Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 299

when you are feeling overwhelmed…

When a sparrow gets caught behind the couch, it’s the light at the other end, behind the poor thing, that we keep trying to turn that one pounding heart towards.

Because the thing is and don’t I know it: If you’re turned the wrong way, you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So I’m kneeled on the floor in front of a pounding-heart bird and the moment, it’s a prayer for the sparrow and for me and for all the overwhelmed ones lost and turned around and  looking for a way out:

Lord God — of all the world, You see the sparrows —

us with the messy nests who are welcome at Your altar,

us with the loneliness who are encircled in Your care,

us with the smallness who are remembered and held and never forgotten

before the God who has an eye for all the Sparrows. 

So sparrows don’t stress. Because they trust. Your Will is better than our ways.

So sparrows don’t hurry. Because they don’t fear. Your altar is better than our agendas.

So sparrows don’t worry — Because they are Yours. 

Your sovereignty is better than the skies.

Simplicity doesn’t mean we will live uncomplicated lives. Simplicity is a matter of Focus — the grace to focus our lives simply on Christ.  

Be our sole Focus, our only Hope, our deepest Joy —

That we may abandon all the worries… and abide in all Your Word —

Those pages that open up like wings.

 

And the sparrow, it turns right there on the floor behind the couch, turns towards the window — focuses and sees —  and  we witness it.

How a sparrow can fall to the ground –

and still fly again.

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 Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

A Mother’s Perfect Work

Seven.

She wakes up this morning that number of perfection and I don’t ask where time goes when she crawls into my bed, her nose crinkled in this giddy giggling.

She had told me yesterday, “Let’s all be the happiest today — because it’s the last day I’ll ever, ever be six.”

And I had watched her long after that. How she stacked the bowls and carried them across the kitchen and how her arms wrapped around white porcelain and I don’t know how to hold on to all these fragile things.

And I had smiled when she caught me watching her and she had grinned too and we had hung sheets out on the line and read the story of Sophie the Spider and her Masterpiece: A Spider’s Tale and she had sang it loud, “Jesus, Lamb of God, worthy is Your name” while we washed the spinach leaves and the last of the six was the happiest and I don’t think she knows how every mother has to keep being brave.

That at the first, at the beginning of everyone that ever was, there is this braving of the pain and no one tells you that this is the way it will always be now– because love is always worth the pain. Just ask any mother — love is a willingness to suffer.

Love is patient —  and patience is always this willingness to suffer.

Love is patient and patience is this willingness to suffer —  to put aside plans for a person, to lay aside self to serve, to set aside agendas to step up to an altar.

This is the work of a mother — this strange and peculiar joy in letting go of self to make the joy of another large.

And today she is all grown up, willowy and long, her and that toothy smile under a sprinkling of freckles.

“It’s finally here, Mama.” She snuggles into me early this morning, her laughing and me nodding. “Seven — I am really seven now.”

And I squeeze her hand and this letting go is the painful work that releases joy and a mother’s heart is a child’s sky.

“Perfect seven! Perfect day!” she laughs to the ceiling and I can see it — how she begins to fly and makes us soar brave.

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 Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-06-13 [del.icio.us]

They Were All 5 Born The Same Day, 1 Only a World Apart

... when the mom of Quads adds one more -- beautiful!

When You Feel like You Don’t Belong?

Someone has to be that Mother.

That mother who drives a full 3 hours to the border with a packed mini-van and anxious kids and creeps through a 20 minute traffic backup under the hot, beating sun, only to rifle through her wallet and look up feebly to tell the custom’s officer she doesn’t have birth certificates for 2 of her children.

So that would be me.

“Do you have any ID at all — for either one of them?”

The custom’s officer asks it gently. Like he doesn’t want to push the flustered and flailing over any imagined or very real edge.

He glances back at the long snake of vehicles behind me, waiting. In the sun. That’s not moving either.

“Um… no.” I shuffle through my wallet again. “No, sir — I don’t.” Does the earth open up and swallow the Abiram of mothers?

“I’m so sorry, sir. If I can just turn around?” I close up my wallet and I can feel it up the neck, the face — the mother shame burning like a red-hot brand. How in the world? What kind of mother…. ?

I’m already cranking at the steering wheel, trying to get this mess turned around, thinking that when you can’t swallow down any grace, you turn yourself back from the land of the free.

“Just a moment, ma’am. Open up the door here.” He waves my passport in the direction of the van’s side door. I fumble behind me, try to unlatch it, still hoping the earth might open up instead. The officer pops his head in. “Birthdates, kids.”

Birthdates?

Joshua states his month, day, year and Hope leans forward and I’m the realist who doesn’t hold out much hope at all.

The officer taps it into his computer, glances over at me, “And are they Canadian citizens?”

“Yes?”

And I really try to say it like I’m not always a tentative Canadian, like it’s not a question, like I’m dubious, like I think he’s just gleefully extending the torture of my ineptness and embarrassment of not having one piece of paper to prove anything — because isn’t this the United States of America and when exactly did they start letting in hicks without a passport, without a birth certificate?

He looks up from the screen.

“Welcome to the United States, ma’am. Have a nice day.”

And he hands me my passport.

“Welcome?” Um … Really? “But if you let us into the States…” I stammer it out — “will Canada let us back in next week?”

“Well, if they are really Canadian citizens — ” the officer nods smiling, “if they are really Canadian citizens, they can’t be denied entry.”

I sit there shaking my head, stunned, and the officer keeps nodding his head, yes, and is entry in always firstly a matter of where you are born and being born again?

Twelve miles down the road and the kids and I are still laughing wonder right out loud, “Thank you, Lord, thank you, Lord, thank you, Lord!”

There’s a grace that let’s the impossible and failing in and how can we ever get over this?

We pass a church and it’s steeple pointing the way Home.

We turn a corner where a yellow house bursts like a full summer sun.

We drive by horses in a field with tails blowing free, with the sky big and round and circling, like the lid being lifted right off, and I feel this.

In Christ, you’re a native of heaven right now. You aren’t a citizen of here trying to work into heaven. You’re a citizen of heaven trying to work through here. The sky keeps unfolding all down the road.

When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.

I’m a mess and I keep driving, smiling, and I know my citizenship and where this road leads. Who in the world gets over this?

There are hills and there are detours and there is this getting lost and it feels so late and it can creep in everyday like the dusk, this feeling like a failure, and there is Scripture in the stereo, Hope in His Word, and I try to remember to breathe, lost and right turned around.

Because this is always it: All my brokenness is a whisper that I don’t belong, and every time I don’t feel like I belong, the Scarred and Rejected God whispers, “Come here, my beloved.”

And the longer I live, the more I feel like an exile. This is a gift. The exiled make His extravagant love their home.

We were made for heaven and Him and our heart beats hard for it.

Somewhere in upstate New York, the skies thunder.

A vehicle pulls out in front of us.

I read the license plate.

And the skies and the heavens are above and close and coming down all around and we’re all out here in the rain and His reign and we’re born again in Him and we are His and we are found.

In Christ — no matter the road, the storm, the story — we always know the outcome.

Our Savior: surrounds.

Our future: secure.

Our joy: certain.

And when a week brings us back to the border, and we cross the bridge without 2 birth certificates, I’m praying, praying God’s grace and Canadian customs will let us in. When heaven is really your motherland, then prayer is really your mother tongue, and you can’t help but yearn to speak in the language of your Father now.

As I pull into the line for custom’s, praying they’ll let us home, Joshua yells it from behind me — “Rainbow!”

Really? It’s like a welcome home!

“No — no, it’s not a rainbow…” says Joshua, and I don’t have to see him behind my driver’s seat to know how his voice, his eyes are searching, reading everything above.

“It’s a double rainbow.”

And I glance over my shoulder — and it’s right there in living color like a signed vow straight across the sky.

Right there as I pull up to Canadian Customs, and I tell a doubtful officer my ridiculous grace story, show her my passport, and the Canadian customs officer shakes her head, “I can’t believe they let you in.

There’s this double rainbow arching over us right there.

All I have is what I believe and the living of it and His promises are enough.

There isn’t a loss on earth that can ever rob us of the riches our Lord has saved us for in Him.

And there’s no getting over this miracle of entering into the country of our citizenship, of the failing belonging in Him and His Grace -– all the heavens low and open and waiting and all the sky this flag.

This flag flying in the unwavering hues of the promise of Home.

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Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart. To read the entire series of spiritual practices

This week, and the next two weeks, might we prayerfully consider together: The Practice of Citizenship: How You Live Here When You’re Home is in HeavenWe look forward to your thoughts, stories, reflections….

Today, if you’d like to share with community: The Practice of Gospel … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-06-12 [del.icio.us]

How Creative are You?

@The High Calling ... so how did you score?
Because you know you want to celebrate what matters...

... will you come join us at Women of Faith this year?
A Poem for the Twenty Something

@ Andrea Lucado

What in the World Should Christians Wear?

He does a double take.

It’s got to be my ridiculous bed head.

I step back from the luggage carousel, run my fingers through tired hair.

It’s mid June and I’m flying home from speaking, only to find my flight home to Canada canceled. It had been after 2 in the morning when I finally fell into the pillow in a darkened hotel room, heavy air freshener masking a million travelers who’d gone before.

Then four hours sleep.

Then pull on a dress, back to the airport to take my place in humanity’s lines of leaving and dreaming.

I had watched how a woman held her swelling abdomen as she stepped down the escalator, caressing the coming one, attending to the unseen.

I remembered that unconscious cradling right from the beginning, all those times.

I had smiled when a woman breezed by with her hair done up in wedding veil, her flipflops slapping, a grinning man right on her heels.

Now and then, I glanced at the woman beside me writing in a looping, lopsided scrawl on a yellow legal pad, making her numbered list.

I had made mine own mental list of thanks, me waiting and watching, bed headed and bare-faced and without make-up, relieved to be going home to the Farmer who takes me anyways.

A man who thinks the best thing any woman can wear is a smile, the hidden within wore happily on the outer. I am praying for this.

And when I land on Canadian turf midday, and the man at the luggage carousel does his double take, when the man turns from the the luggage conveyor belt spewing out a stream of black carry ons, all a bit like adolescents with identity crisis, each sprouting a wild head of ribbon to set them apart from the crowd, he asks, “Yours?”

I shake my head, no. Not yet. Still waiting.

I don’t expect what he says next:

“I like your dress…”

I must have misheard.  Without luggage, I’m wearing the same dress as yesterday, the same one my mother frankly called bland and bag-like, the one without a zipper or shape, that you just slip over your head, long, mid-calf, and simple, neckline round and high and plain. I’m shaking my head. No. Not at all.

“Your dress…” he says it again so I hear, his accent heavy. “It looks so… spiritual.”

Oh? Um. I didn’t expect that.

I’m wary. I’m not sure who this man is…   And I’m ridiculously awkward, shy and not the kind of pretty face that men strike up conversations with.

And a Travelsmith dress, bought off ebay — spiritual?

It’s pale purple. I’m wearing a strand of pale mauve glass beads. I’m not wearing a headcovering, habit or bonnet — just bedhead. No cross around my neck, no robe with a rope tied around waist, no Beth Moore button on shoulder (though I do fleetingly think of Mrs. Beth’s airport story and wish I knew what she’d say right now.)

I inadvertently look down at bland purple — um, what exactly looks spiritual?

“So…. what do you do?” The man circles his hand likes he’s trying to get me to roll out me tied up tongue.

What’s he expecting me to say?

“I’m a … a farmer’s wife.” I stammer it out. Good one, farm hick — mention your husband. And this is what I do: love and serve one faithful, hardworking man. I am a wife. Oh, and the other important part: “We have six children. I teach them at home.” I’m pulling hard at those strand of beads and I can feel it, the flush of heat rising up my neck.

He nods slow. Face on fire, I keep looking for my luggage.

“I work in stocks. Out of Chicago.”

Oh? I nod, keeping my eyes on the spinning carousel, feeling only a tad spun.

In deep, Eastern tones, he tells me about the last ten years of his life, this job, that city, and I keep nodding, fingering desperate along that necklace like a string of prayer beads, never turning from the luggage carousel.

“One week, my stocks, they make $80,000. Next week, I lose $100,000.” He shrugs his shoulders. “The way it goes.”

“Well…” I lean to see if that’s my zippered piece of baggage finally dropping off the belt. “Money isn’t what’s eternal, is it?”

“Ah!” he throws his arms in the air. “I knew it! So you are spiritual!”

Oh, where is Beth Moore when you need her?

I breathe deep and smile, the Holy Spirit always within, giving the words, and I just pray that I hear Him right.

“So what kind of spiritual are you?” He moves to my right, trying to make eye contact.

“I’m a Christian.” The words come… without fumbling. This is who I am: loving and serving One who is Faithful. I am His. This is the important part.

“But…” he’s circling his hand again, wanting more. “What kind of Christian?”

Oh. Kind? Isn’t being a Christian rather like being pregnant? You either wholly are or you really aren’t — is there an in between? How did we become known as “kinds” of Christian instead of being simply, humbly, loving Christians? What if following Christ was about a living faith not about wearing faith labels — about living Christ-behaviour, not living in Christian boxes?

“I’m an evangelical, born-again Christian.” I say it quietly, searching a stockbroker’s face. “I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Saviour.” It’s startling how right the words feel out loud.

Why in the world don’t I say these words aloud to strangers more often? Why don’t I live them more clearly? I am ashamed of how many times, unlike the apostle Paul, I have been ashamed of the gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16)

I have no idea why the dress appeared, for some inexplicable reason, spiritual — but what about my bare soul?

How much of my life is about looking spiritual on the outside — instead of living with the Spirit on the inside?

Why clean the outer curve of cups and slight the inner communion with Christ?

There’s no true holiness without wearing deep humility — the humility of speaking humbly what the world considers wholly foolish, to be the weak that God uses to speak the strong.

“I am going to see a friend here.” The man looks down at his watch.

“She asks me why I come see her and I tell her that all over the world the spiritual make pilgrimages to places. So can’t I make the journey to see her?”

“Yes, yes, go see her.” I smile, stepping to grab the handle of my carry-on.

“It’s souls that are the eternal priorities…”

I don’t think I am doing any of this right and Mrs. Beth obviously would have done this exponentially better and oh, just to simply clothe this ragged soul in humility and what kind of Christian am I really?

The man nods warmly, reaches for his red suitcase dropping onto the carousel.

And what are we really here to do but to live the Great Commission — not the Great Optional? 

How will I feel standing before Jesus, robed in His sacrificed righteousness, only to see that all my excuses to not share the gospel were but cloaks for selfish fear and pride?

Who in the world hides good news? When you know God is the well of all enjoyment and sin the pit of all entanglement — then isn’t it clear what to run from and Who to run to? Why be afraid to share this? 

There may not often be great opportunities to change the world, but every single day there are small ones —  and all the small can do nothing but add up to great.

And I stand at the baggage claim, unconsciously fingering along the seams of my skirt….

And there could be the humble bold who claim the Truth, wear the grace, and speak the unashamed — that one more wanderer might be clothed in Christ….:

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“Someone asked “Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved?”

It is more a question — Whether we — who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not — can be saved.”

 ~ Charles Spurgeon

 

edited post from archives

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-06-11 [del.icio.us]

A Viral Flesh-Eating Bacteria

that seems to be growing in the Body of Christ? a very thoughtful piece by Karen Spears Zacharias ...
Who Sleeps Better at Night?

@ Wall Street Journal ...

Bonhoeffer & Counting One Thousand Gifts

‘Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things.

We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.

We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious.

We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.

How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

 

opening paint cans up… {#3651}

long grass early in the morning… {#3652}

laughing with Jessica and Annie… {#3653}

a Farmer leaving fudge on my pillow… {#3654}

these 10 easiest herbs to grow… {#3655}

full, soapy cleaning buckets and dirty floors {#3656}

summer lists and 100 free things to do with kids this summer… {#3657}

the peonies out on humid nights… {#3658}

this incredibly easy and remarkably delicious recipe that Jessica made in the crockpot… {#3659}

How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you, which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you. Ps. 31:19

…. counting more of His endless, One Thousand Gifts … thanks be to God

Take June’s Joy Dare?

Print it for the fridge and dare everyone in the family to find these 3 gifts from His hand each day:

Click here to print June’s Joy Dare! Put it on the fridge! Dare the Kids! And begin this week — this month-- right!

Count three gifts a day, 1000 gifts in 2012 (and be entered to win the NikonD90 camera?)

Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world — the whole world!

HOW TO ENTER JUNE’S GIVEAWAY: (The Winner of May’s Joy in a basket is Lynn Pottenger … thank you for giving Him thanks for the gifts, Lynn!)

Each day of June, either share your gifts on on Twitter {label with #1000gifts #JoyDare so we can find you!}, or with us in the gratitude community at Facebook , or on Pinterest (#1000gifts).

Each day, 3 people will who share their gifts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest will be randomly selected & entered into a drawing for JOY BASKET: a gift card @ Amazon {100$} & {signed copies of One Thousand Gifts, the photographic gift book, the DayBrightner, and the family gratitude journal} Give thanks to Him in the assembly!

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?

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 a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

weekends for being shaped into the image of God

Last night here in Nashville,Christa Wells and Nicole Witt sang this song at Broken 2012… and I am still singing here this morning…

(RSS Readers:

When You need Rest …. {Fridays on the Farm}

When it grows loud in the corners of everything and the walls of the soul quake just a bit, I go and sit in the soil where the corn grows by His certain goodness and right out of the earth.

Where the children run in their bare feet and bend to know leaves.

I come into the stillness of the praising things and feel the sun on the nape and I come to breathe deep again, the children running down straight rows and into the sky. The dog presses into me.

A bit of quietness might be born here on the edge of the corn.

For just long enough, all that weighs slips away and there is this rest in the wide open Grace of God, the dog panting happy and close.

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::Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}