Word Therapy

Quit Trying So Hard

You know how sometimes you sit down to read with your toddler at nap time and you feel like God is tapping on you on the shoulder saying “Remember when we talked about this a few days ago?”

 

No? Not a common occurrence? Well, not really for me either, but I do love it when God speaks to me through board books.

 

The book is called ‘The Three Trees’.  If you’re not familiar with this story, it’s about 3 trees that existed circa the time of Jesus’ birth.  Each tree has hopes and dreams of what it wants to become.  The pursuits are noble and praiseworthy:

 

~One tree dreams of being carved into a gleaming, highly decorated chest fit for the most priceless treasure that earth can offer.  

~Another tree dreams of being a majestic sailing vessel bound for powerful waters with mighty Kings as his cargo. 

~The third tree wishes for nothing more than to be left alone to grow to heights so stately and magnificent that whenever it catches the eye of a human, it will cause the person to glance even further skyward and contemplate the God who is exalted even higher than the tallest tree on earth.

As the story goes though, the trees all take on much more humble form. 

 

The tree who dreamed of being a treasure chest becomes nothing more than a feeding trough for snot-nosed animals.

 

The tree who longed to be a ship becomes just a humble nondescript fishing boat.

 

The tree who longed to grow to heights untold is ultimately hacked down with an axe in what seems to be the cruelest of fates.

 

However, each of these trees is shown to serve an even higher purpose than they could have ever imagined, in spite of or even because of the lowly form into which they were crafted.

 

The boat becomes the fishing boat that the Savior of the world uses to traverse the sea on that crazy night when he told a storm to shut up and calm down.

 

The feeding trough becomes the very first bed for the Messiah who descended to earth to begin a life in the flesh that lasted 33 years until…

 

The final tree took that same Messiah upon itself, as it had been formed into the cross that would hang up the bloody beaten Savior for all the world to see.

 

So in the end, the three trees, although their destiny and purpose looked far different than they had initially imagined, all were shown to be used by God in ways more powerful than could have ever been expected. 

 

Cut down.

 

Re-shaped.

 

Turned into something totally counterintuitive based on what they hoped would become of their existences.

 

What they saw as the most extraordinary use of themselves, was in fact nothing even close to what God had planned. I feel like God has been speaking this to me again recently.  I’ve been through this before, but I don’t feel like the idea every cemented itself into my heart.  I know that the Christian answer to living a life of purpose is to trust God and walk in the Spirit and let him work out the details…but I’m a hustler.  A striver.  An achiever.  

 

Truth be told, I’ve often had the attitude that “yeah God, I know I don’t have to worry about doing big, notable things for you because then I might get proud and want the glory for myself, but how about I just do this thing over here and pretend that it’s being done in humility, while all the while I will make sure I get some results even I have to manufacture them.  I definitely don’t want anyone to think I’m a slacker or that I’m wasting my life, so while I do think that you really are pleased with me no matter how much I accomplish, it just feels wrong to actually live like that.”

 

As I was meditating on some of this the other day, I thought of this quote from Ann Voskamp: “Those who keep score in life just want to know that they count. When you work for an audience of One, you always know that you count”.

 

That’s when it hit me.  I’m doing it again.  Trying to prove myself and look like I’m doing a good job in the eyes of all the wrong people.  

 

As I prayed and asked God to clarify just what is my next move, I felt like he clearly said this: 

“Love the people in front of you. Trust me with the impact”.

I mean, it makes so much sense when I write it down like that.  What are we supposed to even think we are to be about besides that? If we fail to love the people God puts directly in our path, we are probably missing the mark.  I think it’s partly our culture, and partly our pride though, that makes us feel like we always have to go bigger.

 

We don’t.  Look at Jesus. The savior of the world, and he spent the bulk of his ministry years with 12 people. Twelve. There was an entire world to save, so I’m sure he’s no stranger to the notion of wanting to make as big an impact as possible.

 

So when I’m feeling stressed, or frantic, or worried that I’m not going to be able to keep all the plates spinning, I need to ask myself a couple of questions:

Have I checked in with God recently?  Have I even given Him space to move in my life?

Am I paying attention to the people that have been physically placed in my life? Or am I brushing them aside so I can do the “important” work?

 

If you’re a mom raising young kids, you might be familiar with this tension.  This is definitely a direct application for me.  If I’m brushing my kids aside or feeling like I need to “keep them occupied” so I can chase after something else, I might need to re-assess.  As a sidenote, I’m not talking about our jobs.  That stuff has to get done. Bills have to get paid.  I’m talking more about this achievement culture where everyone not only has a job, has a side-job, has a seat on a committee or board of some kind, has a creative pursuit, has a home-based start up, has a full calendar of parties and social events and yeah…are we stressed yet?  All of that stuff is fine, but if we are chasing it and loading our plate ever more fully so that we can feel like we’ve crafted something shiny and beautiful, we may very well miss the purpose of LOVE for which we were created.

 

We have to choose to let God cut us down and reshape us. The process might look horrific, and we may not be sure anything good could come from it, but I’m willing to try trusting Him and see what kind of amazing things He will build that I never could.  

 

I know I have my marching orders for now.

 

Love the people in front of you, trust God with the impact.  

 

 

Alone in a Big Loud World

“Don’t air your dirty laundry”. “Keep your drama off of Facebook”.  

 

Yes we all want each other to be fine don’t we? We walk around saying “Hi, how are you?” and expecting the “Fine” response. We aren’t REALLY asking how someone is doing are we? Do we even want to know? And of course, mostly we all want to appear fine.  We want to appear held together, with at least a modicum of happiness and success evident in the highlight reel of our lives.

This kind of forced-happy-faced living invites years of pain to lurk under the surface un-dealt with, lest anyone find out that we aren’t actually fine.

 

Yesterday I was in my meditative zone: the kitchen sink. I find that’s where I get a lot of clarity on the issues that perplex me.  I’ll be ruminating on something for days, weeks, or even months, and then I have an AHA moment.  It never fails that I’m either driving, showering, or washing dishes, all things that have my hands too busy to write.  But as I was standing there, all of the sudden the line from Martina McBride’s song “Happy Girl” popped into my head.  It was seriously like it came out of nowhere, but it dealt so specifically with things I’ve been thinking about lately.

 

I can’t quote the line here without paying the song-writer with a vial of unicorn blood, so listen to it here if you want to hear it: Happy Girl by Martina McBride

 

Turns out when I listened to the line in the full script of the song, it’s not a dead ringer for what I was thinking about, but that one line hit the nail on the head.

 

I’ve been thinking about my own tendency, and the tendency of people I love, to hunker down in isolation when we are struggling.

 

It seems we can fall into 1 of 2 kinds of error when we are in relational crisis, emotional distress, situational drama or hardship, or any other kind of perceived difficulty. 

 

On the one hand there are the people who have no secrets; you know, if you just read their Facebook newsfeed, you can tell something is up. We either sit silently by wishing we could be so bold as to broadcast our distress, or we whisper to our friends that they should probably keep all that “personal stuff” under wraps because who wants to read all that drama?

 

But I have to wonder, by doing so are we perpetuating the good ol’ fashioned American ideal of the mythical perfect life?  Where you don’t ever let anyone see  your brokenness that hides under a polished veneer of a strong family name, a seemingly loyal and sturdy marriage, and a lifestyle that is well-suited to the American dream? Everyone looks good on the outside, but behind the scenes, people are falling apart.

 

It can look a million different ways; marital struggle, depression, anxiety, chronic pain or illness, challenging kids, financial strain, fear.

What if instead of hiding, we actually called or texted someone when we felt our insides crumbling? 

 

I know for me personally, I tend to to hole up when I go through any season of depression or anxiety, whether that’s brought on by life’s circumstances, or my winter nemesis; Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I have one friend who I barely talked to all winter who later confessed that she had been having a rough few months and so just really didn’t talk to anyone. We could have been bolstering each other up through that whole time if we had just reached out!

 

How different could things be if we would pick up the phone when we are down!  Text a trusted friend when we are in that vulnerable space where we are unsure when or if the clouds are going to clear.

 

The sage Beth Nielsen Chapman (songwriter of “Happy Girl”) got it absolutely right when she talked about painting on a fake broken smile and standing in the corner, but then inviting others into actually see her real heart.

 

That’s my goal. To throw open the gates into my life. Although it’s a bit intimidating…someone may judge me, someone may wonder how many more times this fickle middle-class American girl is going to succumb to the worries and cares of this life…I’m going to do it anyway.  There’s a good likelihood that when I throw open that front door, someone else is going to step through it and find a safe place.

 

That makes it all worth it, because we are all in this together, we are all going to struggle and go through pain, and nobody is perfect.  So let’s stop living like we are.

Springtime People

The BEST season of the year is here in full swing. Maybe you know it by the blossoms, or if you're from Wenatchee, by the smell of Funnel cakes and the sight of chairs lined up for the grand parade only 5 days away.

This morning I watched my husband faithfully get in his pickup and drive away to work while the world was just waking up, changing from night to day.  As I walked over to the window to watch him drive off, I was greeted with the most amazing sky.  Pink and purple, scattered and painted across the sky, as the whole tapestry of clouds slowly crawled across the sky toward the east.

I always love a good sky, but this morning the way the pink and purple layered itself upon the emerald green hills making way to the valley floor of white pear blossoms, it really did something in my heart.

It reminded me that we were made to be Springtime people.  We were made to be on our faces in the presence of majestic beauty.  This morning, the vibrant colors, the gorgeously hued layers of sky and earth though extremely beautiful, are but a shadow of the beauty and majesty I will encounter every day of eternity.

It makes me think of a line from this song that I woke up with running through my head: Even when my time on earth is done, louder then I'll sing your praise

There's going to be a day when even the most beautiful things we behold now will fade from our memories as we encounter the beauty of Christ and the heaven he has waiting for us.  So when we feel that thing inside of us that is overwhelmed and awestruck at the beauty that we live in now, we just have to remember, this is just a glimpse.

I for one, cannot wait until we live with the magnified, eternal beauty that we glimpse here in springtime for day after day after year after year after century after eon of never-ending soul-swelling bliss.

Giveaway! (Only for people who know anyone dramatic)

So, the title....I'm assuming that's everyone. If you don't know anyone dramatic, maybe YOU are the dramatic one.  

Our family has no lack of emotion. We are what Jen Hatmaker has referred to as a 'Spicy' family (in contrast to sweet).  We don't do any of the emotions halfway around here, and we are no stranger to voluminous tirades and extremely "robust dialogue" (thank you for that term Matt Chandler).

Over the course of parenting, thanks to a top-notch counselor, I've learned that anger is what's called a "secondary emotion".  Apparently being able to identify the underlying emotions is a big deal.  Being able to name those emotions and have a healthy way of expressing them, being allowed to feel them, and deal with them, are the building blocks to being a person who is able to live functionally in this world.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't come easily for me.  As I listened to this podcast where the authors shared about 'milestones' to be achieved on the path to emotional health, I realized that I probably need this book for myself as much as for my kids.  I can't wait to dig in to this book, and because I believe that as we become emotionally healthy people who teach our children these skills the WORLD will change...I'm giving away a copy!

If you want to enter, subscribe to receive email updates from my blog. That's it.  You won't get an email unless I write a new post, and I won't be sharing your email address with anyone else.  So enter your email address on the right hand side of this page and click 'subscribe' and you'll be entered!

 

I'll draw a winner on Wednesday evening!

'Twas Grace...an Episode of Rocking Chair Theology

 

Who hasn’t heard the song Amazing Grace? Even if you’re not a church person you’ve probably heard it.  It’s been one of Leah’s favorites since she was a newborn.  I’ll never forget when she started making cooing sounds when she was a few months old. As she finished up nursing in the JC Penney’s parking lot, I sang her that song and she practically sang along with me in her cooing baby voice. My mascara ran that day.

 

It’s sung almost daily around here. Like many songs that become so familiar we can sing them without thinking about them, the lyrics are just pretty words most days.

 

But tonight as I rocked her at bedtime and sang that song, I stumbled across a line in the second verse that’s often tripped me up before.

 

“Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved”.

 

Hold up.

 

Why do I want to pass on a song about fearful hearts to my baby girl? Why is that good news to anyone? Where is the comfort in that?  If the fear is from God then isn’t he kind of mean and bully-ish to want to make me fearful? How is that a grace?

 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. -Psalm 111:10

The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. - Psalm 25:14

 

Maybe it’s not so much about fear…or maybe it is.

For years I lived with this dissonance in the guts of my soul; a dull awareness that the God I had heard about in Sunday school probably existed, and from what I knew about him from my little bit of biblical literacy, I figured he was probably ready to punish me because I did so wrong so often.

Though I resisted fully submitting myself to my creator for so long, this gentle drawing of grace finally won.  It’s a grace that I lived with a sense of dread, a sense of foreboding, a sense of wondering what would happen to me when I died…had I appeased God well enough to make the cut? That sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it?  How can it be a gift to live a life full of inner turmoil? So much of our existence is spent chasing the feels. Make me feel good. Make me feel relaxed. Make me feel peace.  I never could catch that, or if I did it proved to be fleeting and shallow. How thankful I am that the grace of God persisted and never let me find satisfaction in the pleasures that would have ultimately dulled my senses to His call.

 

I suppose that most people, if we can all dial down the noise of the world around us and go into that scary inner world that inhabits all of us, will find questions, longings, concerns that we can’t explain. The classic existential questions of purpose, the afterlife, the problem of suffering; if we let ourselves dwell on these things for very long they will begin to haunt us.

 

It’s in this place of haunting, where the cavernous space of our soul starts to feel like a hollow echo chamber; echoing with the unsatisfying platitudes and wobbly ideals that we breathe in continually from our world that cannot explain nor save itself.

It’s in this place of haunting that we may begin to hear the whisper of God. Something about that whisper is alarming; we know we don’t measure up to the hallowed sound we are hearing.

And it’s in that place where we begin to turn, but only if we can humbly receive love and drop our fearful exterior.

 

It’s there where we come face to face with grace and realize that our fearful hearts have been overtaken with a different kind of fear; reverence. Worship….

 

“and grace my fears relieved”.

 

The fear is redeemed. Holy fear.  Something that Jesus would describe as worship. Total adoration, submission, allegiance. 

 

When Jesus was tempted by Satan to bow down to him in exchange for all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus replied with “Away from me Satan! For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only!”.  In this scripture he is quoting Deuteronomy 6:13 which is written as : “Fear the LORD your God, serve him only”. 

 

What Jesus shows us there is that Fear is worship.  It’s a state of our hearts that acknowledges that God is Holy.  He is untouchable.  We are the lowest of the low in His presence, yet He’s made a way for us to be with him, and not only that, He WANTS us with him. 

He wants you.

 

That grace is extended to you. The unanswered questions. The gaping hole that exists when you get real quiet and the loneliness creeps in. That discord you feel when you know you’ve done wrong. 

 

It’s Him. It’s grace.

Grandma, Freedom, & Pizza

So many things. It's impossible to go through a day, when you are really looking, and not find things to be grateful for.

Like this lady here. This is my mom, and once a week she takes my kids for the afternoon until bedtime.  She's done this since Milo was a baby.  Sometimes I think about my brushes with being seriously mentally and emotionally DONE in motherhood, and I realize that if I didn't have this weekly respite over the past near-decade, our whole family would have likely been worse for the wear.  A mom who doesn't completely lose herself in the role of motherhood, I believe, is a much healthier mom and just as importantly, a much healthier wife. So these hours over the past years, given to me by my mom have allowed me to have appointments, dates with my husband, time to write, time to sleep, time to connect with friends that I scarcely see, time to go to Costco without the whole posse, and time to just be alone in my head.

Thank you mom. You've literally saved our bacon in the parenting and marriage department around here. I hope I can be just like Grandma Heidi someday!

I'm thankful and abundantly confident that this is the LAST TIME Leah will put on these snow clothes to play in freshly fallen snow this winter season!

I'm thankful that "who the Son sets free is free indeed".  Last week we sang No Longer Slaves at church and I was undone.  I am AMAZED at the way God intervenes, rescues, and redeems even our darkest, most binding areas of brokenness.

I'm thankful for You-tube tutorials.  Nick had Wacky Wednesday for Dr. Seuss week, and so I had to learn how to tie on that neck-tie.  My husband is a lineman and an orchardist, and I grew up with a dad who was a commercial fisherman, then a logger, then a lineman.  Translation=my men have worn ties as many times as I can count on one hand.  So I needed to quickly figure out this tie for Nick and luckily some 10 year old genius on the internet made a video about it.  Milo thought Nick looked so fancy that he wanted to wear one too.  Kevin has exactly 2 ties in his closet that are probably a decade (ish?) old, so we were in business.  That's Milo's Donald Trump face.  I told him next time he makes that face he's going to his room....no I didn't. Almost.

I was feeling extraordinarily domestic the other day and made homemade pizza, with scratch dough and everything. I probably haven't done this since before Leah was born.  I got a screaming deal on some non-organic nitrate-loaded pepperoni from Grocery Outlet so I ditched my usual $10 Tuesday plan at Papa Murphy's and got to work.  I had help, as you can see below.  Leah had a heck of a time with the flour. Finally I stole it when she wasn't looking because I'm one of those moms that tries to be fun and sometimes I really do feel care-free about creative messes....until I don't. And then I panic at all the cleanup looming in front of me and start sweeping and wiping like a stark-raving lunatic. Not this day though because I ninja-swiped that flour canister. She came to find me a minute later and said "Where's the sugar?"

I'm thankful for the occasional slow day where we have time and space to make a meal from scratch, make a mess in the process, and take our time eating and hanging out.

Rolling

Story Break
 

Saucing

Cheesing

Slicing

What are you thankful for on this gray, rainy day?

Abundant Gratitude

Well it seems I find myself back here in this familiar territory of whiner-land once again.  I am, without a doubt, a grade-A grouch when I let my attitudes and thoughts go unchecked.

Back in December for advent I found three things to be thankful for each day and wrote about them, as a means of keeping myself accountable to be looking for the good things and shifting my perspective. The results were phenomenal.  My anxiety went down.  My episodes of raising my voice at my kids *almost* disappeared.  For the first time in several years, I did not fall into the depth of seasonal depression that the winter usually triggers for me.

Now here in March, I find myself again living in a pattern of grouchiness, angst, ungratefulness, stress, and selfishness.  As I drove to church this morning, I was having a little conversation with God. It went something like this: "God, I'm so sick of being so angry on the inside. I feel like I'm in a constant state of stress and I want to STOP IT! But every time I try to ask you for help I feel like I'm talking to myself. My prayers feel useless and you feel far away. I know you're not, but it feels like it."  Have you been there? Where you are beyond frustrated with yourself and your sin, but when you try to take it to God you feel like you're banging your head against the wall?

In that moment, as I was praying, I felt him remind me of this gratitude exercise I had done before, and all the ways he shows his love and abundance to us every moment of every day if we will only look around and pay attention.

I literally pulled over that moment as I noticed this gorgeous March snow covering everything so thick, draped on every single crevice of every tiny branch because the flakes were so wet and sticky.  Backlit by the morning sun, it was a fleeting moment of beauty that would quickly be melted, but I felt so thankful to see the morning light come up over the unseasonably snowy landscape.

Then I noticed this kid riding in the back seat.

 As we pulled into the church parking lot I heard her say "Kirsi Ahrens!" (that's how she says my name), because she says my name every time she puts her sunglasses on because she thinks she looks like me when she wears them.  How cute is that? How can I forget that every day I get to have three healthy, full of life kids living at my house?  That, in and of itself is a grace that should blow my mind daily when I read story after story of friends who have lost children, walked through major health struggles with their children, or have struggled to ever conceive at all.

The icing on the cake was when, at church, our pastor announced that we are going to embark on a 40 day fast from negativity as a way to observe lent.  It was like God giving me a neon sign that YES KRISTI YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR THINKING.  Duly noted.  

So, I'll be chronicling once again my #grantidotes here as a means to give God the glory He is due for the grace that he gives so undeservedly every day to people like me who chronically complain about dirty countertops, messy bedrooms, & overflowing laundry baskets...and on that note, here is the last thing I'm thankful for today.  It's SUPER shallow, but that's okay because I'm not trying to be something I'm not.  I'm shooting straight here; this singular, clean, clutter free space in our home makes me feel extremely calm when I look at it.  So I'm thankful for this one clean counter right here in our bathroom, because it's literally the only place in our house that isn't a disaster right now.

Imposter Syndrome: The Sinister Sidekick of Affirmation Addiction & Perfectionism

My friend and I have this thing.  It’s a phrase I swear my husband coined somewhere around the year 2003 when he first noticed it in me, but maybe it’s not original to him.  Maybe you have it too. It’s called Imposter Syndrome.

 

You see, for years, I’ve labored under the illusion that I’m some sort of elaborate, unwitting trickster.  I feel like every time I display any level of competency at anything, I’m completely bamboozling whomever seems to be showing confidence in me.  It showed up first when I was in nursing school.  I was able to retain what I was learning fairly easily, so I didn’t have to put in the endless hours of study that many of my peers did.  So when I received good grades, and was reviewed by my instructors and nurses mentoring me, I was floored when they said that I showed good prioritization skills, competency, and generally a good grasp on what nursing requires. I thought I had performed well enough, on the spot, to trick them into thinking I knew what I was doing. I kept waiting for they day that I would forget everything I knew and be exposed for the fraud that I surely was.

Thankfully for my patients, as I look back, I see that I wasn’t actually incompetent, rather I was experiencing a tremendous amount of self-doubt as a result of perfectionism and unrealistic expectations.

 

Perfectionism can show up so many different ways.  Maybe you’re a neat freak (let me tell you, I WISH SO BAD that’s how my perfectionism presented itself, but alas, no. My house and car will quickly reveal that to you).  Maybe perfectionism shows up in your self-talk.  You never feel good enough.  You never do enough. You fail way more than her. You really should get some self discipline and lose that extra weight.  You really should meal plan better.  Maybe it shows up in your motherhood?  Excessively researching EVERY method, parenting style, opinion, latest news about every decision you have to make for your child.  Exhausting. I did that, and I almost drove myself crazy. I felt like the weight of the entirety of my child’s future was on my shoulders as I struggled to choose the best vaccination schedule, sleep training method, discipline methods, the list goes on.

 

Now that I’ve gotten to know myself better (thank you 30s, great friends, prayer buddies, and an excellent therapist!) I am starting to realize that all this striving for perfection, striving to make the best decisions, perform at the highest level all the time, comes from this deep-seated craving for other peoples’ approval.  I’m not sure when this started or why I seem to need it so bad.

 

The problems with this approval addiction are multi-faceted, but I want to hone in on one: Imposter Syndrome. Like I mentioned before, I see this going back in me a long time.  I think as we go through childhood, being accepted by peers, receiving the praise of teachers and parents, being spotlighted for anything where we stand out, feels good yes?

 

But then, as we move through life into adulthood this can create massive problems.  If our self-worth starts to ride on what other people think of us, if our major life decisions are weighed on the scales of community or familial approval, we become slaves to affirmation in a way that will handicap forward progress in the way we are bent toward.  

 

So then we run around, pursuing this and that, looking for people to tell us that we are on the right track, being successful.  And as we do that, we know that we aren’t being true to our most deep desires.  Even if we are doing something we feel truly called to, our need for a pat on the back to affirm our competency undermines our ability to self-evaluate and see that yes, we are in fact doing this thing well.

We build our house upon what others tell us in their performance reviews of us.  We don’t have the clear-headedness that allows us to look at what we are working toward, see that we’ve given solid effort and maybe even had good results, and then feel satisfied. Rather, we fret about whether it’s “good enough” and wait desperately for someone to come along and say that we’ve succeeded, whether that’s through an award, a string of compliments, a review at work, or, in our 21st century context, an increase in Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook followers.

 

Meanwhile we drive ourselves to places of stress and anxiety that God never envisioned for us when he built these gifts into us.  If we could only see the way He smiles over us when we walk in our callings.  I guarantee that then we wouldn’t need the fleeting comments of others to continue propping us up.

 

So, sing your songs because you love to sing. Write your words because you have something to say. Pursue that degree because you feel that the world has a need and you have a specific way you’ve been called to meet it.  Start that non-profit that feels inconsequential now but has the potential to shake up your corner of the globe. 

 

Don’t let doubt and perfection and feeling like you’re a fraud stop you for one more day from doing the thing that has been burning in some corner of your heart.

For my Soul Friend

I'm sharing today, the story of a friendship that is such a gift.  I wrote this post a while back, and I sent it over to my friend Laura at Seasoned with Salt.  She has it up on the blog, and I'd love it if you'd read it and see the faithfulness of God working through a very difficult time in my friend's life.  

Here are the first few paragraphs...

I watched her raise her arms as her beautiful alto voice reverberated across the sanctuary, and tears filled my eyes.  The Spirit of the Lord was on the move no doubt, and that in and of itself always makes me cry. Some people laugh, some people dance, some people kneel, I typically cry.

But my eyes were also overflowing because this day marked such a victory.

As the lyrics “let go my soul and trust in him, the waves and wind still know his name” rolled off the stage, through the mic, and into the hearts of the hearers, I rejoiced inside because I knew my dear friend sang this from a place of legitimate, hard-fought, battle-weary victory.

I met Cindi 3 years ago when we joined a bible study together. We carpooled for the thirty minute drive, and when I picked her up she darted from her front porch. I remember her practically dancing her way to my car. I would find out later that she has quite the flare for the dramatic, with a background in theater and musicals.  We built a deep friendship in record time.  Daily phone calls, getting to know the ins and outs of each others’ lives, quickly led to a kinship that is a rare treasure.

Within just a few weeks of getting to know my new friend, she walked a little more slowly out to my car one evening as I picked her up for bible study.  She said her knees hurt and she had “pockets of fluid” in her joints.  What we thought would come and go quickly because we are completely healthy and vibrant 30-somethings, spiraled into a plethora of afflictions that would send my dear friend into her recliner for nearly three years.

Find the rest over at Seasoned with Salt

Pro-Love

Contentious.  If I had to sum up the feelings of my heart in one word over the past week, that would be it.  There have been big issues in the news, and as a result, if we have been paying attention we’ve had to self-examine and see how these things line up with our personal convictions.  

This past week we saw the collision of two very big issues, and they are big issues because they both deal with the subject of fragile human life.

This past week has been the annual ‘March for Life’ and similar events that highlight that as a nation we are complicit in the deaths of 60,000,000 people over the past several decades, by means of abortion.

This past week as well, we saw our new President sign an order that temporarily halts refugee resettlement into our nation from some very vulnerable places.  This will undoubtedly cost lives as we’ve seen news story after news story over the past months highlighting the destruction and evil ravaging Syria and neighboring nations.  Now we’ve chosen to deny these people running for their lives, any entrance into our country.

 

Both of these major life issues stir up very strong feelings in my heart.  I can’t help but think of Matthew 25. I’ve read that passage of scripture multiple times in the past few weeks, each time looking for the part I must be missing, about when it is okay for us to stop short of doing whatever we can to help the vulnerable once it starts to infringe upon our way of life, our wealth, our comfort. I still haven’t found it.

 

I’m starting to feel familiar in this place of being misunderstood as a follower of Christ.  On the one hand, as someone who is ardently against abortion, I’m way too conservative for my liberal friends.  On the other hand, as someone who believes we don’t have a biblical case to shut out immigrants and refugees for reasons of our perceived safety and national wealth, I’m too liberal for my conservative friends.  

“O Lord deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself” (St. Augustine)  is a prayer I probably need to tattoo to my wrist (at least temporarily, is there a place to get Henna tattoos around here?), because I don’t know if it’s my red hair or what, but when I’m convinced of something I tend to want to convince everyone else and I tend to gravitate towards fire rather than eloquence.

 

But then this morning, scripture convicted me (as it does), that no matter what the issue is, who is on “my side” or not, the command for me is the same:

 

“A new command I give to you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  BY THIS, everyone  will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  -John 13:34-35 (emphasis mine)

 

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”.  -Matthew 22: 34-40

 

Jesus is clear: Love is to mark our lives. This means loving those whom we disagree with,  Loving those whom we are in alignment with on everything, loving those who are different from us, loving those who are the same as us, loving those who are a potential threat to us, loving those who are going to cost us money, security, time, comfort.  And yes, loving those who we have every disagreement with other than this one thing; that Christ Jesus came into the world to live and die as an atonement for humanity’s grievous sins and now lives to be with us as we spread His message of redemption to the ends of the earth.

In short, there is no one excluded from Christ’s command to us to love.

This is something I can’t do without the Holy Spirit of God.  Loving those who disagree with me does not come easily.  Loving those who might threaten my way of life is scary.

 

This is the time I have to keep eternity firmly fixed in my sights.  A life of love here, no matter the cost, is preparing us for eternity with Christ.  And as his ambassadors on this earth, how we love might very well affect someone else’s eternity.  My lack of love can push someone away from the love of Christ. This is weighty.  This will have me on my knees every day begging God to help me love well, no matter who, no matter where, no matter how wrong I think they are, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous they may seem.  

 

Jesus loves each and every one.