Monuments from the Desert Days of 2011

Now that 2012 is fully underway I felt prompted to reflect over the past year and remind myself of the amazing work God has done in my heart so this year will be a year more full of grace and love and trust than any year before.  So heretowith…

Reminders for 2012 of things we already learned:

If something irritates, frustrates, or gets on your nerves to the point that it causes you to point a finger- remember there are 3 fingers and a thumb pointing back at you.  It is very likely that you are irritated by a mirror being held to your face and what you see is something that irritates, frustrates, or gets on your nerves about you.

God is for you and He is in control!  There is no need for worry or fear or stress, over thinking or being offended or defending yourself.  The One who can and will actually do something already knows what is and what will be and what He has for you in it.  TRUST. and REST.

Communication is good.  Do not be afraid of it.  Do not avoid it.  Find your own voice.

Trust the Spirit in you AND in others.

Life is NOT hard.  If it is you are usually making it that way because what God says about life with Jesus is that it is easy and light.  This REQUIRES trust.  You must trust Him with you.  Not just your time or money or family or future or job, but with all of YOU.

He speaks clearly to those who will listen.

We are not so full of love as we might think.  If you find yourself battling graceless thoughts about another, you may want to ask yourself if you have love for them.  And do not ASSUME that because you are supposed to love them that you have let God fill your heart with love for them.

Life is a journey.  A process.  No matter where you are in it, there you are.  And because He always does what is good, right, and perfect –  if you are seeking to obey Him, where you are is also good, right, and perfect.  You just have to choose to see it that way.

Dwell on things that are good, kind, beautiful, graceful, joyful, peaceful, loving, sacrificial, beneficial, helpful, favorable, and light.

Spend no time talking to versions of people in you mind who do not exist. (also could be a sign of psychosis, but not in this case. )

Always check with the Father before speaking.  Some things He may have shared with you are not for you to say, just to pray.

No matter how bad it seems it’s only for a time.  You will always come out on the other side and it is a very clear lesson in what you still need to let God do in you.

What did you learn last year that will make this year more like the words of Jesus, “easy and light?”

This Is How I Roll

As a visual learner I become increasingly aware of the truth that what I put in my eyes becomes a part of what I feel in my heart and think in my head. I’m thinking specifically of a show I used to LOVE.  It was an HBO show called Entourage.  If there is a healthy version of addiction I had it with this show.  I didn’t ignore the things or people in my life, but I could sit for hours and absorb all On Demand had to offer. The show is about an actor in Hollywood who is living the life everyone who thinks they want to be famous dreams. It’s basically the story of one successful actor surrounded by his best friends who all live off of his success.

The show is pretty and flashy and inviting.  It holds all of the appeal of an US or People magazine.  Insight into a life we imagine is full of fun and freedom and all the great stuff life has to offer. I knew as I watched the shinny images and absorbed its tempting ideas it was pouring into my brain lies of what actually satisfies.  I mean I want to have a job I love and get paid an absurd amount of money to do and have my friends and family with me all of the time.  Then I’ll be satisfied right?

So even though I knew this show was not brining me closer to God, I watched it.  And eventually I started to think about why.  And what God revealed to me was sad and sobering.

Growing up in the ‘70’s I was taken to more than one women’s lib rally.  I was told that I could do anything a man could do and that I needed to be strong and independent and fully capable of providing a life for myself.  At some point in this ‘movement’ the right idea that a woman and a man with the same qualifications should be paid the same amount of money, took a dark turn and satan was successful in sending the message of the original sin, again, that a woman wants to be, not who God says she is as daughter, but a man, in headship and control of life.

So if women are now to be men then the things that a woman ‘is’ become difficult and distasteful.  Things like being emotional and needy and meek.  Words like obey and submit become curse words and are cut out of marriage vows.  And now, I as a young girl see myself and other women in the light of lies that tells me that what I am is wrong and the others are too much trouble.  And this leaves me living a life despising my identity as feminine and refusing any nurturing relationships with other women.

I am but one, imagine thousands of us with this imprint.  And what you have is a new version of an old lie that women are primarily jealous and catty, almost to the point of being against one another.  And this iswhat God showed me.  That I love Entourage because those men had something I longed for, deep, intimate

relationships with people of the same sex.  The ones who understood what they meant and felt because their DNA allows them to relate.  And I realized I had never let a woman be my friend to the point where I was safe and vulnerable to be a woman right back. These guys play all the time and got to great parties, they harass one another and fight and argue and wrestle, but first and foremost, they are for each other. They tell each other the truth.  They are fully safe and vulnerable in each other’s presence because they share a level of intimacy that thrives in an atmosphere of

trust.  And something inside of me really wanted that.

After many, many years of restorative work I am beyond words blessed to have that with so many now.  God still teaches me things about how to love and support the women in my life.  He convicts me when I let lies enter and I feel jealous or start to compare.  And those ladies who have chosen to share life with me, you reveal Him to me every day.

God made us in His image as daughters of His, helpers of men, and sisters to one another as part of His eternal family.  Satan is jealous of and despises all of these precious roles of ours.  He has successfully from the beginning torn at our identity and used our disobedience to drive us from truth and intimate relationship.  My love of Entourage was seeking to satisfy my deep need for sisterhood.  Beautiful and flawed interaction with beautiful and broken women refusing the lies and standing on the truth that we are safe in His arms and therefore safe to be for one another in our times of grief, full of joy in our times of celebrations, and just plain glad to see each other at every

point in between.

I love you sisters.  You are my entourage.

Thoughts at the Oxford Inn

I used to be taken with simple sights.

The curve of a glass bulb, the straight line of an upright pole,

The romance of an antique street lamp.

I also used to be satisfied with what others thought about God.

What my relationship with Him was like, what His intentions are for us.

But now I see the layers of a mountain range, ones close and ones far,

The contrast of light on each succeeding peak, the shades of greens and blues

And grays as they overlap only in my sight

But remain separated by miles and miles.

And now I am satisfied that He just is.  The I Am.

And that stirs in me my own questions and desires to know

What He asks of us,

And what He wants for us,

And how has He made the way known to us?

Why is it just so?

Or is it?

Where are the peace and joy and suffering and meekness and dependence?

How do we do this?

Pool Side

The pool room at the hotel downtown smelled so strongly of chlorine that my eyes turned red upon entering.  It did not take me long to discover the source, obviously knowing it was the pool itself, as I lowered myself into the water every microscopic injury on my person began to sting like I was taking an antiseptic bath.  I quickly opted for the whirlpool instead and as I sat there relaxing he came in with his son.

Had I not just seen him come in I might have thought the color of his face, a deep red, was due to the toxic level or chlorine in the air.  But since it wasn’t, I began to wonder.  He had kind of German features.  Big bulbous nose, round head, light colored hair, very tall.  His son was a little tubby and had long hair like the kids are wearing these days.  He was a tad on the old side to have a child this age, maybe 10 or 12 and as the kid swam, he and I both looked to his father for recognition of his antics, neither of us found it.

I filled his mind with my thoughts.  “Why did your mother ever have to have you?”

He was 5 or 6 when the war began.  It had turned his father into a fearful and angry man.  His father up to that point in his short life was doting and vigorous in his way of living.  He doesn’t remember it now but there are pictures that prove they had many wonderful adventures playing in the jagged sloping hills of his village.  The same ones his grandfather had shown his father and generations before that, the only living thing longer on those hills were the mountain goats God put there Himself.

But now they were leaving the lovely shadow of their beautiful mountains and moving to a place he could not imagine no matter how many times his mother answered the question “Where are we going again?”

The city of Frankfurt was busy and grey.  He barely had time to miss his home before the hustle and bustle around him distracted his mind and filled it with wonder.  Tall buildings and many cars and people dressed like they were going to church.  But he did not see a church, and it wasn’t Sunday.  Then they arrived at the home of his aunt.  He had met her a few times but had never been to her house.  It was tall.  That was all he could think.  The ceilings were so far above his head that he almost fell over backward trying to see them.  He stumbled and his mother said something to him in English that he didn’t understand.  That was when he noticed the other men in the room.

They had on the same kind of clothes; it looked like they were matching on purpose.  The stood very straight and had very serious looks on their faces.  They were speaking in German so he understood what they were asking but he had no idea why they would be asking such questions in such a way.  They almost shouted, “Where did the Kleinfeld’s go?”  He noticed his aunt glance at his mother and then at the floor.  His father tried to interject but the two men forcefully moved him aside.  They asked the question again only louder adding, “Tell us where they have gone or we will take you instead!”

With no response the two men grabbed his aunt and his father and rushed them out of the house.  He was confused and then overcome with sadness at the look on his mother’s face.  She was lying on the floor making a face that said she was crying, but no sound was coming out.  He didn’t know whether to run after his father or run to his mother, so he just stood there.

And even though his life went on and he eventually came to live in America and have what he assumed all men were working for, a wife and home and children, he never let go of the pain.  And he never was kind to his wife.  And as he was finally persuaded to have a child by her, he never let himself love the boy.

Then I saw him smile at his son.  And everything was right again.

Listening is for lovers

As I took myself to account as being the reason I am not experiencing a feeling of family with those around me who are offing that gift, God revealed, as He always does, many things.

So to continue our conversation about the need for family I want to share with you a couple of practical things, some gospel truth, and the love of our Jesus.  Because after all, without Him at the center and as the reason for everything we do life becomes a heavy list of do’s and don’ts and not the free gift filled with joy and hope He died and was resurrected to provide for us.

We always want to know what it looks like.  We need examples of how it looks to live out the things we believe Jesus has asked of us.  First we have to remember that any change we need is a heart change, a different way of believing.  Not a behavioral change brought on by the ability to act differently.  Second we need to be reminded that the only way a heart changes is in and by the Holy Spirit.  It is not within our power to even raise our hands and attest to the fact that we believe in Jesus as Savior without the living Spirit of God in us allowing our physical body to proclaim this truth.  The same is true of heart change; the Spirit is the only one who can compel us to believe differently.

That said, do not take what I am about to say as examples of ways you can behave differently.  Look to them as things that will convict or confirm in your heart what you truly believe and attest to as the outpouring of your heart.

So- if nothing kills a family faster than selfishness…

When communicating with members of your family (including the family of believers) whether called to confront a brother or sister in love, speaking love in truth, finding out more about the story of their lives, really any opportunity we have to communicate- enter the conversation asking – how can I show this person that they are more important to me than myself?

A part of loving someone well is to love them more than you love yourself.  And I have found that the best way to show this is to listen.  What people need most from us as their family is not our wisdom or advice, it is to listen to them and to the Holy Spirit on their behalf which cannot be done if you are thinking of the next thing you are going to say while they are talking.  Which brings me to my next idea.

While listening, do a heart check and see how often you mind wonders back to you, your response, or distracted thoughts.  You may think you are good at multitasking during a conversation, you are not and nothing reveals your lack of love for that person as quickly as letting your mind wonder to other things while someone is talking to you.

The gospel truth of this is – you are loved.  You are loved first and if you let Him, He will fill you with a love for Himself that is so grand and so great that it cannot help but pour out of your full heart and life onto those around you in a life affirming way.  You will not love others well until you have let Him love you.

Which brings us to belief.  Do you believe that Jesus was enough?  That His death was sufficient for your sin and that you are forgiven and loved and are now and not yet a restored child of the creator Father?  Because underneath selfishness is the fear that He was not enough and you are still held to the consequences of your sin.

What does your life, what do your relationships, what about your thoughts- what does the evidence of your life say you believe?

Raccoons 0 – Chickens still 4

Now could I pass up this story?   Living with the Henson’s provides me with so many opportunities to write I let a lot of them pass by.  But this one…gotta share this one with apologies to our neighbors.

About a year ago Erica decided to move on her long time dream to own chickens.  Even though at several points in her life she chose not to move onto the dream farm that the said chickens are a picturesque part, she still wanted the chickens.  So the research began, just like any good suburban housewife she checked out books from the library and got all of the family on board.  I learned of the killing cone in one book, which was such a disturbing series of images I chose to block its description from my mind, the purpose being obvious.  When she decided where she would purchase the chickens from she picked up the proper paperwork and the choosing process began.

We saw many different colors and varieties of chicken and on the order sheet next to the physical description were also a temperament description.  We went with the friendly and laid back type knowing the boys would want to carry them around.  We avoided the feisty type even though they apparently produce the blue eggs which we all really wanted.

As the delivery day drew near we had heard from many friends, many pieces of sound advice and some, well actually, disturbing stories mostly pertaining to losses due to raiding bands of raccoons.  Erica informed me much later that she thought that was just a lack of diligence on the owner’s part.  Insert appropriate foreshadowing here.

 

For whatever reason, I don’t remember now, we got chickens, not chicks.  They were already kind of tall and they already smelled like farm animals.  No cute fluffy stage, straight to teenage b.o. and awkward hair growth stage.  Their feathers were kind of clumped together and it only took about 5 minutes in a plastic tub in the basement to realize that those quarters were woefully inadequate.  At the end of the first day we had already had to clean chicken poo off of Colin Jr. and Cheese.

Oh yeah- the names.  There are 3 boys, so they each named one, and Erica invited my niece Stella to also name one as an honorary chicken owner.  We ended up with, like I said, Colin Jr. named after a dear friend of ours that the boys loved but whom we had lost to his meth addiction, Cheese, who is named this as she is the color of artificially colored Velveeta cheese.  The other two were named Stewart, for no particular reason, and Noodle, named so by my niece because I think she remembered one of the boys had a hamster named that and she was always trying to find a way to relate to them.

The coop got built with only one incident halting its progress when the dad here, Dave, fell from the roof onto his back narrowly escaping physical injury, the same cannot be said of his pride as all of the boys were on hand to witness it.  But nonetheless it got built and it was a pretty good looking coop too.  It only took a few weeks for the redesign work to become apparent.  After learning the chickens needed light a hole was cut in the big lift up door that provides access to the eggs, and on its third incarnation it finally worked and the coop was ready and waiting for its occupants.

The eggs.  Now that’s a whole issue unto itself.  I think we all just kind of thought they’d start showing up.  And after the designated amount of time had passed and we still were not getting any eggs we asked our other chicken owning friends for advice.  Again as with the general owning advice, the advice was sound and again this opened the door to other disturbing stories.  As we were talking with a friend of ours with 6 chickens we told her that we thought we may have gotten a rooster by mistake.  The law in the city is clear and it says no roosters.  So when Stewart and Noodle, later renamed Feet, began to grow very large and wobbly combs, we were worried.  Other than breaking the law, we knew roosters were often times mean and aggressive and didn’t want to be chased around the back yard all of the time.  It was at this point that our sweet friend shared with us that you indeed cannot tell if they are male or female until they are grown and she had also had this misfortune to be mistakenly given a rooster which in fact did chase her around the yard every time she went out. To solve this problem, they suffocated it in a paper bag with some kind of chemical.  Erica and I both were kind of sad and shocked by this, but knew we may have to do something if we did have an aggressive male in our midst.  This same friend of ours eased our worries about the eggs and gave us some tips how to make the shells stronger by feeding them the crushed up shells of the eggs we had eaten.  Also a disturbing piece of advice if you ask me.

We did eventually get eggs, not nearly as many as we thought, but good healthy white and brown eggs.  Eggs that fresh hardly have a flavor at all.  It’s very mild and kind of creamy and the yolk is a deep yellow, almost orange.  They are delicious.  And so the owning and eating went for almost a year without incident.  They did spend the winter having free reign of the yard and due to excessive amounts of poo a pin area was recently created, but other than that they are relatively low maintenance and not nearly as noisy as I had expected them to be.  Until 3 nights ago that is.  That was the first night Erica was awake and heard a blood curdling scream coming from the back yard.

I’m not a light sleeper, nor a heavy sleeper, but I did for two nights sleep through the attempted murder of our beloved chickens.  The masked specter that had killed all of our friend’s chickens had finally discovered our hen house and was making head way at least at plucking poor Feet clean of her feathers.  For two nights I slept through the rescue as Eric chased the nasty beast from the back yard with a baseball bat.  On this night, the one I am still awake in, I was the one to recognize the sound of desperation a chicken makes when her life is flashing before her beak.

Lots of flapping and squawking and I knew what was going on having been told the stories from that previous two nights.  I ran from my room to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to Erica’s room, “We’ve got chicken problems!  The raccoon is back!”  I heard her stir from a deep sleep and as I hit the back door heard her coming right behind me.  I said, “Get you bat!” and as we made our way off the deck into the complete darkness that is midnight we could only guess at what was making the terrible noise and hope our sweet girls were all still intact.  With all of the men in the house gone on a camping weekend, we alone, two women in pajamas and bare feet, stood to break the circle of life in the dog eat dog world of suburban farm life.

We headed over to the coop and I decided to go back into the house to get a light.  Having no flashlight I got a 3 wick candle and made due.  As I was lighting it in the house, I could hear Erica screaming outside, she sounded like a crazy woman.  She was screaming and cussing and hitting the coop with the bat!  When I got back to her she had also grabbed a yard rake and handed me the bat and by the dim light of my fresh balsam candle we saw the culprit scurry up to the top of the coop and freeze.  It was huge!  3 of our 4 chickens were huddled in the corner near the front of the coop still clucking away and one was on the cross beam in the roof frozen with fear.

We could see where the evil doer had broken in by tearing the chicken wire from the side of the wall and making a hole to get through.  We danced around hitting the coop with the bat and the rake, only making the raccoon crazier as it tried to find another way out.

Its earlier entrance from its first night attempt had been blocked by turning a hole in the wire into a back door that was now shut and we were standing in the way of the only other way out.  I told Erica to open the front door and so she did and we screamed and hit the coop for another minute or two and then he saw his chance and bolted for the door and ran back to the side fence and clumsily made his way over it.  It was at that point that Erica spotted the second one.  Even bigger than the first, and dumber, it went back up into the nesting area and peered at us through the successfully redesigned window.  I held my candle to the opening and there it was looking right at me.

Now I love animals and I in fact know a couple that you can read emotions on their faces.  I know two dogs that just look worried when things are out of sorts.  One of them is the Henson’s pit bull Pete.  His huge square head wrinkles on the top and it just says, “I am worried, is everything ok?”  But this animal, even with all of the noise and having been abandoned by its partner in crime, just looked blankly at me.  It wasn’t angry our hissing or shaking with fear, just stared right at me like, “Hey, new development.”  This one took longer to scare out the door.  A couple of the chickens made their way out into the yard as we continued the ruckus, and finally it ran out and across the yard, past the completely uninterested Pete, and under the deck.

Not having any idea how to keep them from coming back nor having the desire to fix the broken wire at midnight, Erica decided the ladies would be better inside the laundry room for the night.  So back where they started, a little worse for wear, our 4 lovely ladies are sleeping soundly in the basement where they spent their first nights with us not even a year ago.

As we tried to calm them and say goodnight, we could see where Feet has now lost all of her tail feathers, Cheese has a bloody spot on her head where part of her comb is missing, and Colin Jr. and Stewart have some bald spots of missing feathers as well, but overall, not too bad for their third nights battle.

We decided they were ok for the night and Erica was putting down some paper under the temporary roosting stick she had set up for them, I saw a feather fall from Cheese and I made a sad sound as it hit the floor.  Erica stood up and we looked all wild eyed at each other for the first time since the mayhem began and we hear what we thought was poo hitting the paper layer and we smiled.  We turned to look and it wasn’t poo but an egg that Colin Jr. had laid right that second.  Erica said, “I thought that sounded loud for a poop.  Look – she just had the egg scared out of her.” And we laughed and were sad for our sweet chickens as we said goodnight and left them to rest and recoup.

Family. It Does A Body Good.

So let’s continue the discussion by thinking about that desire for family…

As a believer in the good news - that Jesus is the Son of our one true God and that He came to earth and was fully man and fully God and because of that, the sinless life He lived, made Him a complete once and for all sacrifice for my sin; which restored me to my creator Father who I can now be in relationship with as His daughter, the family analogy is a pretty big deal.  In this life I am a daughter of The King.

I also happen to believe that God himself was in charge of all that is included in the Bible and see it as His love letter to me, His daughter, and in this book the family analogy is also a pretty big deal.  It is the framework that everyone from God to Paul, an early follower of Jesus and writer of most of the last part of the Bible we call the New Testament, uses to inform and educate us on how to live with Him and with each other.

So, like I shared in the earlier post, the loss of this feeling and being of family is, well, a very big deal.  It drives us to all kinds of things to try and find this lost part of ourselves.  We have an intense desire to belong.  I believe this is built into our design.  God exists as 3 in 1, known as the Trinity, as God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  It’s a concept that no one I know claims to fully grasp as it is beyond human ability to be or create this, but it is something that as a believer, beyond the trust that God inspired this definition, there is an assurance in my spirit that it is as real as the nose on my face.  And since God created us in Him image (see Genesis) we are also created to need relationship.

Just walk out your front door, no matter where you live, and you may only need to go one house over to find an example of the destruction and loss of family, bitterness, withdrawing, manipulating, controlling, passivity, which leads to separation and divorce.  In fact, you may not even need to leave your own home.  The world teaches individualism; satan is wholeheartedly behind this, and every day we walk farther and farther down the dark path of separation by texting instead of calling, facebook-ing instead of visiting, going from my own home to my own car to my cubicle job.

As I prayed about this lost family desire, the Spirit said to me, nothing kills family faster than selfishness.  And if you are not feeling like family with those around you, especially those of us who live as a family of believers, it is because you do first what suits you best.  When I heard this, a list of names of people who were the cause of this in my life came to mind.  Within a few minutes, I realized I was on the top of that list.

In the spirit of living as family on mission, I actually live with a family.  They are 5, husband, wife, 3 boys, and me, a single woman.  Two of the boys are 9 year old twins.  One morning I was sitting in the living room and one of the twins was standing with the refrigerator door open staring into it like something new and appetizing was going to leap out fully prepared for him to eat.  The house was quiet when all of the sudden he said rather loudly in a curious and concerned tone, “This is only 2% milk?!”  I laughed out loud knowing that he was wondering that if only 2% is milk, what is the other 98%?

Today I’m wondering what percent of our lives really belong to God?  And what percent are we still selfishly holding on to that is robbing us of the family we so desire to be a part of and feel a part of?  And how do we move from this place to the freedom offered by God through Jesus?

And… Go! Gospel Community Mission post 1

I’ll start by following Paul’s example, and confess to you that I am the chief of sinners and prove this to you by humbly admitting that for years I was addicted to the HBO show Entourage.  It’s a show about all of the ills of being too beautiful and too rich in the sticky heat of LA.  I no longer watch it, mainly because it lost its appeal, but during the time I was keeping up with the main characters as they stood as a band of brothers in the lights of Hollywood, I began to wonder what on earth was appealing to me.  The guys are good looking.  The fancy cars and homes are cool.  But what drew a woman in her 30’s to this story of 4 young men living the fantasy of fame?

God did not just blurt out an answer.  I love this about Him.  What He did was to reveal to me over time, through many people, and from many sources, so that there was no way I could miss what He was saying, the truth of something hidden deep in my heart.  I was yearning for a sense of belonging, a need to be part of a family.  That’s the lure the show held for me.  It was four men who put each other first and supported and loved each other and laughed and fought like any good Italian family.  I always wanted to be Greek or Italian or Irish so I could yell passionately during a fight and then just get over it, all the while knowing that no matter what I said I could never be kicked out of the family.

But it wasn’t just my life that was lacking, because it’s never just about us with Him.  And as our conversation continued I began to see many things, one being a devastating lack of community in our western world.  Maybe that was the appeal of the show for a lot of people.  Maybe that’s why we love face book.  Church meetings.  Small groups.  Movies. Fraternities and sororities.  Fan clubs?  Team sports?  Cliques?  Clubs?  Gangs?  Cults?

But something that was completely surprising for me to discover during this now four year long journey, was that as women not only do we not experience the camaraderie that I was attracted to in the show, but it had become so common place for women to not support each other, it was generally accepted that we are against one another.  This broke my heart.  And my addiction to Entourage.

God has been speaking to me for several years, in every way that information is shared on the topic of the current struggles of women and our lack of community.  As a believer I know it is an ancient lie from the oldest liar alive.  Satan wants us to question our identity and when we do, we question everything else.  Including whom God says that He is.  And without those two basic truths dwelling deeply in our hearts, we live out the same sin and suffering that was ours at the moment of the fall.  But God!  In His infinite wisdom and mercy sent His Son.  And because of this unmerited favor, we can refute the lies and refuse to enter into the sin that causes all of our struggles.

“Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation.  Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself – its world view; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions.  Fifty years later, there is a new world.  And people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born.  We are currently living through just such a transformation.”  Peter Drucker – leading analyst in economics and societal patterns.

We are in such a time and with technology making it possible for us to transfer information across the world in seconds, this is unlike any other time before it.  It creates an opportunity for the good news to spread like never before, it also enables the lies and confusion of our times to permeate every second of our lives in every corner of the world.  This space- on this site- in this time is given to the efforts of the former.  We want the good news of who God is, what He has done, who that makes us, and how we live in light of that to be available to all His children; in hopes that the lies that tear at our identity and our communities will have light shine and peace and grace and mercy abound.

“We stand on the brink of a new area, an area which if properly understood will allow us to visit the New Testament times and dynamics, in a fresh way.  We live in a time of the rediscovery of the simple genius of the local church- the family of God, the pillar of support and of the truth.  We have an opportunity to serve and dialog with churches all over the world.”  Jeff Reed –President LearnCorp.

Welcome to a small part in that dialog

Easier said than done?

Many years ago I was in a little shop in Olympia Washington.  I had spent my high school years about 30 minutes north of that city and that shop and had spent many hours looking at all of the strange and cool things they have there.  In fact my 16^th birthday present came from there.  I got a necklace with matching earrings.  Both with silver snakes curled around crystals.  Yeah- I know.

Along with the very cool jewelry I know you are all envying now, they have countless trinkets and tokens and lotions and candy.  They also have a big display that has several sides and spins so you can look at all of the sides and every square inch is covered with pins.  Well, we used to call them buttons back in the day.  The first one I bought from that shop said- Who is Calvin Klein and why is his name on your underwear?  (http://www.hulu.com/embed/v78EYrtnwvr4GFqFtVkgpw/32/81/i34)

The one I am thinking of now that I saw several years ago had a likeness of Jesus standing behind a sofa in a living room.  It said- I found Jesus!  He was behind the sofa the whole time!

I laughed out loud when I read it.  I had been following that same Jesus for several years at that point and I loved the idea of him being there the whole time.  I am pretty sure that whoever made that button had not intended to minister to my heart, but it did.  And I’ve remembered it ever since.  The funny thing is; I don’t live like I remember that a lot of the time.

Having recently gone through a tough time during which I felt myself coming unglued, I broke down in a particularly desperate moment and cried out to God.  I was pleading with Him to help me when I got a mental picture of myself.  I saw myself clinging to the bottom of the cross with my feet dangling over a black abyss and I’m yelling for Jesus to help me as I struggle to keep a grasp of the cross.  I realize immediately this is not the truth of a relationship with Jesus.  Not only am I not without support under my feet, I am in no way able to ‘cling’ to the cross.

I looked down and instead of the abyss, there was ground.  And I was standing firmly.  And I know it’s because I believe the gospel and know it in my heart that I am standing, because He has given me a foundation.  As for my feeling of losing my grip on the cross, it’s the truth that the Holy Spirit lives in me that gave me the ability to let go and know I was held.  That same Spirit that has been since the beginning.  The one that also came and dwelt in my Jesus while He lived here.  My friend and counselor that reminds me of who I am – and that is not a frightened woman scraping at the bottom of the cross.

It’s the Spirit that makes Jesus as close as our own heart beat.  He is not hiding, He is not behind the sofa, He is in you!  Living, dwelling, working, loving, guiding everything we do and say.  And it’s because of Him that it is as easy to say He is in me as it is to live that He is in me.  And it is because of Him that I can rest in who I am because of Whose I am.  With the Spirit in me I am a seen and known and loved and valuable woman.    I can live that out because the Spirit of God is in me.  My identity, who I am, is because of what Jesus did here on earth and I am free to live that out because the Holy Spirit lives in me making it possible to be that woman.  This is my identity.

A snowflake is unique and beautiful- just for a second.

As I stood in the street today with the car door open just about to grab the groceries out of the back seat, big chunks of snow started falling.  It had been snowing all day and the day before, but a new burst of fluffy white stuff came down just as I got home.

I lifted my arm to reach into the car and several of them stood out because they had landed on the black part of my sleeve.  Little piles of frozen water shaped like sticks that had been prepared for a fire.  Not in any form or pattern, just a pile.  And then there was one, right at the center of my wrist.  And it was perfect.  It looked just like what you expect a snow flake to look like.  In that moment I thought, “This is the only one like this.”  Knowing that snowflakes come in all different formations, like the clumps lying right next to my beautiful one.

And then it began to melt.  And I said goodbye to my brush with perfection and was overwhelmed with the short span of time it filled with its beauty.  Being formed somewhere way above my head and falling and falling and falling until being intercepted just before it hit the ground by my shirt.  And the fragility and length of my own life occurred to me.

I speak passionately about things I believe in.  I speak from brokenness and pain and fear and healing and redemption and freedom.  I know that the issues between men and women cannot be summed up in a few paragraphs on my blog.  But the truth really is that we are here for such a short time.  It may seem impossible to believe, until you lose someone or come face to face with your own mortality, but it’s true.  Life is fragile and short.  And everyday we get to choose who to be and what to be about and how to treat each other.  And it breaks my heart to know that every day men and women get up and hold grudges and pull away and hold in place this lies of the idiotic that keep us from our joy and our peace and His glory.

So my little snow flakes, beautiful and fragile, stop it.  Stop being right and arguing a point and standing on righteous theology.  With the state of things as they are between us as His sons and daughters, all that matters is the gospel of life and freedom.  Not who can and cannot do or say or be.  We do need to press in to understand God’s truth for our roles and right relationships no doubt, but in His presence all else fades away and our time here melts like that snowflake on my arm.  And in the few minutes it existed, I enjoyed it’s beauty and it brought me joy.  As we seek to better understand each other in light of His redemptive grace, let’s also lean less toward the head and more toward the heart and hands on this issue.  Let’s enjoy our differences and embrace our unique beauty.  For His sake, and for ours, and for that of the people who are watching to see Him somewhere in this spinning globe of life.