Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 81
May 11, 2020
When You’re in Need of a Fresh Approach to Move Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode
Aundi Kolber spent much of her life believing that the only way through pain was to white knuckle and shame herself. She hoped that if she armored up and tried hard enough, maybe she would finally be found lovable by God and others. In a beautiful turn of events, Aundi came to find through safe relationships, her training as a licensed therapist, and the profound compassion of Jesus–that she has always been deeply loved. It’s a grace to welcome Aundi to the farm’s front porch today…
“Aundi,” she said to me gently, “it’s okay to cry. It really is.”
As my mentor spoke, years of bottled-up tears tumbled down my cheeks, and my whole body seemed to exhale.
“You don’t have to have all the answers. It’s not your job to fix everyone. You can let yourself rest. You’re safe with me.”
Little did she know how much I needed those exact words; I was starved for them like a tree in the desert longs for rain.
“We are quite literally created with the capacity to move through hardship when our minds, bodies, and spirits have the support they need to fully process pain.”
It wasn’t that tears or emotions were new to me. But usually my big feelings were accompanied by profound shame and blame. One minute I felt as though I couldn’t hold them in any longer, and the next I felt angry about my perceived weakness.
My inner critic had become adept at warning me that my vulnerability and aches were not welcome—and so I did everything possible to project the strength I believed would make me lovable.
Growing up in a family with significant relational and attachment trauma certainly did teach me I had no choice but to be tough, and my experiences seemed to prove that love was as flimsy as a stack of cards.
And so of course I learned to hide, suppress, and numb my pain.
But this is what happens when pain goes unvalidated and unwitnessed: We learn to internalize the false story that we aren’t worth the effort to be cared for.
Yet through the deep, unwavering grace of a God who is crazy about us, I have come to learn that our bodies are designed to heal.
We are quite literally created with the capacity to move through hardship when our minds, bodies, and spirits have the support they need to fully process pain.
“Ultimately, we move toward healing as we learn to steward toward ourselves the profound compassion God has for us.”
Our ability to move toward wholeness and healing doesn’t happen because we pretend, ignore, or white-knuckle our way through the hard stuff of life.
As my mentor reminded me, healing happens when we begin to try softer with ourselves in the face of all that threatens our peace.
Ultimately, we move toward healing as we learn to steward toward ourselves the profound compassion God has for us.
A New Story
During my fourteen-year journey healing journey as a survivor of childhood trauma, I have come to experience the story of belonging and abundance that I believe Jesus invites us all into. It is a story of connection to the God who allows us to live from our truest selves—emotions and all.
Yet our culture and—even more significantly, our families—often teach us that pushing down trauma and pain is the only way to be in the world.
“God is with us in the pain.”
But Jesus tells us a different story, doesn’t He? He tells us that we don’t have to shame the pain; that instead, God is with us in the pain.
God is our Waymaker through the pain.
Jesus—the God who took on flesh to feel all the emotions and realities of our humanity—came and met us in the muck so that we can experience what it’s like to be known, loved, and fully human.
The God Who Weeps
It’s possible that my favorite example of the way Jesus invites us to try softer is in His interactions with His friends Mary and Martha after their brother, Lazarus, died.
The shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35, esv), sums up Jesus’ response as they and others grieved near Lazarus’s tomb.
Jesus absolutely knew what was about to happen: Even though His friend had died, He would be raising him back to life momentarily. But—don’t miss this—Jesus still wept.
What kind of God is this?
His friends had just lost their dear brother—of course they wept.
Yet Jesus didn’t shame them; instead, He honored and entered into their present grief and validated their humanity.
When Jesus lamented with Mary and Martha, He was allowing them to process their emotions.
Joining them in grief, Jesus knew that as they processed their feelings, they would tap into their bodies’ natural ability to integrate difficult experiences.
“Yet Jesus didn’t shame them; instead, He honored and entered into their present grief and validated their humanity.”
And as the Creator of their neurobiological structures, I suspect He even recognized that their minds and bodies needed to do this so the pain didn’t become a form of trauma.
Notice that God-in-the-flesh did not rush Mary and Martha along but instead provided empathy and patience.
This is a model for us as we seek to pay compassionate attention to our own experiences.
It might sound strange to most folks, but Jesus’ weeping is one of my favorite things to talk about.
This is the Jesus I know and serve and give my life to; the One who holds the redemption story in one hand and the fragility of our human emotions in the other—and loves them both.
An Invitation to Try Softer
Today, dear reader, I wonder if you can sense the invitation from your Maker to begin to honor the experiences of your own humanity.
Perhaps you can do so by letting yourself rest one moment longer in the presence of someone who helps you exhale.
Maybe you can listen when your body asks you to feel an emotion.
Even more simply, you might allow yourself to pay attention to what is actually going on in your inner person.
Regardless of your next step as you learn to try softer, my prayer is that you and I each know and experience the God who is profoundly compassionate with us.
Licensed therapist, speaker, and author Aundi Kolber lives in Castle Rock, Co with her husband and two children. She is passionate about the integration of faith and psychology and has received additional training around her specialties of trauma and body centered therapies. Aundi is the author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode and Into a Life of Connection and Joy. As a survivor of trauma, Aundi brings hard-won knowledge about the work of change, the power of redemption, and the beauty of experiencing God with us in our pain.
In a world that preaches a “try harder” gospel-just keep going, keep hustling, keep pretending we’re all fine-we’re left exhausted, overwhelmed, and so numb to our lives. If we’re honest, we’ve been over-functioning for so long, we can’t even imagine another way.
It is the joy of Aundi’s life to invite readers to understand that God is stunningly kind to us—and because this is true, each of us are invited to steward that compassion toward ourselves too. With a thoughtful combination of story, faith, and research-based practices, this book will guide you toward cultivating a gentler posture toward yourself.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
May 9, 2020
For All the Ways Mother’s Day is Complicated: Tribe of Mothers
I
am the mother of my daughter whose first mother I’ve never met.
When your story comes from a long line of women — how do you make the lines of your story write a love story back to them?
My daughter moved inside the womb of a woman I wouldn’t know if I passed her on the street. And before my heart wrapped around my daughter’s, her heart had beat for nine months under the rhythm of another woman’s heart, a woman who made space within herself to grow this miracle I now get to behold.
When your story comes from a long line of women — how do you make the lines of your story write a love story back to them?
How do you kiss the shoulders on which you stand?
How do you embrace all the women who come behind you who are now lodged like all this light in your heart?
My aunt never held a child of her own. But on one of my darkest days, when I was fighting a plan to end all the pain I didn’t know how to stop — I had texted her. And she saved my life, she gave me life.
You don’t have to birth someone to birth hope into someone.
Any woman who has grown a soul within her, or has grown space in her life for a soul to keep on growing — is a mother.
Any woman
who has grown a soul within her,
or has grown space in her life
for a soul to keep on growing,
Is a mother.
When you’re a fountain of love, your offspring is everywhere & you’re mothering and watering souls wherever you go.
When I hear Dolly Parton crooning out a tune on some kids’ playlist yesterday, I dance around like my tiny Grand Ruth used to do, crooking my neck to my shoulder just like she used to as she shimmied to country western refrains, and I can still hear her humming and the creaking of her knees.
How can her old tapestry purse still be here in a closet, but she’s no longer here? Missing her is a way of not missing out on her now.
Even after our mothers go home to our Father, their love still mothers us.
I hear my 21 year old daughter tell her father yesterday, “You know what I just noticed? I have the same dimples as Grandma Voskamp had. Dimples. Both cheeks. Just the same as her.”
The Farmer smiles, stilling holding the phone in his hand from talking to our 23 yr old son who recites chapters by memory of Ephesians every night to his dad. On a top bookshelf in the study, up above the old hymnals, are all of Grandma Voskamp’s dog-earred, underlined and dated Bible Memory Association booklets, James, Colossians, 1 John, Philippians, a stack.
Grandma Voskamp has been gone to glory now, singing with the heavenly host for the last 13 years. Her dimples smile on in her granddaughter, her legacy of memorizing the Word carries on in her grandson.
Every mother can be a star, her light going on and on and on. Every woman can be a wave whose love kisses the ragged edge of things time and again, even after time’s rolled on. Every woman can a torch that passes on a legacy that never passes away.
Every mother can be a star, her light going on and on and on.
Every woman can be a wave whose love kisses the ragged edge of things time and again, even after time’s rolled on.
Every woman can a torch that passes on a legacy that never passes away.
My own white crowned mama, whose frail heart beats with lionhearted love, she sews masks for us all in these strange days, every day letting me unmask my heart when I call her, and she still holds my exposed fears with a gentle wisdom she’s told me a thousand times if she’s told me once, “It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it, it’s what you do with it afterward.”
And who doesn’t ache in these strange days to gather up all kinds of our kind mothers, their real sacrifice strengthening our arms for these days, their enduring courage strengthening our backs for this journey,
their singular love still coursing through us,
still carrying us through all the days.
When I set out a bouquet of wild daffodils in my mama’s vase this weekend, when a kid here raises the volume of a tune my Grandmother danced to, when our youngest daughter, born in another country to another mother, raises up on her tiptoes to grab my neck and pull me close to whisper in her little lispy voice, “My heart is tied to yours always and forever, no matter what, Mama,” — something in me rises, and there it is:
May we all rise for our long tribe of mothers:
May we honour our brave tribe of mothers,
may we reach out as a true tribe of mothers,
and may we raise up a kind tribe of mothers,
so every man, woman, and child feel how they belong
to the forever kin
of our Father.
This Mother’s Day Get What You Really Want for Free:
A Truckload of Grace, A House of Prayer, a 10 Point Parenting Manifesto
All Three Free Gifts have profoundly impacted my 25 years of parenting — so I just really wanted to wrap it all up & give to ((YOU)) as a free gift from my mama heart to your brave one — or for your own mother — a deeply meaningful gift that you don’t have to go out anywhere for, or spend any money on — kinda perfect in strange days like these — and it’s exactly what every mama want the very most: a 10 Point Parenting Manifest for JOY (regardless the age of your kids), everything you need to literally make your house into a house of prayer (especially needed in days like these) — and a printable that gives every mama what she wants most: a Truckload of Grace.
What you really want most this Mother’s Day
Click Here for all you need for the (FREE!) perfect way to Disappointment-Proof this Mother’s Day
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [05.09.20]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
so we’ve been told? These guys are all less than one inch big…
what a glorious God of the details!
This Mother’s Day thank the women who have loved, mentored, and mothered you
Bethany Hope
Bethany Hope
Bethany Hope
can you even?!? Happy, happy Mother’s Day
You’re invited to reminisce with us this Mother’s Day!
Mothers of every kind – physical or spiritual – influenced you, believed in you, prayed for you, and taught you about God and Scripture. Honor your mother’s legacy by giving the gift of hope to others through Scripture in their heart language.
love this idea… Visit Seed Company here: to give a gift in her honor!
This Mother’s Day Get What You Really Want for Free:
A Truckload of Grace, A House of Prayer, a 10 Point Parenting Manifesto
All Three Free Gifts have profoundly impacted my 25 years of parenting — so I just really wanted to wrap it all up & give to ((YOU)) as a free gift from my mama heart to your brave one — or for your own mother — a deeply meaningful gift that you don’t have to go out anywhere for, or spend any money on — kinda perfect in strange days like these — and it’s exactly what every mama want the very most: a 10 Point Parenting Manifest for JOY (regardless the age of your kids), everything you need to literally make your house into a house of prayer (especially needed in days like these) — and a printable that gives every mama what she wants most: a Truckload of Grace.
What you really want most this Mother’s Day
Click Here for all you need for the (FREE!) perfect way to Disappointment-Proof this Mother’s Day
she shares some really good words here
How woke do you really want to be? Do you really want some 20/20 vision this year?
Love God. Love People.
“Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘LISTEN, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.””
Mark 12:29-31 MSG
Turns out? All our homes tell a story.
Every blanket, every spoon, every plate, in every home — began somewhere in the world, was made by someone in the world, and somehow changed a bit of the world —
for better or worse.
And the welcome mats under our feet, the steaming mugs in our hands, the full bowls on our tables, could all tell a grace story — a story of fair trade, a story of life change, a story of saving, Gospel grace.And THESE DAYS at home? Maybe these days at home require a little extra GRACE?
Wherever there is a place of Grace — we find more of Home. Come see.
a message of Hope
I’m Dying: Lore Ferguson Wilbert shares some really profound words here
there is peace…even in the storm
Avery Sass
Compassion Graduate: From Shoeshiner to National Director… YES: amazed at this!
Dear Mom… (don’t miss)
I will wait for you
so yeah, tears here: I’ll Love You Forever
a story of the power of music…
Kinda strange, hard days to be raising kids. What does hope look like? Hope for them, hope for you, hope for us all — that we can change, that we can do hard things, that together, we can rise!
Because there’s no giving up, but here’s how to keep giving it our all:
Parents Who Want to Give Up: how to raise up kids even when you want to give up
Why Do Greetings Matter? Philippians 4:21-23
Favorite Home Dress: Tribe Alive
Post of the week from these parts here
You don’t even know how to say how tender Mother’s Day is for you. Yeah, you are so not alone & I just really wanted to give you everything you need to disappointment-proof Mother’s Day, give you everything you need to know about mothering,
right here, for you:
How to 100% Disappointment-Proof Mother’s Day:
Get Everything You Want for Mother’s Day & Get Everything You Need To Know About Mothering
More than Enough
This month. May. What is needed now more than ever?
That we be the hands and feet of Jesus for each other, that we help be what each other needs, that we #ShowUpNow for each other, that we #BeTheGift to each other.
Because actual lives depend on it.
Right now, we all desperately need to be the gift to each other. To stand together in solidarity—FOR each other—knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than the spread of any pandemic, more powerful sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love.
Dare with us? Let’s spread kindness, start a bit of a movement, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution that turns things around.
Could there be a more beautiful way to live your one life in times like these?
WE CAN #SHOWUPNOW, DO THIS THING AND #BETHEGIFT!
Download the Free COVID-FRIENDLY #BeTheGift Calendar under “Free Tools” here: http://bit.ly/StickyNotesForYourSoul
AND CHECK OUT SHOWUPNOW right now — to bring new hope to this new month!
thankful for the scars…
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT.
Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
On Repeat this Week: Mighty To Save
It’s okay. Slow down & breathe.
Let the goodness & mercy that follows you every. single. day. of. your. life. — no. matter. what. — catch up & overtake you today.
“Surely goodness & mercy shall follow me
ALL the days of my life” Psalm 23:6
*When we feel how His goodness overtakes us,
nothing can overwhelm us.*
Just that today: Slow down & see how His goodness catches up to you.
And then let Him take your hand.
Don’t simply follow your heart —
but follow a Light so lovely that it will ignite your heart.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
May 8, 2020
How to 100% Disappointment-Proof Mother’s Day: Get Everything You Want for Mother’s Day & Get Everything You Need To Know About Mothering
H
onestly, you don’t have to know what you’ll do when the kids grow up, buy a Mother’s Day card for you, while they tell their friends, their therapist, and their kids that you got so much wrong.
You just have to know that you’ll humbly own it.
Because they aren’t wrong.
Favorite Home Dress: Tribe Alive
“Parenting is never about how your kids turn out. It’s always and only about how you keep turning toward your kids & their Maker.”
It’s tender and true: You could have held them longer after they grew too big for your arms: held space for their pain, held their eyes, held them up in relentless prayers. You could have said yes to more campfires, jumped more on the trampoline and been known more for your loud, rowdy laughter instead of being the ready critic. You could have asked more honest questions and lingered longer, simply honouring them with listening space. You could have said yes. And No. Both at the right time.
Where you tried and fell short, they now trip and fall and have bruises to prove it.
Much dysfunction is a function of denying brokenness. The madness of much dysfunction ends now, ends with our owning it. Yes, things were broken. And: All the brokenness can be the tender breaking open of a seed to grow better.
No matter your hidden regrets or their current age: You can tenderly own that you took some wrong turns and it’s never too late to simply turn toward the Light.
Life always turns on the turn.
“The work of every parent is to give the best they know how now — and the work of every child is to forgive their parents the best they can now.”
And it’s worth writing down by the kitchen sink: Parenting is never about how your kids turn out. It’s always and only about how you keep turning toward your kids and their Maker.
It’s okay: Motherhood is never about training your children to be good so they won’t ever fall — it’s about letting them see you fall in love every day with a good God.
And even after you’ve fallen hard — they see you keep falling hard for God.
Simply: The work of every parent is to give the best they know how now — and the work of every child is to forgive their parents the best they can now. Our work will look different, but we both have growing work to do.
There is always grace coming to meet us.
I became a mother on the eve of Mother’s Day. I was a wide-eyed girl of 21. He was 4 weeks early. I wasn’t ready, he was tiny, a curled soul in my hand, and I had no idea how to unfurl him into man.
“Our nightmares end when we accept that where we are, can still be where dreams come true. To accept is to wake.”
That boy who made me a mother now turns 25. I’ve now been a mother for a quarter of a century. I had no idea I’d end up becoming the mother of one and a half dozen kids — which is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying I’m the mother of 7 kids — while saying that a whole lot of days that felt more like mothering 18 kids.
I have lived through days —countless of them — that were unashamedly our actual dreams come true — and I have lived through honestly our very worst nightmares.
Prodigals. Rejections. Diagnosis. Needles and daily injections. Constant meds. ICUs. Self-harming. Open heart surgeries. More than once. Mental health fractures. Mine and theirs. Car accidents. More than once. Drop outs. More diagnosis. Sleepless nights. Prayer pacing and soundless tears at 3 am. More than once.
Seven miraculous kids has meant non-stop riding seven roller coasters with all of the wondrous, exhilarating heights — and heart-dropping plunges.
“Motherhood is never about training your children to be good so they won’t ever fall — it’s about letting them see you fall in love every day with a good God.”
Life always comes in waves, the cresting and the crashing — and we just have learn how to accept the way of the waves.
Our nightmares end when we accept that where we are, can still be where dreams come true. To accept is to wake.
All l needed to know about mothering I learned that first long, sleepless night of being a brand new mother.
It wasn’t that wails of the brand new baby that kept me awake. He barely stirred. I stared at him for hours, as dusk deepened into dark and his face was lit by the hospital hallway, him swaddled in the bassinet rolled up to the side of my bed. I couldn’t turn away from his newborn sleep, couldn’t hardly breathe through the mounting realization that I could wreck this tiny human being entrusted to my blatant inexperience.
My terror was kinda palpable: How do you mother and raise an actual living human being?
I’d opened up the most ancient book and traced a trail of words that had been worn down as tried and found true for centuries:
“He carries them close to his heart
and gently leads those that have young.” Isa. 40:11
In the shadows of a dark room of a neonatal ward, I’d laid there wide awake with The Mother Epiphany:
“God gently leads those who have young, because He is leading us on a journey — that journeys with our kids who are on a journey of their own.”
You need to carry out your mothering the best you can, but the Shepherd carries your babies close to His heart, and He is the one responsible for carrying your babies home. God is ultimately the shepherd of our children, we just have to keep faithfully carrying on.
God gently leads those who have young, because He is leading us on a journey — that journeys with our kids who are on a journey of their own.
No parent gets to decide a child’s outcome — we only get to decide to always come alongside our child. We only get to offer our child with-ness and witness on their way — we don’t get to determine their way.
We can only relentlessly pray that they will choose the only One who is the only Way.
“No parent gets to decide a child’s outcome — we only get to decide to always come alongside our child.”
It’d take me years to realize:
Parenting 101:
No shock, no shame, no matter what they do.
Only sharing the sheltering arms of the Shepherd.
Parent or child, we are no different, we are all wandering sheep, easily lured, who all need the rescue of the Shepherd from the lostness of lesser loves into the embrace of the greatest Love, Love Himself.
When a mother stops seeing herself as the shepherd who needs to be good enough get her child safely Home, but instead sees her and her child both in need of a Good Shepherd, this is how she always stays safe in the home of God.
“Mother, in the arms of your Father: You are not lacking. You lack nothing.
You. do. not. lack.”
When I’d turn toward the expanse of dark hospital room windows, there was my reflection, a mother desperately fearing she was not enough, backlit by the glow of hospital hallway , and there was clear Heart of the Father:
Mama, trust Me:
You are not lacking.
I brimmed….. dropped my eyes, shook my head…..
But there is the Comfort of the Father, gently gathering up all the Mothers of children, hushing away all the fears with the song they know by heart:
The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. Ps. 23:1
Mother, in the arms of your Father:
You are not lacking.
You lack nothing.
You. do. not. lack.
Mother, in the arms of your Father,
no matter how things unfold with your children:
You are Beloved.
Live out of your Belovedness,
Parent out of your Belovedness,
Love out of your Belovedness —
because your perfect Belovedness kicks all fear out to the curb.
On the eve of Mother’s Day, my hours old newborn son slept soundly, and I cried quietly in the arms of my Father and it would take me a long quarter of a century and 7 kids later to know it fully:
“God’s a perfect father with His own prodigal kids — and He only has perfect grace for prodigal parenting of imperfect, glorious kids.”
God’s a perfect father with His own prodigal kids — and He only has perfect grace for my prodigal parenting of these imperfect, glorious kids.
It would take me all this quarter of a century of mothering to find the relief of it:
If we don’t turn inward — it all turns out.
Turn outward — toward your children, and toward your Shepherd — and in the end, it will all turn out.
You will get things wrong, the prodigal parent with prodigal kids, and you and the kids will both make wrong turns, only to turn and find the arms of the Shepherd who left everything to come and find and gently lead all the way through.
A Shepherd who whispers to each of us, New Mother, Young child, Old Mama, Adult Child, Wounded and Wandering and Wondering, no matter where any of us are on our own journey:
Beloved. All will be alright, all will be all redeemed, all will be all restored.
“Beloved. All will be alright, all will be all redeemed, all will be all restored.”
So honestly? The truth is, no matter what anyone says about you, to anyone, you don’t have to know how any of the journey will go, but you can quietly forgo buying any Mother’s Day card and simply make one of your own — for you, for your own mother, for your own child, one that simply transcribes the heart of the Father right now:
Beloved,
I am your Shepherd &
You are mine.
You are not lacking,
You Lack Nothing.
You are not lacking.
You are Beloved.
This Mother’s Day Get What You Really Want for Free:
A Truckload of Grace, A House of Prayer, a 10 Point Parenting Manifesto
All Three Free Gifts have profoundly impacted my 25 years of parenting — so I just really wanted to wrap it all up & give to ((YOU)) as a free gift from my mama heart to your brave one — or for your own mother — a deeply meaningful gift that you don’t have to go out anywhere for, or spend any money on — kinda perfect in strange days like these — and it’s exactly what every mama want the very most: a 10 Point Parenting Manifest for JOY (regardless the age of your kids), everything you need to literally make your house into a house of prayer (especially needed in days like these) — and a printable that gives every mama what she wants most: a Truckload of Grace.
What you really want most this Mother’s Day
Click Here for all you need for the (FREE!) perfect way to Disappointment-Proof this Mother’s Day
May 6, 2020
Parents Who Want to Give Up: how to raise up kids even when you want to give up
When I was an oblivious 16, more than a few moons ago, I met this soccer mama who had it painted on her canvas sneakers:
Shoe #1: These 2 feet run
Shoe #2: After my 3 sons.
We ended up with 4 sons.
Four sons. Four sons who swelled me out like a melon and nobody tells mothers that: Once labor starts, it never ends.
Four boys that made mountains of laundry like they were tectonic plates, who furiously ravaged the fridge 24/7 and left a never-ending stream of empty plates. A quad of explosive testosterone, a quartet of dirt and wrestling and loud and dreams and books and mess and sweat and inventions.
And, frankly, there were a lot of days I wanted to have it wired up in neon blinking lights on a t-shirt:
These two arms
pull out a lot of this mother’s hair
over her 4 sons.
The one boy that was harder than all the other kids all put together?
The one who made me think he was either headed to delinquency hall, or I was literally headed to an insane asylum, who made me lock myself in the mudroom, slink to the floor and weep a primal grief? At least three times a week?
“Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.”
He bought his own house the week before his 18th birthday. That he rents out to 7 other university students.
He now messages me multiple times a day with quotes of what he’s been reading. Links to good stuff. He’s one of my very best friends. One of my very favourite people in the whole wide world. I never want conversations with him to end.
A road always looks one way — until it makes a u-turn.
They don’t tell you that either:
The only way to raise kids — is by never giving up.
I’ve failed our kids like the Hindenberg. Crashed and burned of epic proportions. Daily. Turns out that: Whenever you want to light into someone, is exactly when you should lighten up.
Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.
I confess: I wish I had done that. There’s support groups for moms of preschoolers, but where’s triage for the moms of teenagers? MOTHERSOFTEENAGERS #MOTS
The older our kids become, the greater our isolation can become, because while mothers of toddlers can instagram and commiserate together over the Terrible Twos — mothers struggling through a stretch of terrible teens can suffer alone.
“Redemption is the papery ash that’s falling, turning and uplifting as sparks of pure glory.”
Those hard teens? One of the younger ones scored in the 99.7 percentile on his ACT. Was offered a scholarship to his program of choice — mathematical physics — the week of his 17th birthday.
While the Farmer worked in the fields last night, planting way past midnight, that kid talked on the phone for hours with his dad. Recited to his dad all of Ephesians 1 — he’s been memorizing every chapter of Galatians and Ephesians with a goal to memorize all of the New Testament. He’s become more than I ever dreamed.
Redemption is the papery ash that’s falling, turning and uplifting as sparks of pure glory.
This happens. We don’t deserve this and redemption still happens.
And it begs us to never stop looking for it, to always stop and witness it.
* * *
So when our 4 boys show up this year, in the middle of a global pandemic, to ask their dad how they can help him put in this year’s crop?
“When a family works shoulder to shoulder through something, they find they can take on just about anything.”
Yeah, they end up in tractor seats — grinning a mile wide and nodding at us, and I remember how I once held these boys as babies in my arms.
Remember the year that they got stuck in the back field, tracks up to their knees.
How the cultivator had caught a bit of damp dirt at the edge of the woods.
And the phone had rang after midnight here in the farmhouse, a brother looking for his kid brother.
I’d still been up, making up something warm to eat for for that kid brother who’d just dragged in from another farm and planting 200 acres of soybeans on his own.
Both boys had have been up since 4 am the day before: Feeding hogs. Washing down barns. Hooking cultivators on to tractors. Cultivating up a seed bed for hundreds of acres for those seeds.
When a family works shoulder to shoulder through something, they find they can take on just about anything.
Their Dad was still out there, planting. Still out there going in the field behind the barn, out there underneath a milk moon, on an open tractor, eating dirt up and down the field, trying to get the last of those corn seeds into the ground.
When I’d taken a warm bowl out to the good man, his hands were bone cold. I’d told him that one of the boys had gotten stuck — but he’d called for his brother to come help.
“Growing in grace and wisdom and stature isn’t an immediate download — it happens the way a tree grows up: over decades.”
And Levi had left his steaming plate on the table, headed out to the shed to grab a chain, start up the tractor again, haul over to the farm a few sideroads over to pull his big brother out of the field in the middle of the night.
This old ma of theirs, I’d driven the pick-up tuck out to check on our boys. Stood in the dark and nod our Boy-me on. Brothers.
The Redeemed and the Rescued and the Remade. Gittin’ ‘er done with their dad. Doing whatever it takes to keep the other one going, get this crop in the ground and get this family through — because, for all our stumbling and wandering, that’s what families do.
Levi and Joshua had hooked that chain onto a tractor axle in the dark. Their bass voices echoed across the field. When did I turn and they grow up like this and how did this miracle of grace bond us all like this?
People can say what they want about teenagers & boys these days.
Say what they want about this next generation, say that kids can’t change, that we’re all going to pot here in a hand basket. But even in the midst of hard years, when raising kids is just plain hard, especially in these strange days, and I just want to whisper:
There’s a whole generation of young men who are becoming good men.
There are young men who need time. Oak trees don’t happen over night.
Growing in grace and wisdom and stature isn’t an immediate download — it happens the way a tree grows up: over decades.
There’s a reason why children begin as seeds. It’s okay — it’s okay — that growth and change take time — it’s supposed to.
There are good young men who simply need someone to tell them a dozen times a day, “You’re good at working hard and loving large. You were made for this.”
There are good young men out there who need to be unearthed from low expectations, and made over by relentless grace, and strengthened with daily doses of iron: the nails of service and the Cross of Christ.
“There’s a whole generation of the hardest boys who can become the greatest men.”
There are good young men who need someone to show them they are trustworthy by entrusting them with worthy work, who take the time to inspect their work so they know what to expect, who give them confidence to to do hard things by giving them hard things to do.
One of the boys hauls his brother out of the mire.
I had memorized the boys’ silhouettes in the lunar light — and I can still see it now.
How the two of them had stood in a shaft of moon, farm caps pulled low, deciding who will finish up this field now at 3 a.m., who will get up when the 4 a.m. alarm would go off in an hour for the barn again and those hungry hogs.
It doesn’t matter if they’ve both been up 22 hours now. It doesn’t matter that there are hours ahead of them and rain coming and only so much time to get these seeds into the ground. They’re both bent and bound to not quit now.
Don’t quit now.
There’s a whole generation of the hardest boys who can become the greatest men.
There’s a whole generation of young men who will rise up if we raise our expectations, who can turn over new leaves because we never stop believing in them and a redeeming God.
When you teach a kid how to work hard, you teach him how to work through whatever’s hard.
Yeah —- there’s more than just a few good young men.
There’s a whole world of them. Headlines could tout them. Facebook streams could flood with them and Instagram could capture them and Twitter could trend with our future men: #GoodYoungMen. And a whole generation of mothers and fathers could do the hallowed work of raising them up. Because a country needs them, a hurting world needs them, an eternity needs them, and the raising up of #GoodYoungMen is no small thing — it’s a hard and holy thing.
“When you teach a kid how to work hard, you teach him how to work through whatever’s hard.”
When the third born son, Levi, had caught a glance of a photo from the field, he had leaned in over the outlines by the tractors.
“That’s Dad?”
I had shook my head, no.
“Oh, that’s Dad?”
He points to the other silhouette in his peaked farm hat. “Wait — Dad was planting behind the barn that night,” he straightens up, confused.
“It’s you.” Something’s burning in my throat.
“It’s you and your brother.”
Levi leans in again over the picture. “Really? We both look like Dad. The way we are both standing.”
His mother nods, swallows around this burning ember.
The feet of all our sons run like all the good men ahead of them —
a crop of good young men planted by their Father, for a harvest worth all of a mother’s worn and faithful grace.
May 4, 2020
What Can I Do With a Life that was attacked, broken, or riddled with undeserved tragedies?
Cynthia Garrett is a longtime TV personality in the US and Internationally. Her love of Christ caused her to create the TV Series, The Sessions w/ Cynthia Garrett, currently airing on TBN around the world. She has lived her life daily choosing victory over circumstances since childhood; sexual abuse, rape, cancer, divorce, single motherhood. Choosing to use her life, and the lessons she has gleaned from God’s love, as a healing vessel for others, is her passion. Cynthia has been a secular network TV Personality for many years – but it is her faith that drives her commitment to keep bringing the Gospel to the media in new and unique ways! It’s a grace to welcome Cynthia to the farm’s front porch today…
“I have very little problem sharing the things in my life that victimized me because I have chosen to see their value in my calling.
I gained strength from surviving sexual abuse so I can now strengthen others.
“I gained strength from surviving sexual abuse so I can now strengthen others.”
I gained wisdom in God’s Word every time I fell down so I am able to help others find His Word and get back up.
I worked for years on TV hosting talk shows. Now I use my skill set for communicating information that matters more than make-up tips or fashion labels.
Look at your life.
You have experiences that others can learn from. Shift the focus off yourself and onto why your life matters to all of us, and you will find your calling!
I see my various experiences, good and bad, as tools in my belt that I can use to lead others into their own victory choice.
“I gained wisdom in God’s Word every time I fell down so I am able to help others find His Word and get back up.”
I shook off their ability to define me, replacing it with my choice to be labeled a victor.
I support and understand victim groups and classifications, as long as their goal is to eliminate the word “victim” and replace it with the word “victor.”
Choosing victory in this case becomes the cornerstone of calling and purpose.
In a support group that is focused on victory, rather than lingering in pain, anger, and blame, you can ask an important question:
What can I do with a life that was attacked, broken, or riddled with undeserved tragedies?
The answer to this question takes on many incredible shapes and forms, dictating tremendous levels of victory to every individual.
Joy Prouty
You can embrace your greatest calling based on the skill set these circumstances have given you rather than great limitation based on their residue.
“In a world searching to define you by what you do, finding out why you do it is infinitely more powerful.”
Think about Paul. When he understood that his whole life was meant to share the Gospel, he was able to do it under any circumstances. He understood his why!
What is your why?
In a world searching to define you by what you do, finding out why you do it is infinitely more powerful.
People will not die for their what. But they will surely die for their why! Your why is about your purpose. Your why can positively impact the whole world.
It changes your life, your environment, your community, and your nation for the better.
The most satisfying trophy you receive when you choose to live from a victorious mental state is the why behind what God will show you that you alone are equipped to do because of what you’ve lived through and experienced.
The challenges, the pain, the things you’ve overcome become the fuel for your why—and like me, you will come to a place where you wouldn’t trade much of your past for the power of your present because of it.
You were created with a unique and victorious offering inside you: an offering that is a gift to the world around you.
“Everything you have experienced, good or bad, is a weapon in your hand for good—if you choose.”
Everything you have experienced, good or bad, is a weapon in your hand for good—if you choose.
Being able to shift your focus from yourself to all others frees your mind to see the myriad possibilities for your unique, albeit difficult, experience to touch many lives.
The mind that lives in victory begins to soar with the eagles, seeing a world from thirty thousand feet, filled with many avenues and flight paths.
Understanding your calling and purpose is undeniably one of the incredible gifts in your victory zone.
In my life, choosing victory has unlocked doors and created opportunities that you would have never imagined had you looked at some of the tragic moments, life twists, and burdens I have endured.
As the Bible says, count it all joy. What I went through and what you currently may be going through isn’t necessarily joyful.
I wasn’t celebrating while being sexually abused or raped. Cancer wasn’t fun or fair. Financial struggles and a season as a single mom on welfare didn’t feel good.
“Taking personal responsibility to find the gratitude in my life, no matter what, and accepting that victory is mine to choose and no one else’s to give has been the hardest part of my journey.”
The residue from many of the obstacles that life has thrown me has been hard and painful.
Taking personal responsibility to find the gratitude in my life, no matter what, and accepting that victory is mine to choose and no one else’s to give has been the hardest part of my journey.
In facing the difficulty in life, you must face the difficulty in each of the awful things that others have done to you, each of the failures and mistakes you have made, and each of the vices and sins you have fallen into.
Then you are required to go to war. Yet that war—mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically—opens many supernatural doors and creates a multitude of opportunities.
Stop living out the narrative that says, “I can’t,” “I will never …” “There is no hope,” or “That never happens for people like me.” Stop. Right. Now.
Put on a new narrative.
This one says, “I am able. There is nobody else like me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am an overcomer. I don’t need anything but my faith to push me forward. My God is awesome, and I am His.”
Repeat it daily.
I Choose Victory is the cry of my heart. It is a triumphant shout in the face of the many challenges life throws at you and your refusal to live according to the victim’s narrative each day tries to write for you. In I Choose Victory, Cynthia Garrett teaches readers how to confront the three war zones of their lives; each one walking you deeper and deeper into not just how to make the choice for victory over victimization – but how to live in it!
Cynthia Garrett began her television career on VH1 before going on to host LATER w/Cynthia Garrett on NBC, making her the first African American woman ever to host a network late night show. Now the executive producer, creator, and host of The London Sessions and The Sessions with Cynthia Garrett, she brings us the first faith-based women’s talk shows. Not just the first of their kind, but the number one faith-based talk-show internationally. Her half-hour series is among the highest-rated women’s shows on Christian TV around the globe. Cynthia reaches millions of people on four continents with what she calls “not just another talk show, but a WALK show,” teaching women around the globe how to live victoriously guided by their faith.
[ Our humble thanks to Salem Books for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
May 2, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [05.02.20]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
everything she captures takes my breath away… every day is a GIFT
smiling at this
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
her work is just too beautiful not to share…
at 97!? we’re cheering him on!
This episode covers the big picture of forced migration internationally, the uniquely powerful way Canadians are able to help, and how music is helping one resettled family stay grounded.
smiling through tears: This is Lulu’s “Gotcha Day”! She was adopted at almost six years old and has Cerebral Palsy. Friends and family decided to surprise her, knowing how much this day means to her
Handcrafted French Bread Board available at gracecraftedhome.com.
HOME — it’s the constant beat in all of our hearts. Maybe Home is one of the most powerful words we know?
And THESE DAYS at home? Maybe these days at home require a little extra GRACE? Wherever there is a place of Grace — we find more of Home.
Here’s a look at how airlines parks thousands of planes and the outlook for the grounded fleet
breathtaking! a Monarch Butterfly Swarm
anyone else wanna visit? glory, glory, glory
Sara Navarro
can you even?!? 16 Moments to Make You Smile Right Now
The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds both flew over New York City on Tuesday in honor of the workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
See the view from their cockpits in this video released by the Department of Defense… hold on for this one!
thank you for this one, Scott Sauls… We Disagree, Therefore I Need You
this TV anchor shares her story about her husband’s struggle with depression
good stuff: Kindness 101 with Steve Hartman: Honesty
Trusting God in Difficult Times – Habakkuk 3 Meditation by Tim Keller
Post of the Week from these parts here:
Um. New Month? Fresh start?
Uh —- how do we get back to parts of a life that exists somewhere behind us?
I can NOT get this story out of my head — it’s literally changing my life:
How to Survive This Virus (Chapter 2): Losses Come in Waves: How to Find The Way Through & The Complete Passage Deal
No Need You Have Will Exhaust God: Philippians 4:18–20
New month. May. What is needed now more than ever?
That we be the hands and feet of Jesus for each other, that we help be what each other needs, that we #ShowUpNow for each other, that we #BeTheGift to each other.
Because actual lives depend on it.
Right now, we all desperately need to be the gift to each other. To stand together in solidarity—FOR each other—knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than the spread of any pandemic, more powerful sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love.
Dare with us? Let’s spread kindness, start a bit of a movement, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution that turns things around.
Could there be a more beautiful way to live your one life in times like these?
WE CAN #SHOWUPNOW, DO THIS THING AND #BETHEGIFT!
Download the Free COVID-FRIENDLY #BeTheGift Calendar under “Free Tools” here: http://bit.ly/StickyNotesForYourSoul
AND CHECK OUT SHOWUPNOW right now — to bring new hope to this new month!
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT.
Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
On Repeat this Week: He Shall Reign
…as you look into the coming week, remember — there will still be love when the worst happens and when the hope doesn’t happen, there will still be love when everything’s crumbling and there will be enough love to rebuild, there will be enough love to keep breathing, to keep believing, to keep being and being brave.
Fear can be what we feel — but brave is what we do.
There’s enough Brave in us to believe that though the world is broken, there is light getting in…
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
May 1, 2020
How to Survive This Virus Chapter 2: Losses Come in Waves: How to Find The Way Through & The Complete Passage Deal
“No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear, is what C.S. Lewis said.
And who could have told us that a year ago?
We’d all now be living through a once-in-a-lifetime storm of historic proportions — and what you feel in your bones right now is the exhaustion of grief and fear and the unknown.
I stare at the calendar. New Month. Fresh start. May. And honestly?
In the midst of this blinding squall of this pandemic with 40 foot waves, we are all kinda desperate to wake up and find our way back to a life that we think still exists somewhere behind us.
Ivan Aivazovsky
Ivan Aivazovsky
“There is no controlling life’s storms, there is only learning to live with waves.”
It’s okay to be sad: We’ve lost the way we used to simply grab some groceries, or easily retreat to a local coffee shop, or gather in full classrooms and our calendars are haunting reminders of what one was.
It’s right to grieve: There are no wedding bells ringing, no prayer meetings where we grab hands or happy potlucks together under church steeples and there are all our grandmothers passing birthdays at windows of hauntingly empty rooms, looking out at eerily empty streets.
It’s a painful reality: Whatever next week, next month, next year holds, there are people we know who are not going back to their work, there are dreams that all of us, and people we love have deeply sacrificed for, that are now ashes in the wind, there are people we know who may wake up one morning with a slight fever, a barely cough, who end up in ICU dying terrified and alone.
However the next few years unfold, there is going to be suffering that enfolds us all.
Because the reality of the trajectory of human life isn’t a straight lined of ascent, from strength to strength, climbing higher and higher, but like a repeating W, a dying and rising, a dying and rising, over and over again — the heights and peaks of the cresting waves — and then the depths and valleys of the falling waves.
“In the losses, we gain an understanding of who we really are. In losses, we gain a vision of who we can still become.”
Life is waves — and there is no controlling these waves. Grief comes in waves. Suffering comes in waves. There is no controlling life’s storms, there is only learning to live with waves.
The real work of being human is mastering how to process losses while being in the process of moving forward.
And right now? Now isn’t the time to be up on the deck drinking Tequilas while the Titanic sinks. Now is the time to wake up to the waves, get all hands on deck, and call on the One who doesn’t just calm one storm, but calms all our storms.
Now is when we realize: Losses are a given, but what you do with what’s still been given, is what will take you where you want to go.
Loss may be a four letter word — but it’s a word that you don’t read to understand, but rather one you feel in your gut and hold on to Jesus to keep standing.
In the losses, we gain an understanding of who we really are. In losses, we gain a vision of who we can still become.
Will a global crisis around us grow godly character in us?
Ivan Aivazovsky
Ivan Aivazovsky
Ivan Aivazovsky
To move forward through these losses, this grief and suffering, there isn’t one of us who won’t have to learn to ride the waves and feel the stages of grief and still believe there is a way through.
And when I look at the sea of days in front of us, across a new month full of unknowns, what I know? Is that though we may have not signed up for a pandemic, we definitely signed up for The Complete Passage Deal.
Like that old story often told goes, of the European family who squirrelled away every possible penny for years to buy passage across the ocean to the United States of America. For days, the family huddled in their bunks, nauseated by the relentless tossing of waves, and meticulously rationing the meagre supply of flat bread and cheese they’d carefully wrapped for the long passage across weeks of waves.
Finally, several days into the passage, one of the older children earnestly appealed, “I don’t think — I can keep down one more bite of stale flat bread and cheese. I don’t know — how — if — I can survive this.”
Concerned, his mother consulted with his father, and together they scrounged up a precious handful of change, pressed it into the child’s hand with permission to see if there was any other affordable food to be had up in the ship’s galley.
After what felt like hours, the child returned to the happy relief of the parents who gathered the child up, “Ah, we were so wildly worried about you. Why didn’t you come back any sooner?”
“There is no way Jesus could leave you high and dry now — when He left the heights of heaven to make a way for you to walk through every storm on dry land.”
“Oh, I’m sorry — I’ve just been savoring the best pork ribs I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Pork ribs? With a fistful of change?”
“Oh, I just wish we’d known sooner: The food is free!” The child grinned. “It comes complete with the passage.”
When Jesus is the way across, the way through, the passage through this life and into the next — you realize it’s an All Inclusive, Complete Passage Deal, right?
Jesus doesn’t say “I am the Way” to heaven, but hey, provisions aren’t provided for the Way, meals are on your own, accommodations aren’t included, so you’ll actually have to pay your own way, you’ll have to hustle till you’re ready to drop dead, jostle hard for the best place, scrounge and worry and hurry for your own way, to have enough, and do enough and be enough,
No, read the fine print on the Complete Passage Deal. It all comes down to this passage: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
There is no way Jesus could deny what you need now — when He gave you Himself, all that you need for all eternity.
There is no way Jesus could let you drown in the waves — when He made Himself into the Way, to be your very passage through every wave.
There is no way Jesus could leave you high and dry now — when He left the heights of heaven to make a way for you to walk through every storm on dry land.
“The WayMaker makes sure you have everything you need for the Way through.”
If you make Jesus your passage through the storm — everything you need comes complete with the passage.
Peace? It comes complete with the passage.
Joy? It comes complete with the passage.
Courage? It comes complete with the passage.
Endurance? It comes complete with the passage.
Hope? It comes complete with the passage.
Because He completely gave the greatest thing at the Cross — how can He not completely provide everything needed for the passage across now?
The WayMaker makes sure you have everything you need for the Way.
Ivan Aivazovsky
In the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of the 50-day season of Eastertide, at the beginning of a brand new month that will unfold with a world of unknowns, this is what I know:
“Every darkened shadow of suffering is but a passing thing: There is light above this storm and no suffering can carry us away from the reach of His light. “
If Jesus gives Himself as our atonement — Jesus will give us everything we need, moment by moment.
Loss may be a four letter word — but so is Hope.
No matter what comes to pass — He will give everything needed for the passage.
Life, grief, suffering, it all comes in waves— but we can get out the boat, we can have faith to walk on waves, we can look up and see through the underbelly of storm clouds, to a shimmer of star, a shaft of light, that catches us like hope finding us again, and we can feel it warm on our heaven-turned faces.
Every darkened shadow of suffering is but a passing thing: there is always light and more light above this temporal storm.
This too shall pass — and everything we need till this storm passes, it comes complete with the passage.
In Christ, we are all living in an ocean of light, so there is no grief, no suffering, no loss to ever fear.
There is light above this storm and no suffering can carry us away from the reach of His light.
The deeper the waters, the closer our Father.
New month. May. What is needed now more than ever?
That we be the hands and feet of Jesus for each other, that we help be what each other needs, that we #ShowUpNow for each other, that we #BeTheGift to each other.
Because actual lives depend on it.
Right now, we all desperately need to be the gift to each other. To stand together in solidarity—FOR each other—knowing that an act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than the spread of any pandemic, more powerful sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love.
Dare with us? Let’s spread kindness, start a bit of a movement, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution that turns things around.
Could there be a more beautiful way to live your one life in times like these?
WE CAN #SHOWUPNOW, DO THIS THING AND #BETHEGIFT!
Download the Free COVID-FRIENDLY #BeTheGift Calendar under “Free Tools” here: http://bit.ly/StickyNotesForYourSoul
AND CHECK OUT SHOWUPNOW right now — to bring new hope to this new month!
April 30, 2020
How to find God’s promises in a life you did not choose
Nicole Zasowski is a girl after my own heart–an old soul who wears her heart on her sleeve. As a marriage and family therapist, Nicole couldn’t see that she was living her own life outside the freedom she was passionate about helping others find, wrestling with the need to prove herself and earn her own way in order to feel significant and secure. It wasn’t until she confronted her own season of pain and loss that she discovered that our hope is not in fixing ourselves, but in shifting our gaze to a Savior who fixed Himself to a cross. In a season when we are all confronted with disruption of security and comforts have been pulled from our grasp, Nicole invites us to see our empty hands as open–open to receiving the Peace we’ve been searching for and to find transformation and redemption in seasons we would not have chosen for ourselves. It’s a grace to welcome Nicole to the farm’s front porch today…
“Well, I guess these belong to you.”
Our Realtor flashed a cheesy grin as he dropped a set of house keys into the palm of Jimmy’s hand. We both laughed nervously, aware of the responsibility that came with this tiny set of keys.
It was May 5, Cinco de Mayo, and we were closing on our first home. The only thing we knew about home ownership was how much we did not know.
In an act of defiance against our budget, I toured our little gray Cape Cod–style home during an open house one Sunday in January when Jimmy was out of town on business.
Wandering from room to room, I wrote this home’s next chapter to include us. Upon leaving, I promptly sent Jimmy a text that I found our house. He laughed when I told him the price, but I was undeterred. I convinced him to put in an offer, which we did with a hope and a prayer.
“I was more interested in what I could take from our time here rather than asking myself how I could give of myself to this place.”
On the morning we planned to submit our offer, the sellers dropped their price significantly, taking our offer from offensive to aggressive.
After a tumultuous negotiation process and a comedy of errors on the part of the seller’s agent, the house was ours.
Circumstances had made it very clear that this house was a pure gift from God.
I insisted on sleeping in the house on the first night. As I lay awake in my sleeping bag like the Girl Scout I never was, I felt the full weight of our decision to purchase a home.
Putting down roots in Connecticut was in direct conflict with the daydreams I had indulged since moving here two years prior. I spent most of my time imagining our life elsewhere. My mind was a constant flight risk, making it difficult to properly invest in relationships and the possibility of a future here.
For most of my time as a resident of the Northeast, I realized I had been using the environment around me.
I was more interested in what I could take from our time here rather than asking myself how I could give of myself to this place.
I had been more focused on what I had lost and left behind in California than on seeing the joys that were waiting to be found here in Connecticut.
This house would change all that, serving as a tangible reminder that we had a future worth investing in here.
Sometimes we read Jeremiah 29:11 and, because of its familiarity, assume it has nothing for us. But the prophet’s words are deep and rich with meaning: “ ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you . . . plans to give you hope and a future’ ” (NIV).
“We can easily find ourselves camping instead of living.”
Previously I have understood this verse to be an encouragement that even when our reality looks different from our dreams in the moment, our prosperous plans are promised for the future.
And though we may have to wait, God does understand the life we long for and has plans for us that match the dreams we carry.
But the verses surrounding Jeremiah 29:11 tell a different story. When God spoke these words, the Israelites were in exile, calling a land they did not love “home.” In this particular passage we find them spending their time waiting for better days to come.
They camped, but they did not live.
They engaged only with themselves, hiding out among like-minded people.
They did nothing to bless their neighbors or influence the culture around them.
This approach was reinforced by false prophets who had told them that the days they dreamed of were just around the corner, which only served as further encouragement to put the business of living and blessing their neighbors on hold.
We can easily find ourselves camping instead of living.
I recognized myself as someone who was at risk of wasting the opportunity to find the gifts of the present in Connecticut as I waited for better days in the life I could so easily envision elsewhere.
The prophet Jeremiah confronted the Israelites’ lack of engagement by telling them to plant fruit trees—an investment that might not yield fruit for years. He told them to build houses and settle down.
“Seasons of exile, seasons we would not choose for ourselves and that do not match our dreams, are the seasons when we remember our home is in Him—a Person who cannot be taken away from us.”
His instructions were an invitation to stop waiting for better days and to live in these days in this place. Jeremiah also called them to “seek the welfare of the city” (29:7 ESV). He challenged them to not hide among themselves but to engage with their neighbors and influence the culture around them.
These seemed like odd instructions leading up to verse 11, which had always brought so much comfort.
How could God’s promise of prosperity and a hopeful future be found in a life they did not choose?
Many times in Scripture, God Himself claims to be our home—our shelter.
The Israelites may not have chosen their reality, but God was their connection between reality and a kind of prosperity that surpasses what we can dream of.
Seasons of exile, seasons we would not choose for ourselves and that do not match our dreams, are the seasons when we remember our home is in Him—a Person who cannot be taken away from us.
Perhaps the prosperity that Jeremiah was referring to was the transformation that can only come through finding our secure home in Christ.
And maybe it is only when we are changed that we can change the world around us.
Nicole Zasowski is a licensed marriage and family therapist, writer, and speaker based in the state of Connecticut where she lives with her husband and two young boys. As an old soul who wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, Nicole loves using her words to help others find an enduring peace and joy outside of circumstance.
It was only when she was confronted with her own devastating pain and loss that she realized her current way of life was failing her. She then discovered that sometimes God’s rescue looks like prying our fingers off what we think we want so that we can receive what we truly need. In her book From Lost to Found, she helps readers find that sometimes the greatest joy is found when we are drained of all misplaced hope and shallow identities, and that as we lose our group on comfort and control, we fall right into God’s grace.
God is writing a story of redemption in your life too. In the midst of pain or transition, discover a surprising path to healing as you lose your grip on comfort and control—and fall right into God’s transformative grace.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
April 28, 2020
Let Her Be: Raising Kids Who Believe They Are Worthy of Belonging
Rachel Macy Stafford is one of the most heart-forward people I know, and she is passionate about equipping people to live a heart-forward life. Today’s young people are facing issues no previous generation has ever faced. But Rachel has shown me how our homes can be a safe haven even when the world has gone crazy and feels disconnected and divided. The new realities of parenting are challenging, but if we are willing to live a life anchored by truth, presence and connection there is great hope. Rachel models living a life like this which is what we most need now. It’s a grace to welcome Rachel to the farm’s front porch today.
guest post by Rachel Macy Stafford
I remember the day I came face-to-face with a painful truth.
I’d been getting ready to attend a social gathering in our community.
On the floor of my bathroom lay an array of discarded outfits. I hated the way I looked in all of them.
“Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was trying to mold my daughter in my image.”
Rage and insecurity bubbled up inside me as I finally settled on something dark and baggy. With my mouth set in a thin, hard line, I opened my daughter’s bedroom door to see if she looked acceptable.
I found six-year-old Avery standing in front of the mirror. My eyes immediately zeroed in on the too-snug waistband of her favorite shorts. I lifted my eyes to the mismatched headband and messy knot of hair sprouting in more directions than weeds in a garden.
As I opened my mouth to remind Avery we needed to make our best impression, I caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror.
The expression reflecting back at her was quite different than mine; it was one of pure joy. Pure contentment. Pure peace—all at the sight of her six-year-old self.
Then she twirled in front of the mirror—actually twirled. Upon her second rotation, she saw me at the door, wiping tears from my eyes. She gave me a glorious smile—a smile that said, I feel beautiful, Mama.
And that’s when I heard the protective, healing voice of my dreamer girl whisper, “Let her be.”
Let her be.
With painful awareness, I realized I had the power to destroy my daughter’s joy and peace in a single critique—a critique that was rooted in my insecurity and fear.
“With painful awareness, I realized I had the power to destroy my daughter’s joy and peace in a single critique—a critique that was rooted in my insecurity and fear.”
All at once, I recognized my “helpful” critiques for what they were: rejection.
And in them, I heard the damaging message I was imprinting on my child’s soul: You are not enough. You will be rejected if you come as you are.
I’d always justified my behavior by telling myself I was helping her fit in. In reality, I was planting seeds of self-doubt that would only cause her to believe she didn’t belong.
If I kept up my messages of judgment, they would eventually become Avery’s inner voice, causing her to hold back her God-given gifts from the world.
Is this the life you want for your child? I asked myself.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was trying to mold my daughter in my image.
I’d already passed on my blue eyes and freckles, but by constantly critiquing and evaluating her, I was risking also passing on my fear of rejection. Right then and there, I recognized what my inner dreamer girl already knew.
Listening to the advice to Let Her Be, gave me the power to decide what not to pass on to my daughter—my insecurities.
Why would I want her to stand in front of the mirror for the rest of her life seeing too much and not enough when she could see just right?
“Listening to the advice to Let Her Be, gave me the power to decide what not to pass on to my daughter—my insecurities.”
Why would I want her to believe happiness could only be found in college acceptance letters and social media Likes when she could find happiness from within?
Why would I want her to navigate life hoping to be accepted by the “in” group when she could feel completely and lovingly supported by those who know and love her best?
Why would I want her to waste precious time wondering and worrying what other people think of her when she could be lovingly at peace with who she is?
When I took this epiphany to heart and held it there for a moment, it felt like a healing reckoning.
In that moment, I knew I needed to release myself from being judge and jury.
This means I do not decide I’m bad or good, worthy or unworthy, enough or not enough. This means I do not judge my feelings.
Instead, I acknowledge them, sit with them, or voice them.
My job is to show up as I am—bravely, boldly, flawed, and full of hope—to share my gifts with the world so that I can provide an example that will encourage my child to connect with others as her most authentic self.
I got out a spiral notebook, just as my eight-year-old dreamer girl would have done, and I wrote:
Yes, I am scared, but I am still showing up.
Yes, I feel less-than, but I am not letting it stop me.
Yes, I’m anxious, but the unknowing is always the hardest part.
Yes, I fear they won’t like me, but we don’t click with everyone, and that is okay.
Shifting from the role of Task-Master to Truth-Teller took considerable time, patience, and grace.
I was able to find the motivation I needed to let my children “be” by envisioning the emotional well-being of their future selves.
“Above all, I did not want my kids to live in fear of rejection, but instead feel empowered to connect with others on a foundation of truth, courage, and love.”
I did not want them to develop an identity of rejection that would make their lives harder.
I did not want them to make life choices based on approval rather than on staying true to their values, strengths, and dreams.
Above all, I did not want my kids to live in fear of rejection, but instead feel empowered to connect with others on a foundation of truth, courage, and love.
Although I lived most of my adult life feeling rejected due to my own self-judgment, it was not too late to decide I would not pass that pressure on to my children.
Perhaps making that shift sounds appealing to you, but you don’t know where to start.
I believe it starts when we decide to stop worrying about how our children’s appearance, actions, and achievements reflect on us and start focusing on how our unconditional love and support reflects on them.
Whether they are twirling with joy, melting down in frustration, or aching with pain, accepting them as they are reinforces the inherent belief that they are worthy of belonging, which is stronger than any rejection they will face in the days and years ahead.
Rachel Macy Stafford is a New York Times bestselling author with one goal: to help people choose love as much as humanly possible. Her newest book, Live Love Now comes from her background as a certified special education teacher with a Master’s Degree in education and also from her own drive to live out her message as she raises her own daughters. Rachel is a beloved blogger who offers lifelines of hope in her weekly blog posts at handsfreemama.com and through her supportive Facebook community, The Hands Free Revolution.
In Live Love Now: Relieve the Pressure and Find Real Connection with Our Kids, Rachel tackles the biggest challenges facing kids today and equips adults to engage them with humanness and heart, compassion and honesty to discover the deep, life-giving connection everyone is longing for. With illuminating, straightforward strategies, this book reveals the importance of practicing acceptance, pursuing peace, and exploring wellness and purpose for yourself so you can be the kind of real, relevant, and lifelong role model young people are searching for.
Whether you’re a parent, educator, older sibling, coach, or anyone in a role of leading young people, this book will help you meet the goal of raising and guiding young people to become resilient, compassionate, and capable adults.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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