Happy Judgment Day!
5/21
So supposedly, the world is going to begin its demise and reconstruction in 11 hours. Am I predicting it will? Certainly not. Jesus does not speak of a date and time and Paul says that “… the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). If the info wasn’t important for them to divulge or even know, I don’t believe God planned on revealing it through “mathematical equation.”
Regardless of what I think today will bring bringing something like Judgment Day to the table still poses some interesting questions, most of them centering around whether or not my heart would truly rejoice to be reunited with the Lord today. Life is really good for us here. We are content. Actually forget content, overfed. I have not craved the presence of God like I should crave the presence of God lately. I’ve been distracted by getting the stresses of moving back into our house and getting all my ducks in a row before the baby gets here. Nothing distracts me from God as much as chaos in my personal realm.
And yet, we are told that when we “seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness, [the stuff we need] will be given to [us] as well.” When we put the Kingdom first, God will provide us the rest. His loving desire is our complete devotion.
The rest of 1 Thessalonians 5 seems to indicate that the church should not be surprised when the Day comes, not because we know when it is coming, but because its arrival is to be anticipated and hoped for and today I have had to ask myself if I have been. “Am I ready?” not in the REPENT AND GET READY FOR GOD way, but in the looking at the values of my heart way. If my desire for God is first, this should be a day I hope for, maybe even long for. But do I?
(on the flip side, I should also desire that today isn’t the day because there is a lot of work left to be done here and many hearts I would desire that God soften first. I should also pray that softened hearts would be my first motivation for this over my own personal inconvenience).
I do believe strongly that Christ will return one day to renew the world. It could come today. It could come tomorrow. It could come 1000 years from now. Every day should call us to question what our desire for God’s presence looks like and well, if all the May 21st publicity gets us asking that, it seems like a good enough day to start thinking about it again.
Adventures in Asbestos Pt. 1
One of my favorite song lyrics of all time comes from Sufjan Stevens’ Casimir Pulaski Day:
“Oh the glory that the Lord has made, and the complications you could do without…” Seems fitting, however in all honesty, we are smiling, praying, and waiting to see what more God could bring from circumstances we couldn’t dream up if we tried to.
11:15 AM Wednesday morning, the day before anything officially scheduled for Shack work ended
Told by the doc that I haven’t gained weight in 3 weeks. This could be 1. a late growth spurt 2. a need for more protein 3. the placenta burning out and not giving the baby nutrients which would require an induction in t-minus 3 weeks. Unlikely, but possible. Given two weeks, hopefully we can make up for some lost time and an ultrasound will give us some more insight as to what is going on with our otherwise healthy fetus! Induction stresses me out. Natural contractions are tough. Unnatural, “let’s speed things up” contractions are brutal. Most times, inductions are coupled with epidurals. There are many many reasons I don’t want an epidural, and in this scenerio, that would require an unnatural level toughness to maintain that desire.
2:00 PM
Maintenance man shows up to fix leaky pipes. I begin a much overblown pregnancy meltdown (#2) under the weight of everything needing to be taken care of, even after we discuss how stupid worrying is at house church the previous evening. Hormones and fatigue are not nice.
5:00 PM
Another maintenance man shows to alert us that there may be asbestos in our house and we need to evacuate. That night. And pack for potentially 3 weeks gone. (3 weeks, isn’t there the possibility I might be getting induced in three weeks?) I finish up the batch of cookies I was making for Midnight Breakfast and we start to cram all we can into the cars after having another minor meltdown that in the midst of life turning on its head, Emmy can’t come with us to the hotel.
11:00 PM
After dropping Emmy with very very generous and wonderful friends, we settle into our new home- a hotel suite paid for by the apartments.
Today (Friday), we found out the apartment tested positive for asbestos. We will be displaced for a few weeks. I kind of had the feeling May wasn’t going to be as straight forward as I had planned it to be. I looked forward to seeing friends, cleaning house, catching up on projects, spending time with Danny, training the dog and preparing the house for the baby’s arrival.
And now I get to see friends, catch up on projects, spend even more time with Danny(in a hotel suite), and sleep through the night now that the dog is being taken care of. The house is going to be cleaned top to bottom by the workers. I can’t cook anything. I can’t organize anything. I don’t have to clean anything. We aren’t paying rent.
The things that are truly important are being showcased. God gives us all we need to do His will. And oh yeah, I am going to be forced to rest, which apparently pregnant women are supposed to do.
I had already considered that we had it pretty good. We had plenty time to pack and leave, a place to go and a place to eventually return home, which is more than many have when being forced to leave home. Seeing the footage from across the South where people really and truly lost everything in the storms only confirmed it. Certainly someone affected had to be nearing the end of a pregnancy too. Who knows, the whole hospital could have been taken out!
The important things remain: Jesus is still victorious. Danny and I are together and well. It’s nice to have things all together, but really, how much organization does a baby need to come home to? If indeed it comes to its home at all? It makes me laugh that of all things for God to play around with, He chose my need craving for structure. The lesson seems fairly light, at least for now. We might not have a lot of time to get things together on the other end, but we will have time for what is important.
“To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day will bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.” Oswald Chambers in his entry for today, April 29.
Big Enough to Hold Me
So the question arose again: “What happened to you?” Someday I may answer that more publicly. The painswell and the quiet growing fade that has overtaken me over the last three years came to a head earlier this week. I made a string of bad decisions as direct result of my mounting confusions and insecurities and realized just how mounted they had become.
Last week, I was brought to John 16, where Jesus assures the disciples that their grief will turn to joy. He compares this feeling to a woman in labor. Why on earth would Jesus reference an event like to his male disciples who would never understand it? Let’s just say it hit close to home. And was very very comforting.
True grace has a way of bringing us back to humanity.
This morning as I prayed, God sent me back into my old blog, which is where I tend to go when I start to wonder where I’ve been. There was a lot of beauty and life there, most definitely. I finally settled on a last page of entries to read which coincidentally brought be back to March 2008. And this is what I found:
“God exists. Yeah he reaaaaaaally does. Somethings are too much beyond coincidence. Everyone around me knows how hard I have been praying for clarity in deciding what to do next year. And when God speaks, God speaks. He has actually been speaking all along, whispering in my ear, showing me what to look out for. We are told to pray big so when it is answered, we know it is from God. I noticed that when I tried praying for certain big things, I couldn’t do it consistently. Probably because it wasn’t right. So I prayed for other big things that made more sense. Those prayers stuck. And were answered loud and clear.” 3/23/2008
“I have been praying for more genuine faith for quite sometime. And God is making me fight uphill to get it. But it’s not as fluffy anymore and although my “fruit” shall we say might not come in the quantity it once did, it will be more quality.” 3/16/2008
If I only knew then the process it would take. And I can’t claim to know now just how far reaching the consequences will prove to be for me or for anyone else. Good change never happens overnight. I didn’t plan for it to take years.
I may fade away or I may burn out or perhaps prance forward in glory after all. But I have stopped trying to grade myself because it isn’t about me and the reaching effects of our lives and actions are far from what we can perceive. Beauty will rise from the ashes.
It is time to celebrate Passover and Easter. God is faithful. And Hallelujah, He is Risen.
Empathy
3/13
As some of you may know, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years grappling with the media in question of what I should and shouldn’t be exposing myself to, reason being that while I want to remain exposed to various aspects of the human struggle and relevant to engage the culture I am surrounded with, I never want to become desensitized to or entertained by the things that burden my Lord. It is always interesting to me to hear why people choose to watch the things they do and don’t when they are being intentional about it, but my recent surprise came from someone (outside the church) who was talking about her avoidance of anything disturbing or depressing.
“I just can’t separate myself from it.”
It got me wondering, should we? If we did this in the media, would we also do it in real life?
Is there something implanted inside of us that identifies with our fellow man so deeply that we must force ourselves to turn away rather than identify with it and then act? Do we intentionally stifle the drive to reach out to preserve our sanity/comfort/lives? If this were the case, our hearts would become fairly hardened as a result. I suppose it is the sort of thing that lets us watch the news and not be affected by it because it is “just another car crash” or “just another flood.”
There is something to be said for giving everything because then at the end of the day, there is no question that you couldn’t have done more. The mark of our Savior.
Who did not heal everyone. Who did not reveal himself to everyone in the flesh. Who did the work set out for him.
What does it mean to be truly abandoned?
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25
Walking in the woods
3/8
I wish I was collecting my thoughts more than once a month.
God is bigger than our hearts. He is bigger than our fears. He is bigger than our doubts and questions.
Too often we are walking along with God, and a tree falls in our path. Or we get bit by a snake. Our we just start thinking too hard. All of these things force us to start asking questions, really hard and tough questions about life, eternality, humanity, love, etc. etc. The natural response is to sit down on the path and refuse to walk any further until God answers our questions.
Does God owe us an explanation? Right then? At all?
The answer of course is no. God doesn’t really “owe” us anything, save to do what He has said He will.
We could instead to choose take His hand, hold it tighter and keep walking. Maybe in the events that followed or the conversations that ensued, He would answer. It takes a great amount of faith to keep walking, but we must keep going if He is going to reveal Himself. He will not give into our tantrums and childish demands and He will not drag us kicking and screaming. His invitation is to “come and see” and to “follow me.” This requires us to choose to walk. It is only in the walking, the moving forward, the continued journey alongside our loving Lord, that we will truly grow in the “knowledge of Him that provides all we need for life and godliness.” And He is faithful to give us what we need.
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39
This includes our doubts, fears and questions.
And the Emmy goes to…
2/8
us apparently. It’s funny, you find out you are pregnant and you have 9 months to trick yourself into thinking that after enough research you’ll have any idea of what having a baby will actually be like.
And then your husband calls at 1am from work to see how you would feel about him bringing home a puppy. An abandoned beagle puppy. 2 am rolls around and the phone rings again. “You’re going to kill me. Come outside.” And there stands your studly uniformed husband, looking excited and nervous holding the leash of a small shaking silhouette with giant floppy ears, who runs for you and asks with her big puppy eyes (a gross understatement btw) “are you my mommy?”
uhhhhhhhhgggmmmmyesssssssssssssssssssssssssss
So no prep, no dog food, just a dog that showed up needing a place to stay at 2am Saturday night. And little Miss Emmy has turned life on its head.
Danny and I had decided not to pursue getting a dog because we felt that our resources would be better spent in other ways, leaving it open that God would make it obvious if there was one we needed to take. It seemed obvious enough to Danny when he found it. And I will be the first to admit, I am pretty smitten by her. She is beautiful, she loves people and she snuggles a lot.
And still I wonder. People in other countries can’t fathom us having non-food generating animals living in our houses. There are people starving around the world. There are people with needs right in front of me and we just dropped $250 to our apartment complex for what they call a “pet fee.” I believe firmly in simplicity and pragmatism when it comes to how we steward our lives (I admittedly have a lot of room to grow in both), so all this has been pretty conflicting for me.
I suppose we get it into our heads what God wants for us and become inflexible to what He puts in front of us to do. Knowing that I have struggled with these ideas before, the conflict isn’t surprising. There is still that, “really God, are You sure about this?” factor that screams and wonders how this is going to be edifying to the church and the world, because we were trying to do it differently. Thankfully, our church has fallen in love with her and has been gracious to serve us in all the complications we’ve faced in the last 3 days offering crates, dog sitting, and lots of love time.
Maybe I just don’t accept blessing well. Or trust enough in His bigness or His mystery. Or feel comfortable turning into a puddle when she is with me. Maybe I get prideful over the edgy things I’M doing for the Kingdom rather than serving in grateful humility.
I feel like a little girl looking tentatively at something really special and really dangerous and saying, “Daddy, is this really ok?”
Summing up suffering in 322 words?
1/21
“And then I just gave into the pain.”
This quote was featured in the documentary,” The Business of Being born,” by a woman describing her experience giving birth naturally in her home. I could go on forever about the movie and its affirmation about the mentalities about our upcoming birth, but there is something about this line that hit me.
We don’t give into pain. We usually don’t have to. We live in one of the richest, most advanced countries in the world and if we want to, we can live fairly comfortably. We medicate our physical ailments with various drugs and we medicate our emotional ailments with all sorts of small comforts in feeble attempts to feel better.
“Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” 1 Peter 4:12-13
So, apparently pain is not necessarily the exception? And is part of God’s plan for growing us to be more like Christ? At what point does one need to give into pain in order to commune with God and submit to His plan?
One of the biggest differences between this world and the world to come is the presence of pain. As much as we try to “bring heaven to earth,” sickness, heartache and death will be a reality until the Lord redeems this broken place in and ushers in His (final) Kingdom. And in order to prepare for this adequately and identify with Christ, God sometimes requires that we learn to suffer as Christ did.
In a sense, pain keeps us human, while drawing us nearer to a personal God and increasing our hope in what is to come. The relief will be that much greater.
I still haven’t been through all that much
Laying down to rise up
Last week, I was sitting down to coffee with a beautiful friend of mine who had been mulling something over for a few weeks and this week she asked me point blank,
“What do you think makes a woman godly?”
The question startled me. It was simple, yet profound. And most importantly, it had been asked because the answer was being sought wholeheartedly. What makes a woman godly? What leads her to have a gentle and quiet spirit that is precious in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:4) ? It was too big a question to just make up on the spot, so I thought, I deflected, I prayed and then the answer came so simply and planted itself and has yet to be removed.
Submission
Yes, that dreaded word again. A word associated with weakness, being dominated, abused, and a whole slew of negative connotations.
However, when we look at God, shouldn’t we know ourselves to be weak? Shouldn’t we know that it is He and not we who is worthy of worship? Shouldn’t we know and rest in our need for a savior? Our God does not abuse and He does not dominate ruthlessly because these are not actions of love. But He does call us to submission (James 4:7). Why?
Submission asks us to trust.
Trust is a decision of will that is assured in God’s ultimate goodness, no matter what the circumstance. Our faith is often tested by facing up to what we have to lose by it. Only a faithful Lord could assure us that “he who loses his life will gain it” and provide everything to do just that. A woman who is submitted to God can praise Him during even the greatest of tragedies because she has laid her life before Him who gives and takes away, in full knowledge that He does so in love. She holds her blessings in open hands, and is able to offer grace to those around her in the knowledge that their lives are in His dominion. She believes that her life is God’s to use as He chooses and gives herself to Him every step of the way. Many women trust in nothing and many women trust in the wrong things. There is nothing more beautiful than a heart that trusts in the one sure thing in complete single-mindedness and purity.
Submission takes humility
Humility says “you first,” first to God and then to others. It denies entitlement, rights, boastings and prideful longings, things that make a heart cold, unmoldable and sometimes just ugly. As Jesus gave up the glory of exaltation (Philippians 2:6-11), it takes this very mind, the mind of Christ, to lay down life. A woman must be very sure in where she stands with her Savior in order to be able to possess this trait and act on it. This knowledge alone is admirable.
Submission prompts us to obey.
Obedience is God’s love language (John 14:21) and the most appropriate response we can offer to the grace we have been given. God has given us the tremendous gift of salvation in Christ and of the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us straight from His heart and it is our privilege to respond. It takes trust to obey, and obedience is trust put into action. It not only trusts in a good God, but trusts that His commands are good and worth following. Obedience is the safest place in which a woman can find her heart and her life, as it ensures the favor and pleasure of the LORD.
Submission allows us to love as God does.
Many have tried to love without submitting to God. There are many forms of love present in the world and I realize this is where things get really shaky for some. The love that Jesus has loved us with is more than passionate love, more than affectionate love, more than brotherly love, but an undying and also unselfish love that desires what is best both for the person and for the Kingdom. It is this love that we are to show to neighbors and enemies alike. It is this love that should define what our marriages and dating relationships look like. We love because we are loved first (1 John 4:19). This kind of love does not come naturally. and it is an act of will which is why submission is so important here. It also requires specific action and expression that follows what love is and what love is not (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Without submitting to God first, love cannot take full form because its source be God Himself and the outflow of a close relationship with Him.
While submission shows weakness of sorts before God, it takes great strength of heart and will to actually operate. It is not passive, but active. Shouldn’t these things be true of men as well? Yes. Submitting in love is the call of all believers. However, I think it has become harder on women to do, which is why finding a truly and correctly submissive woman is like finding a rare treasure.
the things we do not see
12/3
Today, Oswald Chambers reminded me of something very important, something that has been pounding in my brain, surfacing and continuing to poke and prod at my consciousness.
Faith based on experience is fickle at best. God certainly reveals Himself to us each in our own way, but the most important revelation of God is the one that we must know to be true regardless of His activity in our lives: God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son. If we can believe this, we can walk in faith of God’s promises. We can live in the hope of the things to come and that we are co-heirs with Christ. All too often, we see what “God does for us,” problem being that when God “stops” doing for us, or enters us into a new season, or we find ourselves based in trials, we start to question God and His goodness. Our faith is based on what we perceive God to be doing, not who God is and what has already been done. And we are quick to believe that God has abandoned us, or is not “loving,” or doesn’t exist, etc. etc.
We have too often divorced faith from hope. This world is not our home. God is renewing and will renew the earth, but it is still broken. And we have been called to be lights in it to those who don’t know God. That leaves us no room for self-pity and discontentment. Do we believe “it is finished” or not? Anyone with an inkling of God’s greatness should know that fighting Him is a bad idea. Life has enough trouble in it without having to then worry about if we stand with or against God.
Faith requires a belief in what we don’t see. We are a generation that doesn’t like to wait for anything, but the Kingdom calls for us to treat life with a certain degree of delayed gratification. The Kingdom is present and active, but it is also still coming. This is why we must never forget hope. It is what allows us to look ahead and know that things will be well so our souls can truly be at rest. Faith should point us towards hope at all times.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Romans 8:22-25
There is no better time than the Christmas season than to reflect on hope. The hope of humanity came into the world as a baby and died to reconcile us to the Father and provide hope everlasting. May we not give up the fight this year under the stresses of the season and the pressures of a life that is fleeting in comparison to the glory that awaits.
Mopping at Midnight
11/19
It seems as though afternoon naps are the key to not falling asleep at ungodly early hours of the night. While my friends were out seeing the Harry Potter midnight showing, I was passed out. And had been for over 3 hours.
I’ve been discovering recently how much I love cleaning up the house after entertaining. I am no longer a late night person, but when the last person leaves, there always seems to be extra energy to put the house back in working order, knowing that I’ve gotten the gift of serving people I love dearly. Each person leaves a mark in a chair pulled across the room or on a dessert plate and each gets remembered as everything goes back in its place. Thankfully, God has taught me to stop stressing about the prep work but not matter what happens, the end of the night comes with the kind of relief that everything that was meant to bless has truly come to pass.
That being said, I am going to bed before my pregamones start acting up again.
In your eyes... 