To fall never again

Like I said yesterday, my family is all together on vacation this week.
We are at one of those obnoxiously large indoor waterparks (because some of us live in the midwest and it's the last day of January---almost all things are done indoors), and it takes probably ten minutes to walk from our room to the wave pool (which is a fabulous workout if you have a 5 year old on your back and are trying to dodge inner tubes so the 5 year old doesn't get squashed...fyi).

At this water park there are all types of things. Lazy rivers, the huge buckets that dump a thousand gallons of water on unsuspecting passerbys, loads of bathing suits (thank you, Lord. The alternative would be awkward..), even more loads of childrens who are sometimes in bathing suits, perpetually wet floors, even soggier towels, and water slides.

Oh, the water slide.

I have had a pretty good relationship to them in the course of my life. When I would spend summers in Chicago with my grandmother, every day my cousins and I would go to the pool (we all thought grandma wanted to be generous, but looking back now I realize she just wanted us out of the house. My grandmother has 37 grandkids, by the way), and there was a water slide. Great times. Great times. Diving boards? Now that's another story. I still have to manually plug my nose when I go under water. Can't do that too easily while trying to dive.
Anyway, the water slide. I prefer the ones where you can't see anything. The anticipation is what kills you, and if the water slide itself is going to kill me I would prefer to not see that coming.

But a few summers ago, all of that changed.
My whole life changed.
I always thought I was afraid of heights.
But then I did this activity (watch the YouTube video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K0qNEpzqQ8&feature=related

Besides the fact that this girl is blond, married, and most likely Canadian (there was a slight tone of her voice...), the situation is somewhat the same.
Actually, that's not true at all, the place is the same.
I was in Switzerland (which you all really should see sometime in your life) and my friends had the great idea of doing something crazy.
Never one to show that I am terrified of heights I was just like, "Oh Yeah!! Perfect!" and then I got two Canadian boys to do it with us.
And in the process of faking my excitement I found myself climbing to the top of this mountain thinking that at least my brothers will think I am awesome.

I was second to go in our group of nine. The waiver was signed. The harness was on. I was walking on to the platform.
What I didn't know before stepping onto the platform was that it was actually just a wire grate, a.k.a. I could see through to what was below me.
Oh.My.Goodness.
What in the world have I done?
I was planning on just running and doing this great dive of faith off the board and it was going to be something magical and heroic and inspire all the 7 people behind me.
All was going much in that direction when, as I was running to the edge, I realized, "Holy Smokes...what am I doing!?!?" and promptly stopped and pulled myself back. Terrified.
Thinking there has to be a better way to do this and knowing that walking back down the mountain is not an option they offer, I thought, "Well why don't I just STEP off with one leg and let gravity do it's business?"
The issue with that plan, I found out, is that gravity DOES do it's business.
In the split second before my entire body started plummeting 300 feet down the side of a cliff my natural muscles just decided to arch my back.

So here is where we are: I have put one foot over the edge and bent the other leg. Gravity kicks in. There are two ropes attached to me.  One hooked onto either side of the canyon in front of me. There is a raging river with huge boulders some 300 feet below.
My back arches.

And my back hits the platform.

Gravity is still doing it's business.

And now I have been pushed, by said platform, into the forward falling position. I am now falling horizontally, facing the river below, knowing that I smoked my back, not knowing if I can still move, not screaming at all, eyes bulging out of my head, and thinking, "Great, I just paid $150 to paralyze myself."

When the rope finally caught and I started flying through the air, that's when I let out an "I'M ALIVE!!!" yell.
I could hear my friends at the top then also yelling "SHE'S ALIVE!!!!"
See, they thought I had hit my head because they just heard the THUMP.
And then I didn't scream on my way down.
So when they realized I wasn't suffering from unconsciousness, they were happy.
The girl who came down after me got to me with tears still in her eyes. "WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!!!!" she said.
Oh great.
That's comforting.

And then I was the talk of the town that night. "Where is the girl who smoked her back on the platform!??!" everyone wanted to know. Then everyone wanted to see my back.
Apparently, in the 15 year history of canyon jumping, I am the ONLY person who has ever done that.

Oh yeah. That's me.


So my family is at a water park this week.
And before my life was changed by that almost accident, I always thought that I was afraid of heights, but then I realized, No NO, I am not afraid of heights, I am afraid of falling.

And, as I learned that fateful day, doing something to spite your fears doens't cure it. It makes you more convinced of it.

Did I mention that there are water slides here?

Yeah, those usually involve a fall of some kind.
I think I have gone on 4 while here.
One brought back all kinds of dark memories.
And the other ones made me slightly hyperventilate while in line.
But I went.
Just to spite my fears.

Which are all pretty solidly still in place, mind you.

So what, I have figured out, is my adrenaline rush of choice?
Speed.
With a lack of feet or tires leaving the ground.
Which would exclude waterslides.
I would be fine if I never fell again.
And will continue to feel this way until the next rush of insanity throws me off another canyon or something heinous like that.


Here is me at the bottom.
After I survived.
I look so happy.
That's a cover-up.

TSL. Chap One.

Chapter 1. STL

                This is late. Because on Thursday I said it was going to maybe come the next day. Which would have been Friday.

But that was like 3 days ago.

So maybe this is just what MAYBE looks like.

                Don’t be discouraged, though. It’s not just the blog that is late. My life was a little late this weekend; irritating how that happens. My whole family is on vacation together and at 9:30 the night before we left I thought, “Oh my gosh! I still have a beach cover-up to sew,” (anyone remember the Swag and Buckle?!) and, “I doubt that beach bag is going to see completion either. Blast.”

                The next morning when we were getting ready to leave, my sister in law, who was staying at my house, was buttoning up her coat and I said, “Oh, are you all ready?” and she replies, “Yes!” to which I then said, “That’s great, but I haven’t packed a suitcase yet…”

                I would like to think (most surely this is ignorantly thought) that I am not a late person, and if I am, I blame it on college. I was terribly prompt before college, but now, well, there are just so many things to do.

Oh, and I discovered the snooze button in college.

What a terrible waste of time. Nothing like a snooze to make you late.

Anyway. That has nothing to do with the Screwtape Letters, I just wanted to apologize.

Moving on.

Have you read it yet? At least Chapter 1?

In this chapter the “patient” is not a Christian yet, but seems to be on the edge.

If you are a Christian now, then you know what I mean by on the edge. It’s that time period of life where all of the nagging is, right before you give up the ghost and say, “Ok Lord, I can’t do this. Life is not going well without you.”

That is where we find the patient and how interesting to see how they are attacking a non-Christian. The products of these attacks are so visibly obvious in our society.

                The opening conversation about materialism, and wanting to keep the patient in that lifestyle, is really brilliant. He says that this young demon is lucky his patient isn’t living 200 years earlier. “At that time humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain reasoning.”

                I find that “prepared to alter their way of life,” and “the result of chain reasoning,” to be exceptionally telling. Right now I would say the climate of society is not acceptable to either of those.

                So congratulations, fiend. You have done your job.

                Right now it doesn’t matter whether something is proved or not, because even if it is proved that doesn’t mean someone will change their life. I think people in general are much more likely to carry on in their manner of living, whether it is conducive to and agreeable with reality or not. A very “in denial” society surrounds us now.

                There was a news show on TV the other night and they were going around at a museum in D.C. asking people to give a letter grade of approval on how they thought the president was performing. What they said is beside the point, but I thought it was so interesting that any person in high school who they asked gave him an “A” because “he is trying hard.” Whatever side of the political stance you are on is irrelevant to this, but it should terrify you that the young generation would somehow think you can do that. Approved because he was trying? An “A” for effort is not how the world works; Nazis put forth a lot of effort. Terrorists put forth a lot of effort. Coming to that conclusion those students got is absolutely NOT a result of chain reasoning, whether it was about politics or whatever, the telling of the cultural story is the same. They did not reason to get that answer.

                The book takes it a step further in saying, “Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together in his head.” I had a conversation with an acquaintance once about how she believes that all things evolved, but believes that every human was created special and with a purpose.

What?

No.

No, that’s not how that works. I wanted to say, “You realize that both of those can’t be true, right?”

For someone to hold that belief they either:

 A. don’t know what either of those theories stand for and it just sounds good to them, or

 B. They do know and are just choosing to believe the names and not the platform behind those names.

This is clearly the means: “Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true!!”

Point taken.

The reason they do this comes in the next paragraph. “The trouble about argument is it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy’s ground…” (the enemy of course referring to Christ in this book) “…By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason.” In keeping people away from thinking, from chain reasoning to take a line from the book, you can keep them away from all kinds of truths.

Go ahead and fight the enemy: think about it.

This is quoteworthy: “Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy’s!) you don’t realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.” He goes on to say that he could remember a patient of his who was having a thought about going towards God, and rather than trying to reason him out of it, he just got him thinking about his need for a sandwich.

And that was all, folks. The man left the art museum where he was thinking, walked out on the street and saw the bus and the newsboy, all such REAL things, and that thought was thereafter lost on the patient.

“You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.”

We are so confined by things that we can see.  Completely controlled by it. Sometimes much more completely moved by the thought of a sandwich than by some earth shattering truth. But the best news we get about that was stated in the last paragraph: Jesus knows what it’s like to be human. He knows how confined we are to appetites and exhaustion and the extent of the failings of our physical bodies and how pressed we are by the concept of time.

 And, I don’t know if he blames us for being human.

Glory Be.

I mean, he made us as humans.

That, of course, is not meant as an excuse to indulge the sinful nature and live outlandishly because, “we are human,” I think it just means that he knows what it’s like to need to go to bed at night. And he knows how sometimes, when your stomach is gnawing, all you really can think about is a sandwich.

Thank you, Jesus, for understanding the humanity of us. Now just don’t allow us to keep thinking like the rest of humanity. Don’t let us be that duped.

Clive Staples. This is happening.

Well kids, I decided to do it.

There was a Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon on TV the other day and I was snowed in.

I could have decided to watch all of it.

But that’s not what I decided to do.

I didn’t watch nearly all of it.

No. What I decided to do was give some thoughts on the C.S. Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters.

If you haven’t yet read it, this is your time. It might affect your life.

I haven’t decided if I will go chapter by chapter, or just if something stops me in the progressing chapters to let you know about it. 

We shall see.

For those of you who are not familiar with the book, a quick synopsis is that this fictional collection of letters centers around an aged demon writing to his nephew, a fiend in training, telling him how to trip up his “patient” who happens to be a new Christian in WWII Europe. The subject matter centers mainly around daily things, but it is in those, we find, where we are most susceptible to the work of the enemy.

I hope you read this book.

Unlike this year, where my only New Year’s Resolution was to become brilliant, last year I told myself I would read all of the “dead guys.”

Apparently all of the dead guys only means four books by C.S. Lewis (for surely there can’t be more that I didn’t get around to reading, meaning that I didn’t complete my New Year’s Resolution!! Silly, you!), of which, ours truly, the Screwtape Letters was my favorite.

Let me also say that while this year I have decided to be brilliant, I make no claim that what I am going to say about this “dead guy” book will be brilliant.

The end.

To my introduction.

Moving along.

Or maybe I should stop.

Go read the first chapter of the Screwtape Letters.

But one note as you go. In my introduction to the book there is a letter by Clive Staples himself that says, “Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.”

Now put that in your pipe and smoke it: Even the devil’s lies might be lies.

More tomorrow.

Probably.

Oh, and one last, completely unrelated thing (unless C.S. Lewis reminds you of coffee…which, for me is a slight tilt of the head and a kind of bobbing which universally means “yes”). My brother and sister in law were in town for the weekend, and of course that means lots of coffee.

I just want to show you the size disparity between his cup, and mine.

And yes. Mine is the little one.

And yes. It is a creamer.

But I love it.

Because sometimes it is just downright fun to drink out of a spigot.

On a coffee creamer, NOT on a kitchen sink.

I don’t really believe in that kind of spigot/spout drinking.

Maybe this is a slight exaggerated pose.

Then again...

The most normal looking this situation can look.

Closing doors.

There has been a situation in my life for a good amount of time that has required a lot of prayer. It kept me away from other things. Potentially better things, even. It was what it was. It was neither here nor there.

In not knowing how to deal with the situation, and wanting to do it in the most God-honoring way that I could, I have prayed continuously for a few years, “Tell me when it’s time to end this, Lord, however, I will remain if you want me to remain.”

Up until now I have had, apparently, the need to remain, because I hadn’t felt peace about anything else.

Have you ever been in that situation? Knowing that the Lord will change things, just not knowing when? And so you just stay put, because, no matter how undesirable the current circumstance, anything else wouldn’t be his will either.

It was one of those.

Let me back up, though. A few years ago my life had gone through a long spell of rocky roads (NOT the ice cream), and I had come to the end of myself, so to speak. I was becoming increasingly bitter. I was building walls thicker than I had before, and if I ever had trust issues, boy, I had them now. Plain and simple, I was wounded. And I was cold as ice.

When a situation opened up for me to transplant my life, on a different schedule than I had anticipated, I took it, feeling like the Lord wanted me to do it, even though I knew it would be not quite what I expected.

When everything I then found myself living in was new and unfamiliar I knew that there were two options facing me:

1.       I was going to become even more lost, or,

2.       I was going to be more found than I ever had been.

Fortunately for me, the latter was true.

I transplanted my life for what I thought was one reason (a very unexpected reason), and found myself completely caught off guard by God’s different agenda.

The first 4 months of the new life I met absolutely no one, apart from the great couple I was living with (who I had never met until the day I moved in and who I was just referred to by a secretary of a church I had never attended)—who by the way I will fondly refer to from here on out on this blog as Al and Ella. They are a wonderful couple, and they are lifesavers. More so than they will ever know (which is usually how lifesavers go, mind you).

Anyway. I knew no one.

But you want to know the funny part? I wasn’t lonely.

I found myself realizing that where I came from had so scarred me, had so changed my personality, that I would have been willing to change serious things about me just to please someone else, so to finally find myself where I had ZERO outside influence----well---it was exactly what I needed. It was just me and Jesus.

And Al and Ella.

And the dogs, Lucy and Ethel.

All living in this beautiful house.

Well, the dogs weren’t living in the house. They live outside. Because they are dogs.

And Jesus was restoring this chick.

It was crazy. I felt like a butterfly in a cocoon for the first time in my life. I would go to bed at night and wake up the next morning and literally know that I was not the same person I was when I had gone to bed the night before.

I was on a walk on day that fall and I very distinctly remember being all giddy because I could SEE changes in my being. It was like the ice on my heart was melting.

I was coming alive again. I said to a friend on the phone one night, “I feel like I am finally owning myself for the first time in my life,” to which she said back, “No, I don’t think you are owning yourself, I think you are finally letting Jesus own you. You are being owned for the first time.”
It was a beautiful thought.

While all of this was taking place I was still in the midst of the situation that made me transplant my life in the first place! It was as if I had two lives. There was the life that got me here on one hand, and then there was this metamorphosis taking place on the other. I had thought that the first situation was my reason for coming, but I soon realized that it was just a way God was using to get me out of a bad situation. If He hadn’t intervened, I fear I would have been lost forever.

Ok, so that is the history.

In the most recent months of this story I have been feeling the ripples start; like Jesus was starting something. Finally Jesus was moving in my life and soul in regards to the situation I had been praying about for so long. I had made my action plans and was at the point where I said, “God, I have no idea if this is what you want me to do. But I am going to do it. If you don’t want me to do it, then stop it. Please.” In that type of attitude I was walking forward. For the majority of this situation’s life cycle I had the mantra of “I will know what to do when I need to know,” and have had that kind of steady trust.

Most recently a friend challenged me to start praying specifically. I will admit that I can fall into the trap of just praying God’s will. That, of course, is a fabulous thing and surely I want God’s will, but it’s kind of like when you highlight in a book: If you highlight everything, nothing is really highlighted. If you pray for everything, you’re not really praying for anything. So I decided to get specific.

I was continuing to make my plans, and changed but one thing. I started to pray, “Lord, I am not even asking you to open doors elsewhere, I am just asking you to close doors here.”

I have been praying that for three weeks. Here and there something would happen and I would think, “Oh yeah, that seems like a closed door,” hoping that it wasn’t just me looking for one. But today, well, today I got my answer.

Let’s just put it this way: If the situation no longer exists, then I can no longer exist in that situation.

Without me manipulating anything, without me having to fret about what I was going to say or when I was going to say it or if I was going to become a traitor, all of the sudden, it just wasn’t there anymore.

And I was suddenly relieved.

And suddenly not bitter anymore.

There was my answer. I didn’t have to make the decision. I didn’t have to pray and labor for it. It just walked through the door.

And that door is now shut.

And THAT is an answer to prayer.

I can look back over the last few years, both lives I have lived here taken into consideration, and pretty soon I will not remember the monotony. I will not remember the stress. I will remember the answered prayers.

I won’t remember the situation he used to bring me here, I will remember how he changed me once I arrived.

I won’t remember those people who burned me, I will remember those who bandaged the wound.

I will continue to be strengthened by his faithfulness and how God ALWAYS does what he promises.

For so long my phrase had been, “I will know when I need to know,” and in God’s perfect, usually “late,” timing I found out that now is when I need to know. Not a day too soon and not an hour too late.

Sometimes God doesn’t tell you his answer, he just hands it to you.

But either way, his answer is the one I want.

So here is to God keeping is promises…..and closing doors.

And how epic that I just happened to snap this on my drive this morning; not able to see what's around the next bend.

When we have more time.

I am not ready to go to bed yet.

It’s 10:30 p.m., I just got done working out, and I am feeling the same sentiment I do almost every day at this time: I am not ready for this day to be over.

When asked what my superpower would be if I could have one, the person who is questioning usually gives me a weird look and says, “That’s not a superpower!” Sure it is. I just told you that my superpower of choice would be the ability to not have to sleep. And there isn’t a human on the planet who can do that, therefore, it is a power that is super. Also known as a superpower. While this story is entirely true and, admitted, faintly odd, I do not find myself in the crowds of those who love to sleep. It has never been a hobby. To me it’s like brushing my teeth and working out and washing my hair: it is not something I like to talk about, it’s not a pass-time, it’s just something I do because I have to and then I move on with my day. Case closed.

The thought, then, that I have to end each day by sleeping, by wasting 7 hours just so I can get through the next 17 once my feet hit the floor, is such a bother. Did you know that if you sleep 8 hours a day by the time you are 60 you will have slept for 20 years?

TWENTY. YEARS.

Down the tubes.

How did I get on this tangent?

Oh yes, I am not ready to go to bed yet. I feel like there is still so much to do today before I go back to the daily grind tomorrow.

Why is it that I feel that way? Did I not get accomplished today all I wanted to?

There may be a little truth in that. I started projects today, I did not finish them. And I am a finisher. But, all good reasons aside, why did I not FINISH my projects today, or why do I not on any given day? What am I doing instead?

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I spend my time. What I am giving large parts of my life to. If roughly 1/3 of my life is already given to sleep (blast!), then I only have 2/3 of my life left for living. Give half of THAT time to work, etc. and there isn’t much time left, kids.

And I don’t even HAVE kids!

I hear it all the time, I have said it a few times, too, “Well I am just so busy! When I have more time then I will get around to it.”

I have decided that this is false for at least two reasons.

1.       You never get more time. You always sleep roughly 1/3 of your life. It’s just a fact.

2.       Drastic life-altering aside, if you don’t do something when you are busy, you won’t do it when you have more time.

How do I know this? Because I am a living example of it on many levels!

For instance, I have even heard people say that they will devote more time to their relationship with the Lord when they GET more time, or get a job with a better schedule, or finish school, or whatever their reason is for not giving him time. I don’t think that’s true. If you don’t give Him time now, honey, you never will. As a wedding planner, every Saturday in the summer is somewhere between a 14-16 hour work day for me. But Jesus still gets one full hour, every morning. I don’t care how much sleep I didn’t get, or how many cups of coffee it took to get me out the door, he gets one hour. Because he told me he needs at least an hour. I find it ironic, then, that if I have days off those are the days that usually suffer the most in our relationship. Rather than knowing on work days that I have to spend my time with him before I walk out the door at a specific hour, I think, “I have all day!! I will do it later.” But that never happens and it usually turns out to be a bad day; I don’t do well without my Jesus time, let’s just put it that way. As Francis Chan would say, “Don’t throw God a bone by giving him the last 15 minutes you have left.” God isn’t dumb, he knows he is not priority to you if he is not priority to you. We make time for what’s important; there is no other way to say it. It’s just like generosity: If you aren’t generous when you’re poor, you won’t be generous when you’re rich.

On another level of me knowing about allotting time, why else do lists for days off usually take about 14 days off to get completed? It’s most likely NOT because the list was just that long, I simply find other stuff to do.

And it’s that “other stuff” that has got me thinking. Whatever it is, that is what must be important to me, because THAT is how I am spending my precious and ever-decreasing free time.

I can say all these good things about what I value in life, but I half way think I only half-way believe half of what I am saying.

Did you get lost in that phrase? Yeah, me too.

What it means is: If the whole list of things I value was true and not just good things to have on the list, some things might be getting done around here.

Or in me. But they are not, so what is going on?

I don’t really have a Bucket List. I don’t think I need one. I like to think I am too spontaneous for that. But maybe I need an actual list of things I actually value. Then I can evaluate my time and try to figure out why on earth days get spent the way they do.

None of this is earth-shattering, I know, but I guess I will ask you the question I am asking myself:

How are you spending your time? Is it on things you actually value? Do they have any significance for anything, let alone your relationship to Jesus at all? If not, then why in the world are you doing them? Why in the world am I doing them? Why in the world are we doing them?

Here is a little picture from a photoshoot a few summers ago that I valued highly. And in the blazing 95 degree, 95% humidity July day, I looked very quizzical. I imagine I am pondering what the sum of my life is. And what ever possessed me to value this shoot so much to be outside in this blasted heat.

If you have any great captions of what those ponderings might be saying, feel free to comment.

J

The Darkness is Blinding.

The season’s first real snow came in the other night to my county here in the Midwest. I was visiting a friend a few hours away so when I was driving back late the other evening I got quite the eyeful.

                I guess the clouds that carried the snow in finally moved out of the area, leaving the ground totally covered and the skies completely clear. As I said before it was late in the evening, so in these rural parts I was literally the only car I saw for probably half an hour. Without the distraction of headlights and without any cloud cover, the moon all grand and luminescent, it was one of the most magically bright nights I have seen and amazingly enough, and I’m not kidding, I could see fields six miles away.

Incredible.

Bright snowy nights like that make me feel all wild.

I love feeling wild when I have put no effort forth to feel that way. When it just happens to me, rather than because of me. I was caught off guard by how very strange it was to be out in the middle of the night, and yet able to see everything.

Almost like I had night vision.

Wolves have night vision, did you know that? That’s one thing about them that I love: They are not at a disadvantage once the sun goes down. I realized tonight how very much humans are at a disadvantage, and how very much we are affected by what we can SEE. We base our feelings, our decisions, and our judgment of outcomes primarily by that which we can view with our own eyes. Is it any wonder, then, that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see?” Because “hope in something that is seen is no hope at all.” It makes perfect sense then that we are called to have faith in what we do not see since we have more fear about the unseen than about almost any other kind of life obstacle.

My father always said that we should “worry about what you know, not about what you don’t know.”

What a good lesson. So much of life is spent fretting about things that have yet to pass, or things where we don’t feel like we have all the details. The whole picture, if you will. But what if we only allowed ourselves to “fear” that which we could see, and thus pray for those such things? For the immediate things in front of us that need grace to be dealt with NOW, trusting that all things will in fact be brought to light when they NEED to be seen. Of course I don’t think it is wrong at all to pray about the future, the UNSEEN, I just need to remind myself to PRAY about the unseen, rather than fear it.

As I was driving along I found myself thinking how great it would be if the darkness did not put me at a disadvantage. Sometimes I look around the world and I see so much darkness; hatred and bitterness and raging sin and blasphemies and all kinds of idolatries—darknesses, for sure—and I wonder how much better I would be able to handle the world if I could see through it. If the darkness wasn’t blinding. If I had night-vision like a wolf.

If dark was as light to me.

Hmm. I think I have heard that phrase before.

What a great God I serve. In that moonlit night I saw what it is like to see a few things through His eyes; eyes that are not hard-pressed by less than bright conditions. Eyes that don’t have to squint to make out shapes. He is not blinded by the darkness. What a comfort. In his eternal plans, the darkness does not come to him at a disadvantage, leaving him puzzled about exactly what to do next.

I found myself praying that this wild, untamed God would give me wild eyes that pierce the darkness just like his. I want to be able to see through the people I know who still dwell in the black. I don’t want their lifestyles to put my ministry to them in last place because I can’t make out the forests and the valleys of hurts and the areas of need. I do not want to be confounded by their darkness. I want to be able to see through their guise to know exactly where love and grace and truth will have a chance to penetrate. In loving people who are not lovers of God, my greatest prayer is that I can be a reflector, like fields of diamond snow, illuminating the big picture to people who walk in great darkness, revealing to them that light HAS dawned despite their existence in darkness and despite the visible world still full of inky shadows.

Can I just loudly say Praise be to God who pulled me out of all the blackness and who is absolutely not afraid of the dark???!!! Thank you, Jesus, for coming into those scary woods to find me, and to “rescue me from the dominion of darkness and brought me into the Kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col. 1:13-14)

(Here are a few snapshots of what the darkness does not show you. Seriously, as my mother always would say, “Everything looks worse at night.”)

This is what it looks like outside my window right now:

Those lights are a car passing by on the road.

Here is what it looks like if I edit the picture:

Here is what it looked like yesterday morning; this is what the darkness is hiding:

And this is what it looks like in June; what the snow is hiding:

Psalm 23.

Psalm 23:1 The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.

*For those of you who are not Christians and for those of you who are---you all have probably heard this verse. The unfortunate part about that is sometimes I think this is taken in triteness. Almost like it is a cop-out verse. It’s what we say when we don’t know what else to say. But a few months ago I was doing my devotions one morning and felt like I needed to read this.

“What in the world do you want me to read that for?” I prayed. “I can quote the whole thing to you right now.”

If there is one thing I love about the Holy Spirit it is that He can make newness in the old.

That morning was just such a morning.

And I was bawling by verse two.

So often I have been in conversations with people who are struggling through something in their life. Or shall I say the perceived lack of something. “I am having a hard time with not being in a relationship right now. Why am I the one not married?” or “I don’t have any good friends,” or “My job is just not good enough, it’s becoming a burden,” or “I need some more excitement in my life, I feel so bored, so purposeless.” I could go on and on. You all know what I am talking about for two reasons.

1.       You have been there, and

2.       You know someone who has been there.

But all of that isn’t really the truth, is it? Oh sure, it’s a struggle for us. We cry and we pray our way, hopefully, through it. I definitely believe that praying through it is the best way to go about it, but my question is, if Psalm 23:1 is true, and I believe all scripture to be true, then for the Christians, those issues we deal with aren’t true issues. They are smoke and mirrors.

Look at this passage. It is clearly in “equivalents.” Part A is true, therefore part B is true. Like in algebra, “What you do to one side of the equal sign you have to do to the other.”

Here is what it looks like for the Believer:

                THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD= I SHALL NOT BE IN WANT.

Ok, so what are the brass tacks to this?

 If the Lord is your Shepherd, then any perceived lack is not actually a lack of anything. That you are “without” something is entirely untrue and, frankly, not possible.

Whoa.

Mind-blowing. How easily do I become offended by God when I am in the midst of feeling the “need”?!? “How can you not give me this God?! Surely I am living my life for you! Don’t I deserve that thing?”

I end up feeling slighted, which leads me to feeling bitter, which leads me to not trust him, which leads me to feeling like my life is empty.

What a pitiful cycle.

And what a life of lies.

The Lord is my Shepherd. There is nothing else I need.

Now let’s take this a step further.

What if you DO possess those extra things? What if there are more blessings in your life than just Jesus? What if you are not like the Levites, but rather like the other 11 clans and you have more than God as your inheritance?! What then do all of those things amount to? If they are not a need, but you have received them, what classification do they fall into in our lives?

GIFT.

They are pure gift.

Not anything we need. Not anything we can’t live without. Not anything that would leave a lack if they were taken away, but GIFT.

Total, unmerited grace are the things that bless our lives.

Family, friends, relationships, children, good jobs, lovely houses, nice cars, money in the bank, vacations, yada yada yada. Whatever it is in your life that you possess that is not Christ himself is a gift from Christ himself.

In thinking about those times when I am struggling through a lack of whatever, what a terrible, mean, awful tool of the enemy that is! To make me think that God is holding out. To view those blessings as trite, or take them for granted, or see them as something I deserve.

I was in a play in college and there was this one line that stuck with me:

“What God has given God can take away, so for what he has given---be thankful.”

God really gives us a lot, doesn’t he?! I mean, he already gave himself, what more is there? But he continually is TOO good to us. Goodness which is undeserved because certainly, the Lord is my Shepherd, it’s not as if I have any want.

And being in the spirit of thankfulness, here are a few photos from my day and life of those wonderful, unneeded gifts that I am oh-so-thankful-for.

Cooking food on this thing is total bonus...

The view from my office...

My office has a Keurig. I know, I know. Some of you think this IS a necessity...but it's not!!!

However, come 3:30, when I see these words....

...GIFT. Received.

I have started putting Bergamot oil in my water because it makes it taste like Pine-Sol.

And that's awesome.

And completely unnecessary.

My favorite rings. That I wear on the same hand.

Beautiful things are blessed things.

Cell phone. Pink leather gloves. Fabulous coat.

All things I could live without.

And why, you ask, do I still have a flip phone?

Because my other option would be a Smart phone.

And I hate Smart phones.

And have vowed to not get one until I have no other option. Until all phones are Smart phones, we will flip.

A wood-burning stove at home.

To sit an blog next to.

A very, VERY warm gift.

Very good friends are serious gifts.

My family is my most treasured gift.

And check out my new nephew!!!

Get a load of that face!

Life is full of good blessings. Now go love the Giver of them.

Not Be The Same.

I was talking to a friend on my way home from work tonight and we were re-counting our last year together and everything we have seen and done and the people we have met, etc. We realized that it was exactly a year ago today that we sat down and really talked for the first time over coffee. My what a difference a year can make. One week after that initial coffee-conversation she received a telephone call that literally turned her life upside down in a matter of 7 weeks. I will never forget the text message she sent me and to my exaggerated astonishment I had to respond, “Excuse me WHAT?!?! You are moving WHERE?!”

Wow.

When we met for coffee one week before the said texting conversation she was looking at her other options. One, in particular, held the most draw at that time: Texas.

I know.

I had the same thought as you did.

But, alas, when that phone call came for her Texas was no longer plan A.

As we were chatting tonight she said, “I don’t know what comes next for me! And all my other options aren’t really that appealing anymore. I don’t even know if I would still want to move to Texas!”

In her astonishment I heard myself say, “Well, console yourself with this: don’t be upset that your desires changed that much, just realize that it was a different person who wanted that a year ago.”

I know it wasn’t really me saying that. Sure, it sounds like something I would say, but I will be the first to admit that most of my good ideas aren’t mine, and the same holds true for a lot of my “phrases;” I don’t come up with them they just fly out of my mouth.

The reason I say it wasn’t me saying that is because that phrase was such an encouragement to ME! I felt like it was not just for her to hear, but myself as well.

Isn’t that such glorious truth?! Who she was a year ago is NOT who she is now. Who I was a year ago is not the same girl who types this.

What grandeur, let me tell you.

Is there any greater comfort than knowing that He is not only the Author but the FINISHER of our faith? Or that, apart from ourselves, in the life of the believer, the indwelling Holy Spirit is shaping and molding us before our very eyes? I think not. I remember a time in my life when I would wake up in the morning and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was a different person than when I went to bed the night before. It was so thrilling.

I want to be a Christian who continually LETS him mold me, one who pushes the process along. I don’t want to stay where I am; I want to keep moving.

Bless the Lord, O growing soul. We’ve got some ground to cover.    

On Suffering.

Philippians 3:8-11

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

* I have had the conversation with multiple people on multiple occasions that Christians in the United States don’t know what it is to suffer. By all means I would say that we do not know the suffering that comes from a hostile government, the persecution, the being thrown into jail or solitary confinement boxes, etc. No, we do not know that. We do not experience that here in the States. That I am writing this blog is evidence enough that we don’t have that kind of persecution.

The above said conversations have also, at some times, produced comments that United States Christians need to know suffering more. While I have heard arguments from both sides of the aisle, I believe there is truth that some type of suffering would definitely sift out who the true Christians are. Those who are merely pew-warmers will have no hard time in giving up the guise if they have the choice to stay seated in that church or to be shot. In that case, suffering and persecution could definitely be beneficial. The posers would drop the act.

But this passage makes me want to ask the question: What kind of suffering do we need, and how should it be inflicted upon us?

Paul is speaking in this passage saying in comparison to knowing Christ, everything is just crap. No entrapments of this world hold a candle to how fabulous it is to be in relationship to Christ. He even goes so far as to say that if being found in him takes sharing in his sufferings, then bring it on. Whatever it takes.

The next line, though, is where I think the ball usually gets dropped. Have you ever been in a discussion with someone about this topic of suffering and the other person gets all angry at Christians who live in America, the “non-sufferers”, and pretty much thinks we all should move to some far-off country or wherever just so we CAN be thrown in a box, so we can… “Become more like Christ.”

Am I overstepping my bounds to go so far as to say that Christ never required Christians to live in nations with hostile governments? When it comes to suffering, metal boxes are nowhere described in the Bible as the prime conductor.

The line in this verse that gets me is this: “And may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…”

Let me ask the question, what did Jesus do on that cross? What was he suffering for in his death?

Was he suffering for the sake of suffering? Was the act of suffering what made him the Messiah?

Negative.

He was suffering to reconcile a people to God.

It just so happened that he was being killed while doing that.

I don’t want Christians to think that there is a pure correlation between physical suffering and reconciling people to God; one can suffer for fruitless causes.

Some time ago I had the opportunity to see the heart of a father who is deeply distressed over a “prodigal son.” There is nothing this father would not do for the son to be brought back in. If there was a choice between the son coming back to the family and to the faith, or giving up his life, I know he would opt to lose his life.

Because that’s what parents do if they have to.

That’s what love does.

That’s what God did.

If someone was to tell me that what that father was feeling is less suffering than being shipped to some arctic circle work camp “for Christ” just because that father still has a roof over their head, money in the bank, and food on the table, call me rash but I would have an urge to give that person a strong piece of my mind. How can you say that there is less suffering a parent feels for a wayward child, or the suffering one feels for someone who is lost that they have been praying for for 30 years, than in the suffering that comes while being imprisoned? Suffering is suffering. If a person has angst over the lost, whether in a nation with a hostile government or not, THAT is what it means to suffer like Christ. THAT is the suffering Christians are called to.

Can I even go so far as to say that those who are persecuted in other countries are probably not feeling the ache because they are in jail, they are probably feeling the ache because they cannot be out on the streets sharing Jesus with people. Which, by the way, is WHY they are in jail in the first place.

Now, I know I just pushed all kinds of buttons.

But I don’t want to apologize.

I want to provoke you all to thought.

Has suffering become an end in itself of what people want true Christianity to look like? I hope not, because suffering for suffering’s sake won’t take anybody to Heaven with you. Suffering for their soul to know Jesus, to know the love of God, to know relationship with him, that’s what Jesus did. That is what we are called to do.

Whether it involves metal boxes or not.

Do you want to share in the sufferings of Christ? Then suffer through prayer and ministry for the salvation of your lost family, friends, co-workers. And suffer for those in hostile governments who just want to be back out on the streets, sharing Jesus; and pray that, like Paul, “it would become evident to the entire palace guard…that their (my) imprisonment is for Christ.” (Phil. 1:13).