only cycle of sanity:
Breathe in: Lord, I receive what you give.
Breathe out: Lord, I give thanks for what you give.
And then, on the hard days, you know — when the transmission falls out of the car, when life turns you and you feel sucker punched, when the kids are all yelling and bickering at once, when the phone call turns into a crisis of faith, when you want to pull your hair out, pluck out your eye, or lay down and cry like a baby —
the perfect prayer can do this thing where it get’s real short, fits right into your panicked, shallow breaths and quiets even them:
Breathe in: Lord, I receive.
Breathe out: Lord, I give thanks.
So there’s that: You don’t get to make up most of your story. You get to make peace with it.
You don’t get to demand your life, like a given. You get to receive your life, like a gift.
This is how you labor through a life, how you make it grace.
And when at some point today, Kate, when they hand your child to you for the first time and you hold that swaddled bundle and kiss that little forehead smelling like fresh heaven, but this is the thing and what the headlines forget: the delivery never stops.
The moment the delivery of a child stops — is the moment when everything starts to go wrong.
That’s what deliver means: “hand over, give, give up, yield.” Once you start delivering a child, just keep on: Keep delivering, handing over, yielding the child to God.
This is how you birth beauty in the midst of the messy.
I know, I know, Kate — they all said that you were too posh to push, but whoever said that, didn’t know that that is what mothers do: we push through exhaustion, we push through overwhelm, we push through dishes and laundry and all these feelings of unimportance, because we’re the ones who live the biggest and realest and profound idea: that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.
This isn’t only theology — this is sanity. We let the grace of Christ push out into the world through the grace of us.
Somebody said that there’s this restlessness among the next generation of women, that they fear more than anything – wasting their lives. I’ve felt that before. Feelings can last for years but they can lie and change your forever.
So, look — There’s no fear: You aren’t wasting your life when you’ve poured out for eternity — wherever you are.
There’s no fear: You are doing something great with your life – when you’re doing all the small things with His Great love.
There’s no fear: You aren’t wasting your life – when you aren’t wasting opportunities to love like Christ.
So labor and deliver, Kate, and know you are not alone — there’s a whole world of us doing it with you, grandmothers and widows, men at desks and pulpits and barns, and women who are single, who are weary, who have never had children but have bore these beautiful lives — We’re all breathing with you:
Breathe in: Lord, I receive.
Breathe out: Lord, I give thanks.
There are a thousand ways to be stretched thin and it’s the stretchmarks that a soul wears gratefully that can be these thin places –
that give us more of God.
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
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Photo credits: Stacy Brunner, Erin Smith Photography and Ken Lee.
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 20, 2013
Good News Saturday Links: Sharing Crazy Beauty
From Marte Marie Fosberg, one of my favorite instagramers to follow : sheer beauty
The beauty of Difference : Beauty is Everywhere (because He is)
{You must see the whole inspiring Positive Exposure website of the beauty of difference}
When you feel unloveable…. Please… watch to the very end.
I am RA Dickey (winner of the Cy Young Award) — and I am Second.
Profound, Moving and absolutely unforgettable.
“You are as beautiful as you have sacrificed. …
“I can want the pretty of Pinterest – but the only way to get to the beauty of godliness is to wrestle with the ugliness of sin.
The Esther Generation is beautiful – because they don’t turn away from the ugly. The Esther Generation faces the injustices of this world — and reveals the beauty of the face of Christin the face of the injustices.The Esther Generation aren’t a bunch of escapists to the palace — but are activists for those outside of the palace. This. is. what. makes. us. beautiful.
That is the Christian definition of beauty: sacrifice.”
One Woman who saved 2,500 Jewish children, dies this week at 98:
#EstherGeneration
Free Chalkboard Printable for the fridge :
His beauty is everywhere and we have so much to be thankful for
Give thanks: Find Joy #1000gifts
favorite photo from my instagram this week –
a beautiful woman because she lives the truth and beauty of the Gospel
“He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me.
The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace.”
-@Joni Eareckson Tada in
A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God’s Sovereignty
Xi Fu’s story tells of how strong determination overcame the difficulties of surviving in a society scant support for the disabled.
Surrounded by cloth, paper, brushes and ink, the 34-year-old whose name means ‘Seeking Happiness’ — he makes beauty.
Gather the kids: Pure inspiration @ Boston Big Picture
Never miss the Interesting People — this actor’s tears at the realization.
His understanding of what women have too long experienced… Absolute Must See:
{turn off music by clicking the speaker icon in the bottom corner of the left margin}
“Lizzie Velasquez, a girl bullied and voted the “ugliest on the Internet,”
inspires you to trust God, accept yourself and give thanks for the life that was given to you.”
This is a MUST see:
Read more of Lizzie’s moving story here and in her own words here
Just that, this weekend, friends–
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well.
Become the gift.
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
July 19, 2013
When You feel Like You Never Belong …
That was it :
That for all her yearning to belong –
What she wanted was someone to long to be with her. …
Belonging wasn’t about some club, or cool clique, or country — belonging was about Christ. Who never stopped longing to be with her…
So no matter how many days she felt lost in her own skin, no matter how she struggled for breath in her lungs that didn’t hurt, that didn’t make her ache, no matter how she kept looking for a home and a place of her own and to be known and roots that would never let her go —
There was always One who longed to be with her — so she belonged.
You never belong until you believe you do.
And it’s only when you believe you belong, that you believe you are beautiful. …
{The rest of this quick “Five Minute Friday” post is over here today,
where I had the happy privilege of hosting the weekly “Five Minute Friday” gathering of beautiful writers…}
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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
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