Fan the Flame

the unending surrender

2012-02-28T09:16:00.001-08:00

All of the doubts and questions and echoes of mystery that swirl about my soul are clarifying themselves in one clear, singular, resounding chorus:

“Will you surrender every moment in its uncertainty, its overwhelming wave, its acute reminder of your insufficiency to Me? to the Lamb of God who was slain and who is WORTHY of your everything now and forever?”

And I sheepish, helpless and weak yet somehow knowing that this complete undoing leads me closer to the pathway of life, the ONLY path of life, the ONLY LIFE as the vision of He WHO IS {LIFE} becomes all that I see, say ‘yes’.

I think of those who modeled the unending surrender as they lived before God’s Son came incarnate and every promise of the ages was fulfilled:

I think of Noah and the absurd plan of God that branded him crazy to the world yet was the provision for his life and his family’s and all of mankind’s existence.

I think of Abraham and the waiting of decades for the promised son who was the sum of his own worth in such a time and culture. And I remember how he walked a hill with faith, a knife and wood for an altar and only his long-awaited son to offer as a sacrifice. Obedient fully to the unthinkable with trust in the God to whom he owed everything…knowing his promises were true and that was all he had to see.

I think of Joseph when wrong upon wrong was committed against him. Sold into slavery by his own brothers. Falsely accused. Years in prison as an innocent man. Forgotten by those he saved. Made prince in a foreign land with every power to take vengeance on the brothers who had hated him and wished him dead. Only to declare in meekness ‘what you in intended for evil, God intended for good to bring about the salvation of many’.

I think of Rahab, the prostitute, a Gentile yet possessing a heart for God. Risking her life to hide Israelite spies knowing their God was the only God. Honored by Him in being grafted into God’s family and the lineage of Christ.

I think of Ruth the Moabitess, a daughter of pagan faith, who left all of the comforts of home to care for her bereft and weary mother-in-law and embrace Yahweh as her God. Honored, as well, grafted into the faithful of God and the lineage of Christ.

And then I think of Mary. Giving birth to the Messiah and struggling with her flesh, often not winning, as she had that clear revelation her son, Jesus, was the Son of God. Called to be his mother yet showing us all what it is to surrender that which is most precious to our hearts even the very promises of God declared over our own children.

But mostly, I think of the Savior. Winning every time over his flesh. Tempted and tried in ALL WAYS AS WE yet without sin. Being handed over to death while each moment possessing the full power to obliterate every enemy. Standing in the face of jeers and the deepest blasphemy as he, in infinite irony, was accused of the same. Coming from eternity past, the infinite length, in the most perfect, beautiful and clear manifestation of unending surrender and looking into every weary eye that has ever lived and saying

‘Come, Come to Me…I am meek and lowly of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

And laughter fills where the battle has waged. A light-hearted joy springs up that flows from the Perfect One through these spirit veins. And there is peace in a world that rages. And there is hope to speak into the darkness. And there is the vision of the Kingdom of God that is forever and victorious when all others will crumble and fall.

And there is the promise that each new day will bring the same question and choice and eternal fruit that only comes from the unending surrender…

True Grit…God’s Way

2012-02-24T21:36:00.001-08:00

Go:

When I first hear ‘grit’ I think of the grinding out life and when the going gets tough the tough get going and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…

And I have known this grit and things have beaten me down and many seasons of life have been hard and especially for those I love and there was a time when I just lived to ‘not quit’ because that was unthinkable.

But then, then, I saw so quickly how all of this not being a quitter could become all about me and soon I would be beating my head against my own walls and I would be shutting out love, from others, for others, not receiving ultimately, His Love.

And I realized that this wasn’t the ‘grit’ that I wanted at all…I wanted Jesus Grit. The One that was so in tune with the will of the Father and so full of a holy zeal for His Glory and a deepest of deep desire to please the One who He loved as Father and knew eternal communion with that He looked into the deepest, darkest, infinite cup of wrath and death and alienation from all that was the life of God in Him to drink it. He did it with that grit that is staking its all upon the reality of a love so vast and full that NOTHING can overcome it and so is willing to lay down EVERYTHING to preserve it.

And I have embraced this grit and I cry out with deepest soul cry that I would live with such a deeper grit that won’t quit not for my pride, or glory, or even to please others BUT to make so, so much of Him because NOTHING could ever compare to what it is to give it all to and for the One who has given His Infinite All for me.

This is TRUE GRIT…GOD’S WAY.

Stop.

when there’s no turning back

2012-02-20T21:04:00.001-08:00

It’s a good place to be. The place of no-turning-back. But it is NOT a comfortable place and as we grow we learn that the truly good things that last forever come in the risk. the fire. the surrender.

These words that were a part of the sermon text on Sunday have always been a balm for my soul::

So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

~John 6: 67-69

I feel the heart beat and passion of Peter knowing that they have staked their all on THIS ONE. THIS JESUS. This statement comes on the heals of many of Jesus’ followers deserting Him after he has told them that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. It was apparently too much, too all-out, too incomprehensible for many. And so they left, but the twelve remained.

The better part of humility and perspective knows that I live in a different time and the sacrifices that we are making to stay the course and move overseas are far less than all that those first followers faced. But I also embrace the ache of my heart as it resonates with a full knowledge that there is no other path and NO OTHER ONE on whom to fix my gaze and tune my soul.

And so I thank Him for the awesome privilege of having a path of obedience so clearly defined. In this season of waiting as we run the final leg of this part of our race and prepare to embark on a complete life change, I have been tempted to look at many things.

The endless unknowns of how I will adjust to life in Budapest.

The fears of my gaping inadequacies to do any of it well.

The roiling emotions of the permanency of our commitment. {We will not return in six months, a year or five. We are on his timetable and if we serve overseas until we die, then, Praise Him.}

But He reminds me that LIFE is where it has always been. In Him. Abiding in Him. Feasting on Him with the full counsel of His Word as to what that means.

So gentle and so kind and so patient, He is. Calming my fears with the truth of His Grace and that it is always one step, one moment at a time. And filling my heart with thanks that the things I face beg the same question He asked the disciples. Will I go away? Will I turn back because it is just too hard? Will I pursue this path ahead with my own willpower and strength?

And even before the question comes I know the answer echoes Peter’s.

Oh LORD, where else can I go? You ALONE have the words of life. I thank You that there is NO turning back. I thank You that You have given my life purpose that can only be fulfilled by Your Strength. Your Life flowing through me. And I ask You to keep me on this full-out path all of my days, wherever I am, whatever you call me to do until I am Home forever in Your Arms. Amen & Amen

{Ever since we sang this song during our overseas training last summer and I joined the voices of many going all around the world, many to places where it is forbidden to preach the Gospel, it has transported me to a place of passion and purpose that I share with all who embrace the path of no-turning-back.

I have dubbed it The Missionary Anthem. I hope it encourages and challenges you!}

how to really {L}ive secure

2012-02-14T08:17:00.001-08:00

As I was reflecting on some of the things that have gripped my heart more deeply these last couple of weeks, I remembered that my word for 2012 is secure.

And yet I’ve been writing about the absolute all-out worthiness of Christ to command whatever He pleases of my life AND what it is to live {L}ife with a Capital ‘L’.

I wondered if I was being true to my word. What can any of this kind of surrender and boldness have to do with dwelling securely?

Then I realized that the kind of security that I am meant to know has everything to do with a fullness of living, a fullness of giving ALL to Him.

“I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
   in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the LORD always before me;
   because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
   my flesh also dwells secure.”

~Psalm 16:7-9

This same One who I purpose to give EVERYTHING to, Who I follow where He leads and sacrifice all that I have that NOTHING be held back from Him, yet with ALL HE IS AND HAS PROMISED TO BE set ALWAYS/CONTINUALLY before me gives me a ‘glad heart’ and causes me to ‘dwell secure.’

And my life bears testimony to this truth. I have lived, in shadowy ways, a mere ephemeral representation of what I am destined to be. These days and seasons are the ones where I have held back and made problems BIG and the God who holds this infinite universe together by the word of His power small. These days are the ones where I have set what I can control before me and the predictable that is the great mirage of security that, especially our culture, can solely define itself by. These days are the ones that I hope and pray to see in swiftly diminishing number as I step forward in the journey.

And so my heart is bearing a ‘weight of glory’ that is defining more and more of this life. The unseen has become my increasing security and the unknown embraced as I look to Him who holds this universe and every minute detail of every day I will ever live and my forever in His loving, able hands. I say it humbly for I fall down and forget and falter but the vision of the only Life that can ever satisfy and its breathtaking backdrop of an unshakable security bound fully in ALL OF the promises as ‘YES AND AMEN IN HIM’ is becoming so glorious and overpowering that I cannot fathom looking away.

{photo source}

Five Minute Friday :: Trust

2012-02-09T21:58:00.001-08:00

Go:

‘There is No LIFE without TRUST’

I remember saying those words to a friend when I was in college? And I’ve {hopefully} been really living because I’ve been really trusting.

For me it usually involves the willful child kicking and screaming that I know the way that it should be and He

the Gentle, Kind, All-Powerful Lover of my soul speaking to me the truth of His Life found only in trusting Him.

It has walked with me through mom’s cancer, heartbreak, teaching 160 teenagers {not in the same class;}, choosing a path around 7 or so years ago that has led to full-time missionary support and many uncomfortable steps into unknown countries and relationships and teams and more relationships and more walls of faith and trust that have reminded and tested if I really want the only life that there truly is.

Trust is the breath of the beating heart for God. We cannot live in Him if we aren’t trusting Him and I am no exception and while I would love to say that it gets easier, it doesn’t;} It does in the sense that things that used to be hard to trust Him with once continually let go, they do become easier to do so BUT there are always the bigger steps coming…the living, truly living, that will not let us stay where we are, but grows into the constant unknown and trusts it is always His best to do so…

Stop

photo source :: flickr creative commons

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when love fills time and space

2012-02-08T11:58:00.001-08:00

you sunshine girl with light-kissed hair holding so much in you and I stop the cleaning and the organizing because I know this moment will be gone with this tiny next breath.

and you invite me open-hearted into your world full of joy and happy and life and all of the fun that just can’t wait to get out and I just come along for the sweet ride of my two year-old girl.

and we sing the songs together. ones you learn by seeming osmosis so quickly they become your own and I gaze in wonder at how the life in you bursts forth.

and we draw pretty flowers together and I don’t know what is more, the beauty of our togetherness or your little button nose:)

and soon you jump high on your bed and dance to the songs that still play and smile and sing happy and when you ask me to jump too, I say ‘mommy’s too big’ and you furrow quizzical but then accept that this kind of fun is toddler-shaped and mommy’s fun is just to open eyes and heart and soul wide to receive.

then when mommy’s creaking back is hurting and I lay on my tummy you come for a horsey ride which I cannot quite give so you tumble off and stretch to push-up form with all of your teeny might {which is none too small} and I marvel at your itsy bitsy muscles at work.

and when we find the pink ball that you got for Christmas we stand and bounce and sit and roll and you are fierce in your ideas of how it all should be and I smile for the strength yet visible in you.

when afternoon comes and so does your nap you toddle down stairs to get your water ‘my by self’ and you pad back up and curve to your room and I read your current favorite and we dip ‘my little pony’ hooves in paint and make the flowers and butterflies on the page and then we get you into your sleepy-time place.

‘Dalia the Dolphin’ your pillow pet that we name together gives her usual greeting with kisses and hi’s and sentiments of how she’s missed you! and you cuddle happy with your blankie, lovie, and best little stuffed friend…

…and I sing the song today that first came to my heart when you were jello-limbed newborn resting in my arms

You’re my precious, precious, precious little baby girl

The only one, only one, in this whole wide world

My precious, precious, precious little baby girl…

{then this verse added last summer}

You’re His precious, precious, precious little baby girl

daughter Susanne Elizabeth

consecrated to the Great I AM

princess of the King of Kings

daughter of the Abba Father God

And He REJOICES OVER YOU WITH SINGING

Yes, HE REJOICES OVER YOU WITH SINGING

You’re His precious, precious, precious little baby girl

and while my voice quiets and you ready for sleep I walk out of this sacred space of the slowing and being present with what is gone as soon as it is but the song, the song, remains tucked in heart of hearts and lifted in worship for the miracle of this life. this unimaginable privilege of being your mama. this joy shaped only by love that is as deep a part of me as soul and spirit and the eternal perfect imagination of God.

and this new meme, kd continuing Emily’s amazing community::

Life with a Capital ‘L’

2012-02-06T22:20:00.001-08:00

So I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of Life. It’s one of those thoughts that swims around in my brain and never really leaves. But lately, lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to live FULL, ALIVE…like all that I believe is real.

The same sermon I mentioned last week made me ponder this Life when Tim Keller read this excerpt:

"How can you cope with the end of a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that the fire has become flesh, that Life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it’s a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between…"

- N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth

And then I listen to this sermon and it’s all about the TRUTH of the resurrection and there is no desire that is ultimately left unfulfilled because Jesus really did rise in flesh and bones. Life is with a captial ‘L’ for the Redeemed or we condemn ourselves to that ‘shallow world in between.’

And so the question begs to be asked, do I experience life or Life?

I had a sweet answer {of sorts} to this on Sunday morning. My husband and I were sharing an update of our journey overseas at our home church. And Life was there. Undeniable. Unquenchable. Ours.

It was there in the Sunday School hour when we interacted with some amazing middle & high school students who are living the mission that has become the heartbeat of our calling. Loving their neighbors who are their classmates in the vast mission field of the public school. Happy and at peace and yet wanting to know more and more what it is to follow Him.

It was there when we shared with the church the core lessons of our extended time here completing our fundraising in order to move to Hungary. We danced a dance of the heart as he began remembering that fireseed that entered our hearts in that very place eight years ago and I continued and he concluded. The Spirit melding our words, our journey, to speak an authentic message of what He gives in the waiting and surrendering and learning to live in the light of His unchanging, eternal Glory.

It was there as members came and laid hands on us and our son and interceded, for us, and when his name was mentioned in prayer he looked up at us with this exquisite smile.

And as we sat down in the pew and I held my beloved’s hand, I felt the smile of Heaven. Dreams that were dreamt a long time ago were resurrected and I saw how with this man I am living that vision of bearing witness boldly side-by-side as ONE of the reality of this God being ALL He says He is and the Life He gives as we give Him ourselves.

Then, in a sweet benediction of this Life we were led into a deeper understanding of Communion, as sacrament. As our pastor said multiple times it is ‘a symbol’ and ‘more than a symbol’ of the TRUTH of the Life bought with the body and blood of Jesus and given FOR us, TO us, come to live IN us.

We shared with each other later how the Presence who is LIFE was palpable and we tuck deep to raise high an ebenezer of remembrance, of the Life He intends.

And I thank Him for this answer that opens more questions as this holy haunting swirls about this heart and mind and I plead for Life to mark more moments and fill increasingly the breaths of this time, this journey, I walk here and now and into forever.

Five Minute Friday : Real

2012-02-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

Go:

And so I've been thinking about this real relationship, both human and divine.

It's weaving into me and I into it and so I am changing and softening and growing and falling down in worship for the beauty of the real.

This husband, who I love, yet who sees the deepest reality of my need for a Savior. Who is there in the moments that I can hide from the rest of the world and in the spaces that the Spirit has yet to speak into and he bears witness to the ugly. And in the face of it, though at times shocked by the real, he stays and we learn about some of those deep places and about the unharvested terrain of that which has laid fallow and without fruit.

But in the face of this real, this real relationship, we also discover that which could not be found if the journey were in quiet spaces, singular. We embrace the real that refines and Our Great God's means of perfecting him and perfecting me. I cannot imagine another person that I could be so deeply real with and where all of the dark, hard, wounded and hurting would be so deeply exposed. And while there is still a big part of me that reels for the reality laid bare, here the voice of that which remains resounds stronger for the ultimate healing that lay on this path for me, for him, because of the Great I AM present in it all.

Stop.

Five Minute Friday's Home @ The Gypsy Mama

you weave within

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

spins up up
and strong
intricately woven
gossamer
that with but
momentary
dip from the
divine Hand
you
transfuse brilliance
and I am

hushed.
stilled.
transfixed.
beyond the raging
surging
doubt and the
pervasive worry
that dizzy makes
the small into
big and
forgets you

above in
and through
it all you
broad brush
stroke and kairos
fills the sky
my vision
all that is
and was and is
to come
manifested by
breathtaking
splendor
and the deep
places quiet
and I see all
hideous and

skewed that
darts out disjointed
from this
dark and hard
yet wounded
hurting place
and you paint the
beauty to kiss
away the distortion
clear away
the haze to the
single focal
point of your love
your high-and-lifted-up
your effortless wonder
your being
you’re mine.

AWA 1/26/2012

Do I Make God a Stepford Wife?

2012-01-30T21:40:00.001-08:00

“Have you put a microchip in your god? Do you have a real God? A God Who can cross your will? Contradict you? Or do you have an appliance god? A god who is happy in the kitchen whipping up whatever you want?”

~ Tim Keller, February 6, 2005, Christ : The Final Word

Provocative? Indeed. True? How can it be? I KNOW so much better than to even put one little toe a millimeter in the direction of thinking of this God who spoke everything into existence in such a teeny, tiny way.

But, I must confess that I do. I do imagine Him into something altogether subservient to my whim and wish. I do it with every little puny fist shake when I don’t get my way. I live it with every aching worrying fear that weighs upon my back and in my heart and leaves me crippled in a life I am meant to stand straight, tall and rock solid in the reality of this Infinite God.

In this same sermon where Keller’s text was Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:1-4 he reiterated a teaching he had heard from a female Bible teacher 25 years earlier that he said forever changed him.

It went {something} like this:

“If the distance between the earth and the sun {93 million miles} is the depth of a sheet of paper and the distance between the earth and the closest star is a stack of papers 70 feet high and the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy is a stack of papers 300 miles high and the Milky Way is just one galaxy in the estimated 100’s of billions in the Universe and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, holds ALL of that together by the word of His Power {his pinky finger, essentially}, AM I GOING TO INVITE HIM INTO MY LIFE AS MY PERSONAL ASSISSTANT?!?!?!?!”

I definitely crave the ‘punches in the gut’. That truth that jolts my perspective beyond the gray, colorless and small. And this, this, does just that.

I step outside of myself and start to shake me silly with the wonder and the glory and the infinite compelling Nature of this One who IS WORTHY OF ALL OF ME.

In a million and more subtle ways my view of the One who is…

“the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

~Hebrews 1: 3a

becomes domesticized and I allow my own worldly penchant towards narcissism to drain Him of His mind-blowing Power through my grotesquely warped eyesight.

And so I scream from the mental, the heart and the soul mountaintops, ‘NO!!!!!’ ‘NO MORE!!!!!’ I am done with the dull and the dismal and the shadowlands of the half-truths, the half-dreams, the half-hope, the half-faith, the half-life…It is TIME to live like He is All that He claims to be and that He lives in me and that I live every breath for Him!

By His Grace, May You and I begin to make MUCH of Him with our lives.

Five Minute Friday :: Tender

2012-01-26T21:25:00.001-08:00

Tender is the arms that hold tight

Tender is the lips that kiss

Tender is the eyes that shine up

Tender is the hearts that are ready to mold

Tender is the reverence of a little soul

Tender is the deep knowing

Tender is the embrace of the unbelievably special

Tender is never pretending it’s yours

Tender is holding so gingerly that which breaks so easily

Tender is hallowing the Giver of it all

Tender is the Heart of the Abba Father

Tender is the source of that Love

Tender is the heart that receives

Tender is the one who remembers this

Tender is the place to stay, to live, to remain

Tender is never wanting to let go

Tender is strong because

Tender is never alone

Tender is full

Tender is where all the strength comes

Tender is the armor of love

Tender is resilient to a thousand blows

Tender is the overcomer

Tender is the eye of the beholder

Tender is the one who truly lives

Tender is the one who never regrets

Tender is the humble

Tender is the great

Tender is the willing to sacrifice

Tender remains in the arms of surrender

Tender is the only way

awa 1/27/12

On JoePa, Final Chapters & Scandalous Grace

2012-01-23T12:59:00.001-08:00

For the second week in a row I am posting about an iconic sports figure who is close to my heart. {In case you didn’t know, I come from a sports-lovin’ family and married into one as well:}

But, today, I write very little about the game that JoePa so dearly loved and made his life work.

I write rather about the Final Chapter I hope and pray will be written over his life and the one that I cling to with all of the weary, the weighed down, the wanting-to-do-right-in-a-world-gone-wrong and who will undoubtedly find themselves powerless to cure, understand or even protect others from the depravity and evil that yet remain.

From a human standpoint, or perhaps because I am from a state where many are loyal to Penn State, where JoePa lived most of his life, I believe that his legacy will shine even though his last days as head coach were terribly marred.

But it is not the last chapter that any human admirer would write that I want to lift up here.

It is rather, the one that the God who sees and redeems and has the final say over ALL THINGS writes for JoePa and for every person who has ever lived.

It is one of Scandalous Grace, so outlandish to lavish on but one of the poor and defiled who bear His image let alone the millions even billions throughout time.

It is the Same One who authors the life of Abraham. A man who put his wife in grave danger of abuse by denying that she was his wife to protect himself TWICE and thus handing her over to heathen kings. Yet he is hallowed forever as the forefather of faith to the blessing of myriad of nations and people.

It is the Same One who authors the life of David. A man whose victory over the great giant Goliath set him on the path to rule as a righteous king over Israel. But also one who slept with another man’s wife and murdered her husband so that he could have her all to himself. Yet his legacy is one of a ‘man after God’s own heart.’

It is the Same One who authors the life of Peter. A man who enjoyed an intimate inner circle relationship with the Savior of the World. Who boldly proclaimed that he would die for this Savior even before His Savior had died for him! Then in an hour of weakness he denies the One he’s sworn to die for, not once, or twice, but THREE TIMES. Yet it is his restoration and the renewed calling from Jesus that he be a shepherd to fledgling lambs, Christ’s first followers, that has the final say.

It is the Same One who authors the final chapters not only of the thief on the cross but of many death row inmates who in truly repenting have an Eternal Chapter grander than the ones written in time and space over the lives of the most heroic men and women.

It is outrageous to believe that the Grace of the Author of All Time extends to such as these.

And yet, it is no more outrageous to believe that that Grace extends to you and me.

We are each one made in His image bearing the Truth of His character in the deep places and yet we are born to the race of Adam. The race which has committed heinous acts in massacres and rapes and holocausts and gulags and all that mars every relationship where love is withheld and hatred flourishes in a lack of forgiveness, a resentment and a bitterness that shuts out the light.

And so in this light it is an easy yet full hope to trust in that Same One to write the last Eternal Chapter of JoePa’s life. A man who sought to lead and guide young men into maturity and faithfulness in all of life through the avenue of football and the commitment to the Institution it represented. A man who garnered 409 wins in the battlefield of the gridiron. Yet, a man who either through trusting too much, possessing a naivety to the depths of depravity one close to him could sink, maintaining a fierce full-out commitment to the nuts and bolts of the game he loved, maybe too much, or perhaps a combination of these underscored by the simple reality of being human, was unable to stop the evil that lurked.

But that evil can never have final say for the receivers of this Scandalous Grace. Its power triumphs, sees deepest trust where it lies and embraces all who stand upon THAT truth for ALL TIME with a ‘well done thou good and faithful servant’ as they enter their Forever Rest and so live in the Glories of this One Great Love :: The Eternally Perfect Final Chapter.

Five Minute Friday :: Vivid

2012-01-19T22:12:00.001-08:00

Go:

There’s one thing I’ve been on the hunt for…the lens of a vivid faith.

I’ve been walking the motions and doing the things to surrender this one life for His kingdom…along with my partner & beloved and our two little kids.

But I’ve been wandering a bit in this field of calling, in this journey of faith and it’s been a pretty vivid oxymoron.

The living defining faith and yet faith not defining the living?

He showed me this when I was just reading Hebrews 11 and the hall of fame of faith.

How we wander as Abraham.

How we look to that CITY like Moses ‘whose builder and maker is God.’

How we do not cling to what is but all that is promised…

How we may one day be called to suffer greatly for that faith we cling to with everything, that to lose would be to lose everything.

And yet, I’m crying for the VIVID. I’m crying for the colors of Him. That azure of peace that flows rivers and oceans and bleeds in skies. And that crimson of love that falls from the skies and fills all of the things and people so that they are dripping. That brilliant sunshine yellow that shines over this happy journey where there is a Lamb and a Father who is all the Glory Forever…the Eternal Son and Sun.

And though vivid does not yet fill this journey shaped by faith, I cling to the promise that One Day it will, until then, I hunt and refuse to be satisfied…

Stop.

I’m loving, loving LOVING this song…the tears were just brimming a tiny bit for what I felt was in me when we sang it last Sunday…trusting and praying, you sing with me for the truth and often more the desire for this truth:

On Tim Tebow, Hits & Followers and Living in the Light

2012-01-17T11:38:00.001-08:00

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
~Ephesians 5:14-16

I had a pretty tough week last week. And the hardest thing about it is that my vision was and is murky, dull, clouded, even dark.

When I look at how I am living, I see this woman who is great fathoms less than the fullness of grace upon grace that comes with having the light of the world at home IN ME…that fullest life that makes ‘best use of the time’.

I have felt chained and bound and yearn to be free.

You may be thinking I am being too hard on myself. I know all of the reasons why this season of great transition is hard, but I have also been blessed with the light, a clear vision, of the ways in which He wants to live in and through me. So, I speak the truth of where I’m struggling to Praise God for how He’s made me unsatisfied with lesser things. a lesser life.

And Tim Tebow is not randomly in the title to draw more hits on this blog.I read his book, Through My Eyes, last week. And I thank God for him and his testimony.

As I read through his life story, so many inspiring things surfaced. His birth was a medical miracle and through an amazing network of family support and coming to know Christ at an early age he has sought to thank God with his life. Seizing the days and each opportunity to make the most, not of himself, but, of God, His Love, Grace and Salvation.

A major factor in his not entering the NFL draft after his junior year in college was the huge platform that college football had given him. After the 2009 BCS Championship Game when he led the Florida Gators to victory, there were 94 million hits on Google for John 3:16 which he had worn on his eye black during that game.

By seeking to live fully for God in the midst of the strongest vortex of temptation to live for the world, he brings to light why God is pleased to lift up his life & testimony so that 94 million hits would be drawn to a verse that so clearly shares the Good News and has given him 1,029,292 twitter followers {as of 10:35 PM 11-16-12}. A gigantic amount of Google hits and followers for one great purpose of leading them to Jesus.

Our pastor summed it up well when he talked about the chains of living like our performance somehow stokes the fire of God’s love. We live bound to the darkness, the murky gray of a world that rises and falls on the praise or criticism of others. And if you are in this blogging and social media world, how often do we ride the waves of followers, comments, hits?

And Tim Tebow faces more media criticism than just about anyone and each word goes viral by the millions in seconds. Yet, by choosing the lens of God’s Great Love for him, he focuses on what really matters and is eternal and incorruptible and he lives FREE.

I don’t write about Tim Tebow to praise him, but to thank God for how he and so many through the halls of history bear witness to that One True Light.

And I pluck out these words on this blog home to mostly remind myself of that light. The dark and the haze are for the sleepy and in these days I know that the fight is a real. so real and so close. And I hear these words from Paul to the Ephesians. to the would-be faithful throughout time. to me. And by His Grace I will arise and awake into the days ahead and plans prepared before time for that one great purpose of glorifying HIM with my life!

{p.s. I guest posted yesterday at a great blog {and facebook} community for wives in ministry. January’s theme is ‘Beginnings’ and for me ‘The Beginning is Simply…Grace.’ It is an inter-cultural community and was an honor to post there on MLK Jr. Day:} Hop over and especially join the community or site if you are a wife navigating ministry and/or invite others too!}

This song stirs a quiet sure hope.

Five Minute Friday :: Awake

2012-01-12T22:06:00.001-08:00

Go:

On days and weeks and moments like this AWAKE is but a yearning.

I know I have lived little awake these days but I KNOW that I want to live so much more so.

AWAKE to them, those little wonders all full of everything beautiful

And yes, the funny, messy, not-so-beautiful too.

Their wonder and joy and their innocence and all that wants to harness their world and plunge full-force and awake into each day.

With smiles and jumps and cries for more and better…this is really our naked humanity laid bare, isn’t it?

Awake is what we are when there is nothing that can yet put us to sleep. When all is full of wonder and newness and the ‘no’s’ and ‘can’t’s’ and ‘shouldn’t’s’ haven’t quite been understood.

Awake to how fun is around the stairs and the hall and mommy plays crocodile and we laugh and run.

Awake to tender touch and holding and loving because I am there, their only mama, awake and present.

Awake to tears I cry today when I find out months later that a beloved supporter is in Heaven. Awake enough for little two year-old sympathy to wield tears and cry with a hurting mama and ask me about my sadness multiple other times.

Awake to the reality of the image-bearers that they meet each day and to the possibility always of community, relationship and JOY.

Awake as them, to be born again into the innocence and wonder, that is my yearning.

{Alarm sounding…in more ways than one;}

a faith to move mountains :: ‘oh God, I believe, help my unbelief!’

2012-01-11T11:45:00.001-08:00

It is a year where I have chosen to dwell upon secure~ness {and make up words, apparently;}. And yet this year also meets me at the cusp of a wanting, a needing of a faith that would break the final places of that rock foundation to that mountain that we need to see moved so that we can step fully into our calling.

And He used a precious friend who, through her own journey, reveals glaringly that I live with far too little faith. It is dull at best and I have most definitely been settling for less.

I don’t know if I have said it here before, but regardless, it must be said again. Just because we are uprooting our lives, have left a life we love while putting an ocean between us and home to bear witness to the Light in a dark place, it DOES NOT MEAN that inside we live radically full of faith or are brimming with the Life that escapes unbounded for the adventure.

It does, however, mean that we can see when all is lackluster and ho-hum because this journey is designed to be anything but that.

I have no prescription to fill to miraculously provide me {or you} with what is lacking. There is no step-by-step plan to stoke the fire within.

But for each of us it is but that teeny tiny mustard seed of faith.

Waiting to be planted anew today.

A Listening and yearning for the stirring to rise above the din of what is and in the desperation a gasping prayer for a glimpse of Glory. His Beauty to touch and compel our faint spirits beyond the innumerable voices that speak the lies and the inertia of a cynical world bound to keep us where we are.

If you are like me, many times, this itsy bitsy seed is a spark of vision, of light, that seems to flicker off and on. But I remember with you that we are made for the light, for eternity, for a Great Plan beyond imagining that has been prepared for us. And I believe with you and we hunt for that pearl of Great Price, that smallest seed of faith and together we plant it with trembling hands and soul deep cries lifted to the One who brings all to pass and creates every particle of life—physical, emotional, spiritual—LIFE.

And we wait expectantly for mighty trees to grow that reach limbs high and bear witness to His Glory and yes, for mountains to move and plain places to be revealed as the impossible becomes fully possible.

Immediately the father of the child cried outand said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

~Mark 9:24

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
~Matthew 17:19-20

{dwell} secure in 2012

2012-01-09T07:26:00.001-08:00

dwell

[dwel]
verb (used without object)
1. to live or stay as a permanent resident; reside.
2. to live or continue in a given condition or state: to dwell in happiness.
3. to linger over, emphasize, or ponder in thought, speech, or writing (often followed by on or upon ): to dwell on a particular point in an argument.
se·cure (s-kyr)
adj. se·cur·er, se·cur·est
1. Free from danger or attack: a secure fortress.
2. Free from risk of loss; safe:
3. Free from the risk of being intercepted or listened to by unauthorized persons:
4. Free from fear, anxiety, or doubt.
5. a. Not likely to fail or give way; stable: a secure stepladder.
b. Firmly fastened: a secure lock.
6. Reliable; dependable: secure investments.
7. Assured; certain:
____________________________________________________________________________________________

My word(s) for 2012 is {dwell} secure. At first, it was simply secure. But as I was walking the other day, and praying about how to live in these days, the word ‘dwell’ so clearly came to mind.
Last year, my word was Home. And it was an amazing year of learning and clinging to the vision of Home that He gives. Home is all about knowing whose I am and looking to all that is eternal with His eyes to see it the whole journey through.
And so this year, with the biggest displacement yet to come in the form of an overseas move and adjustment of our whole family to this, secure is how I will dwell in the Home he has for me.
I love that ‘dwell’ is like living, but there is more of a centered understanding of what that living is. It can even be defined as ‘living or continuing in a given condition or state.’ It is not a living that is jumbled or hurried or BUSY, but whole and full and blessedly simple.
And secure, well, in this worry-racked world of all that teeters and totters and the fickle nature of opinion and mood, there is nothing quite so shocking as claiming an unshakable security. But we know that in Christ this IS what we possess and out of this we are called to live.
We have an incorruptible inheritance that is ours forever with Him. And the best that we can know in this life is to dwell deeply in the reality of that promise and depth of commitment that comes unwavering and sure from Him.
For my part, I know what the huge displacement that is coming will do to any false security or pretension of who I really am. Every confidence in myself, my abilities, my understanding is going to be stripped away and I will be left naked and raw and wondering who I am or if I have anything to offer the world.
So, to dwell secure in the midst of that will ONLY be possible through a vision of myself that is wholly His yet freely given as I claim every truth of who He says I am:

“The beloved of the LORD dwells in safety. {dwells secure}
The High Godsurrounds him all day long,
and dwells between his shoulders.”

~Deuteronomy 33:12

“He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”

~Isaiah 40:11

A beloved lamb tended by a Great Shepherd who holds me close to His heart ALWAYS…come what may this is where I dwell always and forever. There is NO WHERE that could be more secure than here.

By His Grace, this year, may I {and you} learn to dwell all the more securely in Him and His abiding, sustaining truth that we might be healed and changed and overflow that sweetness and goodness to everyone we meet.

Thank you Lord:

That in You I am secure far beyond what ANYTHING ELSE can offer
That You call always for me to dwell in this security
That You promise to work this in me as I cling to You, Your truth
You are enough to rid me of all anxiety, worry, doubt, fear
For family

These days of precious time before we move
Great talks and time with my mother-in-love
Sons and buddies and brothers who are amazing daddies
Experiencing a great win together!
Son who asks a zillion questions
Daughter who wears bright pink happy shoes even over footy sleepers

For a friend who loves You so much and who is hurting so
For all that it is to love others in the good and bad
For a twin sister who now reads and loves Ann too & I think will start counting gifts too!
For how my beloved loves me in the good, bad and especially ugly
For always new friends made in this journey we are on
For chances to hear stories from so many as we enter homes and listen
For all that You continually remind of
and how You are ALWAYS working
For every promise Yes and Amen in Christ!
For all that is beautiful now, if I have but eyes to see and the Indestructible Beauty that is to forever come!

#1706-1727

Five Minute Friday : Roar

2012-01-05T22:07:00.001-08:00

photo source

Go:

All your breakers, they wash over me.

Deep is calling unto deep

and the deep is a roar

and it is in me.

it rages and pounds the air

and flails the arms

and screams the cries

and longs for another world.

and the roar of my

puny self

is met with the roar of YOU.

it is a loving way to

come to me for

in YOUR ROAR

is a deafening power that

is made full only

by the great Reality YOU ARE.

And in Your Roar

are all of history’s questions

and the millennia's doubts

and the striving races of

the masses

they are silenced for

You, when you ROAR

there is but one thing to know

and that is that there

is NONE like you. And

to take you for the fullness of

Your Voice or not to take

you at all and so YOUR

ROAR is a thousand and more

choruses and they are in

harmony and on key

and they absorb all of the

off notes of time and

all of the chaos of a

billion voices claiming

their own eternity

only to finally all of us

be stilled by what can only

be Your Roar. Your Waters.

Your Voice in all of this

raging, spinning, wobbling

yet permeated by Your ROAR

world.

AWA 1-6-12

On Pilgrim’s Progress, Fanning Flames and Eyes Fixed

2012-01-04T06:12:00.001-08:00

Pilgrim’s Progress, the classic work printed in 200 languages, written by John Bunyan and published in 1678 is probably the favorite book, next to the Bible, of my father. We had the children’s version when I was a little girl and it was read to me before I could read it myself. My Dad and my husband went through it together soon after we got together and my Dad has used it in numerous Sunday School classes of all ages.

Tried and true. A place to go when you need perspective, grounding and a great place to be at the start of a new year.

So, I was delighted when the visiting minister, named Jared, like my husband {I have never met a Jared I didn’t like:} referred to the classic allegory in his sermon on New Year’s Day. My husband and I turned to each other and smiled.

Jared, the pastor, had been reading the book to his children and referenced a part that I didn’t immediately remember. Leading me to mention right then to my Jared that I NEEDED to get it into my new Christmas-present Kindle. And as I re-focused, capturing me all the more as the reference was all about fanning flames.

It is in the house of ‘the Interpreter’ which occurs early in the story. It is the scene of a fire burning against a wall and one continually throwing water on it. BUT the fire still blazes higher and hotter. Here is the interpretation:

“The fire is the work of God’s grace in the heart. The person throwing water on it is the devil. Still, you see, the fire burns brighter. Come around the wall here and you will see why. (On the other side of the wall was a person secretly pouring oil in the fire.) This shows why it is hard for the tempted to understand how God’s grace is maintained in the soul. This is the way Christ continues to supply grace in the soul of the believer through all of the cold showers of the world and temptations of the devil.”

And Jared {the pastor} emphasized Christ IS THE ONE pouring oil onto the fire of our hearts. And as the sermon concluded our Pastor, Jeremy, spoke further into the heart of Christ quoting a favorite of mine:

“Consequently, {Jesus, the Great High Priest} is able to save to the uttermostthose who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

~Hebrews 7:25 {emphasis added}

The whole focus of this wonderful sermon was the sure promise of He who calls.

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”

~I Thessalonians 5:23-24 {emphasis added}

Our entire destiny rests on His work and that is sure. Surer than sun rising and setting and planets orbiting and stars shining and ALL of the galaxies’ orchestrated motions. And that commands our vision and propels our gaze at the beginning of a year and at every righting step.

The Risen One who LIVES on High to make intercession fanning the flame of my heart and yours. Such glory and freedom and though I could name a million character deficiencies and specific improvements I’d like to enact as resolutions, this one will do:

To fan the flame right here with you this year as we purpose to see more and more that it is all Him. His surety bound in His full nature and work, promising He knows who we are becoming and will forever be.

{p.s. my word for the year is…SECURE. I’ll be posting more on it soon!}

Praise You God who holds all surety, security:

For a new year promising to have You continually fanning the flame
For a new day 366 {1 extra} times to pick up the truth again—that it ALL rests on YOU
For chances to be reminded of classics and images that stick
For all that is coming together in Your Perfect Timing
For the little ones:

Baby Girl constantly reminding that she is indeed ‘two’;}
Buddy Boy still jumping up and down whenever excited about something
For sensitive hearts in both to reprimands and correction
For shining eyes that brim wonder and ever engage
For new Bibles and playing ‘bible study’ and ‘church’
For delight held deep within and brimming over in the moments
For the lavish grace of being their mama

For {finally} finishing 400 hand-written Christmas cards
For so close to the end and knowing we WILL move soon
For window shopping flats in Budapest on-line
For Grace as close and constant as I have ever known it and a peace that is pure gold
For His surety & promise in all : THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

#1689-1705

Five Minute Friday :: Open

2011-12-30T12:51:00.001-08:00

Open ::

When I think of opening myself, opening my heart, opening my soul, opening the possibilities within and without and opening the dreams and hopes too easy to bury…

I think of birth.

I think of what it is to open wide the unknown and to find the only way to experience new life. If all remains closed and there is no room to grow then we become dead in little ways that spread a thousand places.

But in the opening we experience new life. We open most the deep and vulnerable. the hurt and raw. the weak and weary. and we open not knowing what it will bring and knowing that there is no guarantee of being protected from…anything.

But we also know that it is either open or shrivel up and keep what’s ours protecting it from what it cannot be protected from anyway and losing it most likely because it, because they all, want to live.

So we open ourselves and we open the journey of our kids to a faithful God and give Him free reign over us all. It is only our heart that opens for He already holds it all, but when WE open we open our eyes to His strength and vision apportioned for all of our needs.

Open is what we long for in every moment of fear and doubt because it was a long time ago that we realized we didn’t want to live any other way.

So, here we go!

Thoughts on Home :: Anchoring the Unknown {part 3~the future}

2011-12-26T21:50:00.001-08:00

If I had written this post a week ago it would have held more certainty and the coming together of this journey with Home in 2011.

But, today, right here, right now, there’s more of the unknown that is hanging around this heart and soul and its mirrored right through a thousand parts of me.

There’s the unknown of the place, I mean that physical space, that I will call ‘home’ a year from now. We’ve been praying for a while for the right place to make our new home when we move overseas. I’ve prayed for a place that we can stay for a while {I mean, please, at least 2 years, but hopefully 10!} mostly for the sake of my dear little ones who want to take that deep breath with us. Could they have a string of Christmases in the same physical place?

But I do not know how that prayer will be answered.

I’ve prayed for all of the relationships that will enter our lives. For the teachers, classmates, language tutors, flower, fruit & vegetable stand owners, neighbors, friends and well, many more that dot a city. And while we have some amazing friends already there, there are so many empty spaces yet to be filled.

And there’s the unknown that is cutting through me most deeply. How will those we leave behind be a year and more from now? There are many things that encourage and there are the things that have just surfaced in the last few days that have broken this heart of mine to a degree that I cannot remember since the death of my mom. In some ways, even more so…

And I do not know what journey those I deeply love will face. And though my heart be with them and the prayers I pray be given for them, I will be so limited an ocean away. And this is the unknown that threatens to undermine every truth embraced about Home.

I would have scripted a coming together of some very big pieces in my family that would send me off graced with a great peace. But, that is not what He who holds it all has chosen to give.

And as I think about this journey Home that has defined this year, I can only surrender what aches. The shouting reality of the exiles we are is what meets me today. The pain of displacement, disunity, depravity touching us all has struck a chord so deep within and all I can do is let go of my understanding, controlling, fixing…

The Home that anchors my future is made of promises. As I seek to teach my son, I know a promise is something that is yet to be, but it is special because we trust in the One who promises.

And so I round out this series on Home in the place my God has designed for me. The pain that is shooting through allows all that questions to rise right up and, as with anything that is true, defines itself as the light piercing the dark.

Emmanuel. God with us. He sees the tears that bear the hope of a Savior and so I’m drawn into Him all the more for the pain of exile and the sure promise He.is.with.me. Here. He wraps up all of the angst with the ever-vision of Him as the One who never changes always holding the full promise of Home. And every place that lies in the shadow of the unknown draws in the full air of Him and feels the tingling strength of this Living Anchor.

{I’m rounding out 2011 with a weekly series:: Thoughts on Home. Home was my word for 2011 and the choice was full of irony and searching. I am sharing that story here along with the priceless lessons I have gained. Go here to read the introduction to the series and here to read Part 1 ~ the Past and here to read Part 2~the Present}

Thoughts on Home :: How the Pieces Become Whole {part 2~the present}

2011-12-19T22:29:00.001-08:00

And so it is that home finds me now. As I walk in these days where all that is static and mine in the material is being released and yet the vision beckons. What will you do with me now? I hear her say in the gentle voice of a friend with a touch of mirth letting in on a surprise that’s coming.

And this present journey has been just that. A secret kept from she who fully plants her heart in a home that can be touched and tasted and decorated and dusted, yet revealed to those who are willing to dream beyond what is and look to what comes on the other side.

And that, my friends, is worth every bit of a long and tiring journey.

You see, the secret is that all that we ever love of home is truly never lost. The pieces of my life, my home, form the deepest fibers of my being. They have borne the grief of losing all that I thought they were and have shown themselves made of the eternal.

Nearly ten years ago, when my mother went Home to Jesus, I lost every physical sense of home that I had depended upon for so long. I spent time running away from what I misjudged it to be only to find in the end, that it was unbearable to lose such a mother, such a home, such a place of forming and belonging that can never be re-created in its constant, abiding, extending-from-the- womb, carrying-so-the-woman-be-formed-in-me love.

And as I have grieved the fragments of memory and the pieces so far from whole that remain in my four siblings and father and me, I have learned what Home is.

By stopping the running when it hurts the most to stay, I have come to know what I could not know anywhere else. By allowing the questions and the angst and the sadness of what is gone to reach the deep places, I have learned a coming Home to the only Love that is really present in all of our moments.

And I have learned to know the love of the Abba Father God in a way that makes the eternal touches of my mother’s love more present than they have ever been. It is a mystery given to those who grieve in hope. It is an acceptance of the in-part that guides our longing to be fully known. And it is a living with some part of us here in time and space and another that begs for and is met with glimpses of eternity.

And when the Divine sieve reveals the true pieces of home, it is how those fragments that remain become a whole. Bound by the mortar of the in-between, we allow the Spirit to make us whole through the realities of the here and now transfixed by the heavenly joys to come, and we rise resilient, full of the secret joy of Home.

So when I look at the sunset over this ridge where just a few miles north lies my mother’s grave, I see not what is gone, but what I possess within of a Love that defines all that I am. A love that honors that mother and a love that has the strength to come home still and be present with what I’ve lost even as I am formed by the hope of all I have yet to find.

Five Minute Friday :: Connected

2011-12-16T06:37:00.001-08:00

Go ::

Like the string of lights around a tree, so we are in Him.

Connected as the light of the world flows through us.

But I think about the lights we would have growing up and when one light went out the whole strand didn’t work right anymore.

Sometimes it is this way with us too?

Sometimes when my light goes out, I have a hard time seeing anyone else’s light because it is hard to see the light when you are not living in it.

But, the truth is that the true light which enlightens everything has come into the world and is preparing us and this world to come back again.

And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

And it is in this hope that we connect as this string of lights around the tree of Calvary.

And it is in this promise that we stretch the world over to light it for Him. because of Him. and that all might know Him.

And when we stretch and when our string of lights becomes this living thing with no limit in length, then there is no way to measure how much of this world can be changed.

The darkness is not any darker than when He came, for its Source is the same.

But the light is not any different either and so as you believe and I believe in He who is what He says He is we join together to light up one another into a flame that nothing can put out.

Stop.

clarifying advent

2011-12-14T19:34:00.001-08:00

ad·vent n.

1. The coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important…

Pursuing the diamond in the ruff, the needle in the haystack, the pearl of great price.

Learning what it is to seek first the Kingdom when it is upside down and covered in the gray.

Stilling, quieting, deepening when all is frenzy-filled and hustle and bustle and biggest busy.

But can the pursuing and the seeking co-exist with the still and the quiet?

Can His coming be met with both the inner life and the outer fulfillment?

Can I live so shockingly counter-cultural that a bright stream of clarity guides?

_______________________________________

I know so little of Advent. It is a newer practice for me and I am a sojourning woman in great need of this stable heartbeat of Grace.

The drum, drum, drum of the Little Drummer boy his story told in Veggie Tale style as I snuggle wet-head toddlers in footie sleepers points me to His coming.

The lights on houses all simple and white beam soft reminders within.

The wrapping paper tree in our makeshift home of transition with its felt Jesse Tree Ornaments and string of lights put up with duct tape that keep falling down and a four year-old who starts to see a little and a two year-old who draws flowers as we read…it all focuses us in its imperfect yet true.

And the living, the living, the living. The learning together to say ‘yes’ to Him though the way be rough and long and I want to cry inside for all that I long to see but is yet to come and the knowing, oh, the knowing that this is the way to Advent.

His coming in the obscure and improbable and absurd. His coming in all that defies the conventional. His coming in the weak and helpless. His coming in the dark with a singular light to guide. His coming is my longing and this Advent clarifies the pearl, the kingdom, the quiet for it finds us in the living as though His coming is everything.

Thoughts on Home :: Releasing the Dark, Embracing the Light {part 1~the past}

2011-12-11T20:46:00.001-08:00

A steeple, a church, a house that is no more and a glorious sunset.

This picture holds a thousand words and more.

The steeple is a fairly new and beautiful addition to this church. I know because this church is the one that my family attended during all of my growing up years. Before I went to college, it was the only church that I really knew for its ins and outs of living.

The left of the picture, where the bare trees are, is the space where the house we lived in as a family for 10 years used to be. It is no more. It was torn down earlier this year.

And the sunset, ah that sunset. It is the gift of those years. When things were hard and days stretched too close to hopeless for those we loved, my sisters and I would cross the driveway of the church and its front lawn to a slope on just the other side and we would sit and sing praises to God and marvel at the glory of Him and what He always paints. Day in and day out. Never ceasing.

And this whole mix represents a big chunk of ‘home’ for me. The church, as any, it was not perfect and at times I was angry because of all of the turmoil that surrounded it in my family.

My father felt obligated and ‘indebted’ because the church allowed us to live in this house for minimal rent after we left our farm just 2 miles down the road. We were broke and in great debt and truly, it was this home or???

My mother was broken down just like the house and living in the church’s place, well, it was her last choice. The situation {and the house} deteriorated over the years and my mom just stopped going to church. More than being about the church, it was about a sadness, a cloud that covered my family, especially my parents, for some long dark years.

When we had to leave our farm, my father lost his life-long dream, my mother lost all of the blood, sweat & tears she had poured into helping him fulfill that dream and my four siblings and I {along with our parents} lost this home where we all labored and loved to build our life together.

We gained all of the outward signs of failure. Debt. Sickness. Depression. and a Run-down house. We were each broken in so many ways.

For a while, I wore a pretty significant chip on my shoulder. A splintering wood block of shame and resentment and pride. In my eyes, we were the poorest of all of my friends and classmates, but nobody knew. Our hard financial times were a secret to many and my parents were too proud to ask for help and too grief-ridden to know how to make any of this mess better.

I can say now, though, that it takes some work to remember these days, these years, this stretch of time filled with so much pain.

How is that?

Because I’ve learned to let go of all of it.

I have released the hard and painful into the hands of He who writes my story. My parents’ story. My entire family’s story. In relinquishing the rights to what was dark, I have received it all back in the form of light and new life. There is not a thing that happens that cannot be redeemed. I can say from deep places once given to shame and fear that I believe this, oh yes, I do.

And so, what of home? Just like in the picture it is not the broken down house that represents broken lives, encased and secret, that can be seen. No. That home is gone and with it, for me, all that will not last forever about that home. About home itself.

Home is rather like what can be seen. The steeple and the sunset. It is in the steeple that exalts the cross and a Savior who absorbed the darkness of all time and now sits at the right hand of God on High. The Glory is his because my story is His. And the sunset, yes, the sunset. For all of those years it sealed the days in promise. Though there was great sadness He was daily painting the reminders of all that He gives, namely, His matchless Beauty, to heal the world. to heal me. to draw me wholly to His bosom that allows me to see clearly what or who Home, enduring and sure, truly is.

Thank You God of My Story ::

For the chance to remember
For the extra time here at ‘home’ to do that
For the hard, dark years
For the failures and all they brought
For a home, though broken down, it was a roof and over our heads
That it is no more and my mother is in her Perfect Home Forever
That You never, ever leave or forsake
For the sunset glory that was as beautiful a spot as I’ve ever had
For a steeple and its cross raised high to You
For these days and staying longer here…waiting and living
- That in the waiting we have gotten to be with our two nephews and niece
- For how I am ‘Mama Abby’ or ‘Mommy Abby’ or ‘Auntie Mommy’ because these are my twin’s kids
- For how sweet niece loves that I sound like and remind so of her mama
- For the chance their mommy and daddy have to be away together
- For little O and his one-of-a-kind brain…so much fun and so many laughs!
- For being mistaken SO many times for my twin at her son’s school and her church…it is still so funny…
- For singing Christmas carols together
- For packing up 5 kids 6 and younger in a van…
- For love, cousin love, and auntie/uncle love and just family love!
For getting closer to going {85%!} …for the waiting that is full of this season of Advent
For trusting You more and more…You will never disappoint
For lessons weaving deep and no time wasted
For the journey always leading to the BEST…coming, yet to come!!!

#1665-1688

Five Minute Friday :: Color

2011-12-08T21:38:00.001-08:00

Go::

And it is You, always you, the one Who paints the story.

I see it in the glistening eyes of a son whose heart is in my hands and how I want to wrap it in a warm red and gold and fullest of all beauty bright, resilient and forever.

I see it in the sunshine smile and the twinkling bright, clear eyes of my baby girl. And how I want to ride that life within her onto brilliant blue plains of sky and over all of the rainbows that promise she is of a generation blessed and she is His.

I see it in the love shining eternal and so all of the blood of Him who covers in grace from the eyes, the loving eyes, of my beloved. my life partner. He pierces me with the kindest, coolest, clearest blue of love that is as deep as the oceans vastness and into me it sinks to heal a thousand raging fires in me.

And I see it through them all in the Grace which paints in sunrises of the glorious hues rising to high gold and brightest yellow and setting to the purple of royalty to crown each day with Your faithfulness…

And I see it and I see it and though the rain comes in its gray dullness it could never conceal what lies below…the eternal Roy G Biv or Your undying vibrance.

Stop::

Nourished by the Gospel {at Jen’s Place Today}

2011-12-08T05:38:00.001-08:00

Today I have the great privilege of sharing over at my friend Jen’s place, Finding Heaven. She is doing a Thursday series on nourishment and is asking others to share about how they are nourished.

For me, that answer is simple :: By drinking in the truth of the Gospel, the good news, for every bit of me and all of my moment’s and days.

Join me at Jen’s? and let’s drink together ‘the Simple, Sweet and Pure Drink’.

Thoughts on Home :: A Reflective Look at 2011 {an introduction}

2011-12-05T22:33:00.001-08:00

Home. That is my word for 2011. For those of you who have followed our story, you know that I picked it because I needed to learn what ‘home’ was outside of a settled physical place because well, I would not have one for the majority of the year.

I remember picking this word and just looking at this great beyond of transition that was so overwhelming I would wake up in the mornings or after an afternoon nap and just say, ‘is this really happening?’

The year began with the preliminary stages of packing up our house in Florida. That quickly escalated into our transition out of life and ministry in Orlando and into eating breathing packing or travelling to raise support or me packing and my husband travelling and many friends helping!

Then came that night in early June when we said goodbye to the home and life that had been the only one our kids had known or we had known as a family. We packed the things we wanted to keep and send overseas into a truck where they were then transported to Newark, NJ and are in storage until we know when we will be in Hungary can send them!

Next, we travelled with our van full of the rest of our worldly possessions and headed across the country to Colorado for our overseas training. We had a wonderful temporary home there and an even more amazing community but it went so quickly and soon we were packing up again.

We took a week and travelled back to our home in Pennsylvania stopping in Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio and Western Pennsylvania before we rolled into our hometown north of Philadelphia. We moved in with some friends and that was our ‘housing plan’ hoping that we would soon be moving overseas.

However, in the perfect timing of God we are at four months and counting here in PA. We moved three times in two months or five times in four months and I felt like ALL of my energy was spent simply trying to stay sane;}

But, I am learning that there has been oh, so much more! And it really does center around what Home really is and how I have been changed through meditating on this word in a year like this.

I am going to spend the Tuesdays in December reflecting on what I have learned about Home. And I am going to invite you into some scenes of my life, my story, through pictures I took during what has become one of the most stable things in my life :: a daily walk.

As I snapped the pictures, I was amazed that this place so close to the physical homes I grew up in provided a set of images that tell my story so well.

For example, the rustic barn picture above reminds me of where my story began, on a farm, a dairy farm, to be exact.

I won’t give away the ending, but I will tell you that I began these months at ‘home’ lamenting that none of my family lives here and really dreading being in a place that seemed to hold so little of home anymore.

However, in that grief of what I’ve lost, of what I have kept losing in this fragmented year of transition with more to come, I’ve found the elements of home that can never be taken away.

I hope you will join me in this series and perhaps reflect yourself on this word ‘home’ that is so central to all of our lives.

Five Minute Friday :: Tired…

2011-12-01T21:38:00.001-08:00

Go ::

Aren’t we all just…tired? It is a madly spinning planet and all of the currents of this world woosh over us and sweep us in, too, too much.

I know it is true for me.

I am tired. Tired of proving to everyone that I imagine is asking {but isn’t it just that intense self-critic?} that I am a good, mom, wife, missionary, writer, friend, sister, daughter…

oh my, could I go on for the list?!

And then I stop in crystal clear instants and I remember that this is the current of this spinning, yet oh-so-fading world. Not the opinion of any who are mortal and who live for what is seen will ever matter or stick of bear the weight of all that I am made for.

I rest again, then, full in the air of Him, of eternity. He wraps me up in all completed and all I need is but to worship Him. All I need is but to rest in His fullness and that I am His beloved daughter like I sing over my own every night and nap when I put her to sleep. consecrated. princess. beloved.

And there is no tired where eagle’s wings are mounted and I rise above the din of what is oh so shrouded and the vapor of here and I rise above the stars to the heart of the One who reaches through the cosmos and reminds of a completed work and a victory forever…

and then, no, I am not tired, I am alive and ready to live.

Stop

I am loving this WHOLE album by Sovereign Grace Music, ‘Risen’…but with this post and Lisa-Jo’s post, thought of this song, ‘Hail the Day’ especially the beginning of the second verse ::

“Though He dwells beyond the stars

His Redeemed are on His heart

Even now He intercedes

Jesus cares for all our needs”

Ahhhh…yes, He does!

vintage story

2011-11-29T20:41:00.001-08:00

When we brush the days clear

and colors fade to vintage,

faces smile up and chubby cheeks jiggle

the rhythm of song,

And we remember all that paints our story.

The color of JOY is classic rose

reaching through the thorns

And happy hues are bright

rainbow eyes that glimmer for the love.

Secret places become the ones

no one can take away

They hug us tight in tender ways

that weave through every thread of time.

And when the fruit is picked anew

there is a freedom born

to open wide hearts made ready

for the ever-morn.

awa 11~29~2011

wrecked and broken, I come

2011-11-28T07:01:00.001-08:00

I come to the well, where the woman met him.

Wrecked and broken in a thousand and more ways.

I come with nothing because my all is staked on Him.

I hunger for one look into His eyes, that well of love bearing life eternal.

I come with all of the shattered pieces because it is only with the wounded hands, the cuts of shame and guilt and doubt and pain that I look to His wounded hands and feet and side and flagellated body.

And though as wrecked and broken I have come repeatedly before, it remains the only way.

If this journey we are walking can be highlighted supremely by any work happening in me, it is the knowing so deep of all that shatters and falls and fails :: the can-not-make-it-me.

And as I draw the ragged breath and hold my hardly beating heart in these fragile hands to Him, I learn that one great thing that lies deepest in the place of the well.

I would never see Him face-to-face and dip my shaking self deep into His drink if I came all whole and put together and holding all things close and well and living up to the expectations long set mostly by the haunting imaginary me.

And yet I know I try, oh how I try, try, try to put on the pretty bow and wear the fullest smile and be the BEST in everything to present this finest dressed one to Him, here, at the well.

But I hit a wall of plexi-glass and there He is and I want to be with Him. But this glass, a mile-high is that dim reflection of who I think I should be and it grows thicker and taller with each look I take at who I believe is the one good enough to honor this man from Galilee.

Yet He reminds that my wrecked and broken is what honors Him.

He comes to me, never leaving the well, but those fiery light-filled, the cool-blue piercing eyes they melt the glass and read this heart of mine’s desire for a Beauty Eternal, worth the surrender of all I imagine I can do or be or muster up the self to become.

And when the glass melts the image oozes down to the ground and the eyes they reach into all of my naked humanity and how could I have ever thought it possible to dress myself in more than filthy rags?

Wrecked and broken, bleeding and busted, swollen and blistered with a heart that beats harder at each step, I come to the well.

{We visited for the second week in a row the woman at the well during the message at church…these sentiments are my heart’s journey to come to the well knowing I am just like her}

Joining the last week of a month long link-up at my great friend, Stacey’s for Write it, girl! AND

Lord God of the Well, I thank You ::

You wait for me at the well
You allow this imaginary me, so that I might die to it
You gently show me the wrecked and broken that I am
You never let me see You when I bring something to Your feet
Your Beauty is infinitely better than…ANYTHING!
For precious time with family

Thanksgiving meal prepared for family
Together…simply being together
Sharing from the heart about the year
Taking up the mantle in our generation
Backyard football and everybody plays
Son, the only little boy, in a huddle with three men
For pitches and runs with little feet and little hands holding the ball
For both sets of parents to join later
For a full heart (and stomach) at the end of the day
For the year crowned with YOUR BOUNTY
For amazing family shots this weekend
For a wonderful photographer who is also a friend
For little smiles and hugs
For love surrounding all
For stones by the dam…never get enough
For the joy of this kind of love

For the lessons of this time :: a hard eucharisteo
For showing me my doubts and fears
For YOU, Your truth, always and ever the answer
For ALL of Your promises ‘yes and amen!’ in Him
For showing us how to live each day…
For the BEST always and ever…YET TO COME!

#1636-1664

Five Minute Friday :: Grateful

2011-11-25T07:45:00.001-08:00

Go ::

Grateful for the sea…I have always loved the rushing waters.

But it isn’t the literal sea, but the sea of blessings.

When my eyes are opened this is how they appear.

For when I look far and wide into what I've been given, it doesn’t only fill today but yesterdays too and yesteryears and as far as I can see I have been a part of a blessed people. a blessed legacy. a blessed heritage. a blessed one of God.

When I look into my children’s eyes I want to see them as a part of this sea. A sea of Gratefulness that rests in an assurance of blessing upon their lives. Not one that can sit back and not do the hard work of parenting, but one that knows I have a great cloud of witnesses who is urging on the generations.

Will you take up the history, the legacy and make it your own? I hear them say. And I know for I have heard the stories that it was not in dashing glory that their victory was won, but in the gaze upon that sea of blessing that their eyes fixed and their hearts filled and so they did the stuff that matters. They were there for diapers and feedings and backyard football and soccer and baseball. They were there to kiss the boo-boos and to pray over the fears.

And they are the sea I see and the sea I want to become.

Stop

Happy Thanksgiving :: And November Newsletter

2011-11-23T21:19:00.001-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving

Dear Friends!

This holiday has taken on such renewed meaning in my life since I met her and read her book.

I started my own list, which is pretty much how I started this blog, and it’s somewhere in the 1600’s, but I know enough to know that that’s just a tiny, tiny glimpse of His gifts.

I can say from the depths of my heart, as the Bible is so clear as well, that it is so easy to pin my lack of contentment, anger, doubt, fear back to a lack of thanks. Since I began this journey I’ve known times when the way to life was to thank Him, BUT I WOULDN’T! How’s that for learning the obstinacy of my own heart?! But, even here, there is thanks. Thanks that this light shines and the darkness is easier to recognize for what it is too and this is the real truth :: the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

And for all of you who follow our journey, here is Our November Newsletter that updates you on our family and the ministry we are called to in Central & Eastern Europe.

May You be FILLED with Him and His Great Love for YOU today and no matter the joy or sadness that a ‘family holiday’ can bring, may YOU know the depths of His love for you…TODAY.

A truth-bearing dusty-footed Savior

2011-11-21T07:03:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, our pastor, who has been preaching through the book of John, shared from the story of the Woman at the Well in John 4.

I was struck as he compared this interaction with the one with Nicodemus in the previous chapter. They were as different as night and day : both the people and the way in which the Savior brought his message.

To Nicodemus, Jesus brought stark, full truth. Nothing that Nicodemus was or did would gain him eternal life. He needed to die to all of that and be born again. Become like a baby, weak and helpless, and it was here and only here that he could be saved.

We don’t know the lasting impact in Nicodemus’ life of that conversation. {personally, I would like to think that he was an outspoken part of the Early Church Movement.} We do, however, receive the most recognized verse of the Bible : John 3:16. It was early and young that I learned this and, no matter who you are, if this is the only verse you ever heard from the Bible it is enough to come Home forever.

‘For GOD so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

And then there is the Woman at the Well. The Samaritan woman is an outcast in every way. Defiled as a half-bred Jew, an untouchable. And then she lived that worthlessness through the pursuit of life in relationships with men. Five marriages. And the present relationship was not even a husband.

Jesus altered his journey to go to Samaria, taking a circuitous route in pursuit of this one considered worthless by the only voices in the world that mattered;

^‘And he had to pass through Samaria.’ John 4:4

As our pastor spoke of Him as the dusty-footed Savior who so fully pursued the lowest of the low, sending His disciples away and going at noon, a time when no one else would, I was hushed and stilled. He is not preachy or judgmental, but simply bids her come to Him—the only One who can quench her thirst.

Yes, she hears truth, but in such a tender way that He, the Messiah, comes from Heaven to Earth to specifically seek her. the lost and helpless one. And He loves to do this. This is why He was sent and the heartbeat of His mission that will culminate in His own emptying that all might live. Whether the high and honored or the low and despised.

When I look at these two : Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman, I don’t want to see them as different, but one and the same. And not only the same, but the same in me. The same Savior. The One I need to rescue me from my full-of-it self-righteousness AND the One who loves me whole when I am the broken adulterer lost in pursuit of everything that will never give life.

And, I know, oh I know, He will NEVER turn away, always come, and always offer the Life that He is. And may He find me hungry, athirst for Him and ready to eat fully and drink deeply. And ready to offer that Life to the world.

{The song below is one that has been captivating me since we have been singing it at our church. It is blaring in our car, home, on my mp3 player when I walk. If you haven’t heard it and if you have, I trust you will be blessed!}

Loving this and blasting it wherever I can…I am SURE we will sing something very close to this in Heaven!

and Write it, Girl! at my friend, Stacey’s

Oh how I thank You :

For being the dusty-footed Savior
For loving enough to seek me
For loving enough to speak into my self-righteousness
For loving enough to continually offer life when I seek it in all that doesn’t satisfy
For loving enough to be sent from Heaven and Earth and hold nothing back from the ones You came to redeem
For this Thanksgiving week:
- For the chance to HOST my family—a longing realized
- For the sweetness of savoring all as gift
- For a hubby who suggested it
- For the twinkling-eye joy of Thanksgivings to come
- For how You will work out the details and bless—because You are good
- For the sweet memories from last year—a Thanksgiving I’ll never forget
- For this amazing family you’ve given us::
  - round-cheeked blonde-haired baby girl
  - stunningly beautiful buddy boy
  - for spotlights and play in the dark
  - for chocolate-chocolate-VANILLA! duck-duck-goose style
  - for laying on the ground with legs in the air silly fun
For the strength to keep going
- How we are being tested: knowing YOU as our only life
- for Psalm 62:8 a thousand times over
- for the desperate, hurting me that You love
- for all we KNOW You are doing…even when we don’t see
- for the hard eucharisteo…turning it into SONG
For the BEST, always and ever, yet to come!

#1611-1635

Five Minute Friday :: Grow

2011-11-17T21:55:00.001-08:00

Grow

Go ::

If hope were a seed then I have asked her to plant deep in this heart of mine.

And if love can grow roots then I have asked her to weave herself into the deep places.

And if Home is a place that can travel with me, then I have asked Her to be with me always

And if Faith is a dream that becomes reality, then I have pleaded for the dreams that come tiny and timid to rise on eagle’s wings and fly into these coming days

And if Fire is a seed like hope, then I have asked that the hope that bears life would be fire and that it would be planted within a generation

And if Life is a journey that grows and deepens, I have asked that it would grow to Heaven and that it would deepen in souls that I find being found in Him when now they are lost.

And if there is a way of growing that makes all that happens, the darkness, the mess, the pain, the grief all a part of this One Great Divine Wish for the world and knowledge that it will all ONE DAY be forever so, then I plant myself where this is what growing can only be.

And if you are a seed waiting to be planted, I ask will you go deep into this soil with me?

Stop

{E-mail me at aalleman_03 {at} yahoo {dot} com or include your e-mail when you comment and tell me if you’d like to join our prayer team for updates and the chance to journey with us as we go out into the world to reach a generation}

a secret joy

2011-11-16T20:15:00.001-08:00

I read through a good bit of Heaven is for Real this week after about a bazillion people mentioned it and that I should read it.

As I took in the things little Colton Burpo saw and understood of Jesus and Heaven, when he was the age of my precious son, I felt the contagious secret joy of the ones who see.

The little children see, like Colton, a God who has not been eaten up by cynicism or corrupted by the sinister ploys of the powers of this dark world. Even when you know and love Jesus all of your life, like me, your faith can become tainted with the passing of the years.

But it is always the pure in heart who see God and I want to see God. Oh, I really, really do.

As I walked around the day after reading Heaven is for Real, I had this smile that just would not go away. I thought of my mom who is, now, almost ten of our years there, but, like Colton’s 3 minutes, these years have taken on the form of infinity I am sure.

photo source

I thought of how she loved children so much and how she lost three to miscarriage. I’ve always thought she was with them somehow, but Colton’s account of meeting the sister his mother miscarried, made me think that she has probably barely left them in her time there. She has flitted about this heavenly world with her youth eternally renewed with those three in tow, oh I know it! I do! I also believe that at least one stayed a baby, or perhaps it is the grandbabies miscarried here that are the babies she holds in Heaven.

Yes, I would say this sweet contemplation is a secret joy to fill up this heart and spill over into twinkling eyes and overflowing delight-filled giggles.

But then, I also remember that, as in Colton’s experience, it all comes back to Jesus.

{Akiane Kramarik’s painting, ‘Prince of Peace at age 8’…the one Colton said was ‘right’ }

He is the bridge even there. The One who takes us into his lap and tells us great and awesome things in pure and simple ways. He looks us in the eyes with His own gorgeous loved-filled ones and that is forever enough.

And when three minutes of this kind of love are enough to take in a touch of eternity, NOT ONLY for Colton who experienced it, but for all who would partake of this gift through a book, is it possible to imagine what an eternity of taking in this kind of love would touch? the depths of emotion and soul-encompassing ecstasy?

It is all a bit overwhelming and in the best of ways and the result, for me, can only be a secret kind of joy.

Goals, Aspirations, Dreams and…Failure??

2011-11-13T18:40:00.001-08:00

There is some pretty strong wisdom widely circulated that those who would do great things will certainly pass through serious failure.

And this was the theme of the message this morning.

A visiting minister, Dave, spoke about failure from the life of David Brainerd: pioneer Christian missionary to Native American peoples. Brainerd’s biography written by Jonathan Edwards inspired the future missionary careers of William Carey and Jim Elliot just to name a couple.

However, it was not from the glowing success of Brainerd’s missionary career that Dave spoke. It was from his greatest failure.

Brainerd’s greatest aspiration had been to become a pastor. In the 1700’s this was a noble profession with high esteem in society and so he entered the top training school at that time, Yale. Brainerd was nearly finished his degree, poised to gain top honors when one arrogant, impetuous comment about one of his tutor’s cynicism towards a revival happening on campus changed his life forever.

Brainerd made the comment in a hallway of the school to some friends, but someone from the school administration overheard it. He was immediately expelled and never allowed to finish his degree. At this time no pastorate could be obtained unless the candidate held a degree from Harvard, Yale or a European Institution. Thus, this expulsion effectively forever crushed Brainerd’s one great dream for his life.

But, as is the case with all great stories, with our story, it did not end there. God had something greater that could only come through this failure which He allowed in Brainerd’s life.

It is fairly certain that Brainerd would never have become a missionary to Native Americans if his dream of a pastorate were obtained. Yet this path was not his settling for something less, rather, it was the finding of the life-sized dream of God’s heart for him.

And through Brainerd’s life, not only did many come to know the hope of Jesus, but future generations of missionaries were inspired to go to countless people with the good news.

For all of you who have been following our story, you can imagine the chords of this story with which my heart is resonating. As Jared {my hubby} and I sat beside each other, I thought of all that’s led us to this point in our missionary journey.

One great season of failure, in particular, stands out. I had begun a seminary degree in which I was very successful. I had been chosen as a finalist for a prestigious internship where I would have travelled around the country with a well-known Christian speaker. I felt with surety that I knew where my life was going.

However, I failed to travel to the live interview due to a personal crisis resulting from a relationship I had foolishly invested myself in and it’s abrupt and full rupture which devastated me. I really believe that if I had been able to go to that interview {they were choosing 7 of 11 finalists} I would have been offered the internship.

Instead, I wasn’t. And due to how much hurt and pain I was going through, for the first time in my life, I was willing to leave seminary and NOT finish something. I was also, for the first time, willing to come home to live with my parents.

So I came home and taught Math at my old high school which was no where near any dream of mine. I cared for my mom when one year later she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and nine months later died, which on the face of it, would have been one of my worst nightmares. In the midst of that, I met my husband and married this guy from my hometown. Definitely NOT what I was going to do.

Then, about eight years ago, in my husband’s home church, God introduced us to a ministry to high school students in the public schools of Hungary. Eastern Europe had NEVER crossed my mind as a place where I would one day live…even go to for a short-term missions project.

But God knew about all of this and about taking away every dream I had of what, where and with whom I would live my life. He laid me low in a life-altering way and has been building this journey piece by piece ever since.

I have so far to go, but I can tell you, that the great theme that emerged from this life-altering failure is that God loves me enough to bring no plan or success into my life that does not bring me closer to Him. He has burned within my heart as its greatest desire that I would be His and that my life would reflect His Glory.

That is worth everything to me. to Him. and worth the bearing of every failure and the death of every goal, aspiration and dream.

Thank You LORD who is Greater ::

for the unexpected
for bends in the road
for failures that open the door to Your dreams
for moving past the fear—You redeem it all
for how You write the best chapters
for darkness before the dawn
for all of the shattered dreams of years gone by
for bringing me home
for finding this life in the last place I would have looked
for the Song of Creation
for harvest moons
for sunsets that make me think of Your robe reaching Earth
for tiny voices
for son who wants to please Your heart and says so
for a Sunday date with my sweet hubby
for You. fully trustworthy.
for loving me enough to close every door that leads me away from You
for how You are re-making me to desire Your Glory more than my own
for Your ways as higher
for the BEST ALWAYS AND EVER YET TO COME!

#1591-1610

Five Minute Friday : Unexpected…

2011-11-10T21:36:00.001-08:00

Unexpected…

And so it is I find such unexpected ways

a haze

of myself.

I wish that all was vibrant and

that the

weight of

all to be expected

coming

would sweep

me away in

a wildness of adventure.

Instead I have

this unexpected

numbness.

I long to feel

and know as

reality the JOY

of all that’s ahead

when the adventure

reaches fruition and we

board planes and go.

When Europe is our home

and though it is all mostly new

it will be quaint with romantic

dates galore and city-sized

playgrounds of trams

and underground trains

for boys. and just

the flowers of Margit Sziget

to captivate my little girl’s heart.

But, there is also all that

won’t be romantic and so

there is the unexpected face

or reality blowing cold air

in the face of this head-in-the-clouds

loves the idea of things…

But, oh how unexpectedly the

growing up has been the really

seeing the real and yet knowing

that this can still bring sparkles

to eyes and even deeper ones

because there is no barrier

to the living and the joy.

And so I ask for the unexpected

of His transformation to

bring what He always expects…

a fire within that

burns and fills and is full

of all that feels and embraces.

Roller Coasters & Tidal Waves {Guest Post at Graceful}

2011-11-09T06:11:00.001-08:00

As we were preparing to go overseas to Hungary for the summer of 2010, I remember sharing with some friends how I felt like I was about to get on a very tall, very fast, and very scary roller coaster.

It must have been a bit prophetic.

I felt that way anticipating taking our family of four, which included one not quite three year-old son and one not quite one year-old daughter and thankfully, one very hands-on father, across the ocean for five weeks.

I came home after those five weeks with the full weight of a long-term call, which, although it included much joy and excitement, had the undeniable mark of a great upheaval for our little family.

Fast forward fifteen months and I am still on that roller coaster.

{Please continue reading with me at Graceful where my dear friend, Michelle, who I had the privilege of spending some wonderful time with at the recent Relevant Conference has welcomed me to her blog to share a bit about Roller Coasters, Tidal Waves and Letting Go. If you don’t know Michelle, spend some time with her at Graceful, she is a breath of fresh air, honest, true seeker of God.}

I can live…

2011-11-07T21:39:00.001-08:00

The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.

~Acts 23:11

Something that the pastor said when we were visiting my Dad’s church stuck to me like bubble gum to the bottom of a high school student’s chair;} {and I know about that sticking since I taught in high schools for seven years!} :

‘Paul lived like he was immortal {from that point on}…come shipwreck, come whatever, he knew he was going to Rome.’

It was Jesus himself who had told Paul that he was going to Rome to testify as he had in Jerusalem. And you might say, like me, if Jesus told me I would do this or that or go here or there then I would have the confidence of Paul.

And I say to us, ‘hasn’t he?’

He promises that all of our days are known to Him before one of them comes to pass. He knows our coming and going and our beginning and our end and we ARE immortal, invincible, in our life here on earth until we fulfill the living of each day written for us. And when our work is done, we will land safely in the arms of Jesus at peace forevermore.

Like my Poppy who passed away today at the ripe age of 93. When a history of heart disease necessitated triple bypass surgery 30 years ago, would he have pictured living this long? When his wife of nearly 70 years went to Heaven would any of us have thought he would live 3 years more?

Yet, His Lord knew. He kept Poppy in that nursing home with a smile on his face and a song in his heart to touch the lives of many in his last years, months and days.

And this is my hope and peace and life and joy. All of my days written in His heart and held in His hand and I can live in boldness and confidence as the moments of my life span before me.

I can live immortally.

I can live with the God-breathed, stilled and quiet confidence of the Lord who IS as my own.

I can live without holding anything back from Him.

I can live with a fullness of presence that marks every relationship.

I can live with dreams many-hued and manifold and boldly step into achieving them.

And when all is said and done I can live forever with Him and never miss a beat because it has all been FOR HIS GLORY anyway.

I can live…

Five Minute Friday :: Remember…

2011-11-04T16:04:00.001-07:00

Remember…

and this day when I hold you in my arms and you four big years now. and I cuddle you and I remember how I held you when you first came to the BIG doctor’s office and you so tiny and this world so big. and I lost it when you cried with your first shots and it takes a piece of me today, 4 years later when I cuddle and you cry because it hurts.

And I cry for all that hurts in this life and I can’t protect you from it.

And I think of how just last night you sigh at dinner and say you are sad having to give back all of our houses, our Florida house, Colorado house, first Pennsylvania house and now this second you know we will leave soon. And your little heart is weary born into this sojourning family following the bigness of God leading us across an ocean.

And so I remember how He is writing your story. It is bigger than your mommy and daddy’s calling and it is bigger than shots that hurt to protect you and it is bigger than all that we will fail you in and that this whole world will fail you in and you with your big heart feeling the shots and I feeling them right with you. And I remember that the pieces that this Mama’s heart is breaking into are the very heart of God given to me for you to intercede for you and to make a Home where He is all the hope and refuge and strength and tender grace to see us through this long journey home.

Stop.

31 Days to His Heart :: What This All Could Mean? {Day 31…final day!}

2011-10-31T22:05:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

I’m humbly treading the hallowed ground of the Heart of God for the 31 days of October. First we look deep into the Beauty of His heart, shown through God the Father and His Son Jesus, then, we peer into the fragile and yet powerful role of our own hearts as we seek His and learn to live it in this world. To read the entire series go{here} 31 Days to His Heart.

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

Joel 2:10-14

The earth quakes before them;
   the heavens tremble.
The sun and the moon are darkened,
   and the stars withdraw their shining.
The LORD utters his voice
   before his army,
for his camp is exceedingly great;
he who executes his word is powerful.
For the day of the LORD is great and very awesome;
who can endure it?

"Yet even now," declares the LORD,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments."
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the LORD your God?

Why have we come?

We have come to His Heart because there is no other source of life.

We have come to be changed by the weight of His love, grace, and mercy.

But have we come only for ourselves?

No, this cannot be the sole motivation or result of truly coming.

As we come and live from His heart, we receive it and we give away all that we are given that this world might become a different place.

We come to change the face of the world.

We come with all of our hearts, the fullness of our ability to feel and know in the depths, so that we might live and move and have our being in Him and His heart. In so living we reflect His image brilliantly in the world. And as we pour out His love-light, all that the world was created to be—in full relationship with Him--is reconciled bit by bit to this glorious vision.

That is what I call greatness. A greatness bound up in a God who will never disappoint, but always supply, sustain, and shower upon His beloved children the light of His Face.

Praying His Heart

Oh Lord, we come with all that we are and all that we long to be. We come to You, the only Source of Life. We come to bring You to the world and see smiles of joy upon what was sadness.

Teach us to number our days according to the knowledge of Your Heart. We pray that we would long for Zion and that we would give our lives to see this world draw close to You and where You are.

Praise You for all YOU infinitely give…We Love You and long to wrap ourselves around the knowledge of Your Heart of Love…

May Your work in us be far from done and Your work of reconciling this world be our heart’s greatest reason to live…that Your Glory might shine in All the Earth!

Amen and Amen

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: hearts that never, ever stop beating {Day 30}

2011-10-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

John 3 : 16,17

And so we come to His Heart. We listen and we come and we draw near.

And then everything that can go wrong, does.

A cancer diagnosis for a loved one, or us.

A prodigal we love is destroying their life.

Pay cuts or lay offs at work.

The general mêlées of a world that is broken and though trying, trying to be fixed, it can’t be.

And so our hearts weary of the fight for His love and strength. We charge out like warriors to slay evil and we win some battles but the war wages and we have nothing left to give.

But He promises His love that will eternally give for all who would believe. He came to save the world and He asks us to trust Him. To trust that His Heart sees and understands the pain of this world and knows ALL of our thoughts and emotions and He. is. enough.

He is enough when death looms and money dries up and hatred runs rampant and we cannot endure.

He is enough and His life in us is enough to keep our hearts beating. Always beating and reviving to the wind of His Spirit, the breath of His voice. The promise of all He’s come to win for this world forever.

And we rally not because our human potential is being actualized, but because His Heart is fueling our lives. He is our supply and our vision and when everyone else gives up we have the strength, His strength, to keep on.

I hear Him calling to us now to remember that He will. never. run. dry. or burn out or stop being God. He is always and forever. And He’s asking us to believe again that His heart is our life and sustains us. and will never, ever, ever stop…

Praying His Heart

From the down-trodden and weary places within, the ones that are ready to give up on that person or circumstance, we call to You. Keep our hearts beating with Your love, Your strength, Your hope, Your promise.

We choose to believe that You are enough and we choose to reject anything that says otherwise.

We pray that we be the last standing FOR YOUR GLORY!

Amen

31 Days to His Heart :: How He is Making All Things New in Our Hearts {Day 29}

2011-10-29T13:53:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

Isaiah 40:11, 31 (ESV)

He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

How does He make all things new in us? our hearts?

He carries us. Close to His Heart. In His arms He takes our crippled and crumbling, bleeding and broken, fearful and fallen and breathes life, making whole, one breath at a time.

With each beat of our hearts held in His bosom He is resuscitating the deadness and renewing the wasted. He is making our heart places altogether lovely.

It isn’t like a magic wand but like the weight of His love, sacrificing Himself for all that we cannot do or be, filling our hollow hearts with His Glory.

And it isn’t all of us changed in an instant {though, One Day, YES, forever and ever it will be so}. Rather it is all of our emptying and inadequacy and inability to do anything to love Him falling on Him and His mercy and grace in each tiny little moment and way.

This is how all becomes new and the impossible becomes possible and we sing from that deep soul place of Him alone. His Grace. All His work. and for His Glory Alone.

Praying His Heart

Oh Lord, Praise You for how You carry us. In all we cannot do or be and as helpless lambs You hold us close and make us new to live this life for You. You give us all we need to breathe with the beat of Your Heart and in Your transforming power within us to reach out and touch the world.

May more and more of who we are be given to ALL that You are and Your breath give us our only life and strength. Oh, hear our heart’s deepest cry, we pray.

Amen

31 Days to His Heart :: His Heart for You {Day 28}

2011-10-28T11:38:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

Psalm 139

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from afar…
…Where shall I go from your Spirit?
   Or where shall I flee from your presence?
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light about me be night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light with you.

Five Minutes from His Heart at Relevant…
Go:
I love you daughter. You are mine. I have made you unique and beautiful and complete and what I see in you is a heaven’s blasting glory-filled sunshine rays life that I sing over.
Wherever you go, whatever you do, however you feel, whenever you doubt my love…I want you to know that from the depths of my infinite heart I embrace you.
I hug you abba tight and hold you in my heart beloved crown of my creation.
You can never, ever, ever leave the folds of my love. You can never go anywhere, run to the farthest reaches of all that this needy world strives for where my love and my heart won’t reach you and long to see you open and know and receive it all.
This is my most relevant message for you and out of this singular reality of my love I call you to live from this place of warmth and acceptance…
I love you always…Your Abba Father God.

Praying His Heart

Oh Abba Daddy, help us to see nothing but Your love…we need it. You. it is our life and so we plead that we might know it and live out of this knowing.

Thank You for how You will answer with the realities of ALL that You are!

Amen

31 Days to His Heart :: Dreaming the Dreams that Flow from His Heart {Day 27}

2011-10-27T17:20:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

John 14:12

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.

And so we come to His heart and in so doing we learn how to dream. Not the dreams that we were born to dream {though this is true } but the dreams we have been brought Home and re-born to dream.

As we believe in Jesus and come to rest forever in the affection of our Abba Father God, we are given everything we need to see His kingdom come through our lives. our dreams. our hopes. our risks. our faith.

We learn to live entirely new and full and dream in the shape of His Heart. And when I think about that, I know that there is no other place from which I want to live this life in its moments, its choices, its broken, hurting pain, its grief, its hope, its horrible injustice, but also its deep and full redemptive potential THAN from His Heart that dreams of it all as only He can see it with the power to make it so.

Praying His Heart

Oh Lord, teach us to dream Your dreams. You promise all we need and cast the vision for walking in the truth and love of Your footsteps, Jesus. May we be a people who dwell so fully in Your Heart that we cannot do anything but long to see Your Kingdom come through our lives and give You ALL THE GLORY as You bring about this singular heartbeat of Your will.

Because You have promised in the light of Your completed work that it would be so,

Amen!

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

{And blogging from Relevant Conference these next 3 days!!! so good, wish you were all here!}

31 Days to His Heart :: Learning a Heart of Love {Day 26}

2011-10-26T22:21:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

1 Corinthians 13

The Way of Love

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When I read this passage, I become undone. I know every limit in my own ability to love, to really love in this infinite, highest, greatest of great ways.
I need Him. Oh how I need Him. I need every nutrient from His Heart of everlasting love to love for a moment in THIS way.
He is Love and it is only in dwelling within that affection that I can behold and know it as my own and have all of the hardened, selfish places become as putty in the Abba Father hands to shape into the likeness of His love.
Reading about this love every day is a beautiful practice to shape our heart’s highest vision. And in the reading to receive each element of His stopping at nothing and conquering everything and healing and filling and changing all it touches love.
And from this place within His heart we live. It is the only way to love as He loves and in so doing to bear His heart for the world.

Praying His Heart

Lord God, we know we have no way of loving in this Pure Beauty as You paint this picture for us. We long to know and behold this sweetness as first receivers and then as the ones who spill out what we have received to the world around us.

We long for the face-to-face of pressing deep into Your love to have meaning hear and now…brighten our vision, we pray.

All, Because You FIRST loved us,

Amen

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: Our Hearts Become His {Day 25}

2011-10-25T22:27:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

John 14:20-23 (ESV)

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is why we have come.
This is why we keep coming.
This is why we stay…to be changed.
We receive His Heart as we abandon all else and throw ourselves upon Him, bloody and bruised, battered and beaten.
We cannot truly come to know His affection WITHOUT it becoming our affection.
We learn that what we thought limited us, really doesn’t.
There is no limit to our love as we receive His.
There is no limit to the holy emotion given as we behold.
There is no limit to the relationships we seek as He makes His home in us.
There is no limit to the good we become as clay in His Heart-Hands.
There is no limit to the mercy we have for a hurting, dying, broken world when we know the depth of His compassion FOR US.
There is no limit to the grace we offer others when we swim in the ocean that flows from His fullness.
We come to His Heart that we might open a way for others to come, too, as they see the here-and-now living it out in and through us GLORY that He is.
There can be no other result, no other experience of truly coming than to be changed into His likeness and glory, glory, glory dwells in Immanuel’s Land.

Praying His Heart

With every breath we take and every beat of our heart we pray that shrivels up and dies more and more of the hearts we were given as sons of Adam…and that in place of all of this lack we receive the fullness of You. Your Heart.

We plead to NOT LET US go another step without this heart surgery…without being changed. This hurting world is desperate for Your touch through those who bear YOUR HEART…Change us, oh change us, we pray.

Amen

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: Hold Nothing Back

2011-10-24T22:06:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

Mark 12:28-30 (ESV)

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'

The journey to His Heart is one of commitment.

We cannot truly be on this journey unless it is THE journey of our lives.

Holding nothing back.

All that we have and are surrendered into His hands and when we lose the way we surrender again. We rest continually in a place of bankruptcy, of empty, of broken, of bare, of nothing…without Him. the wonders of His heart the only nutrients to satisfy.

This is how it must be if we take His heart for our own and have our own hearts become His.

When we hold something of ourselves back from Him, we cannot not be swept up in the wild fury, the passion-filled river, the untamed roar of the waters of all that flows from Him. His everlasting love, good~ness, mercy, grace in its fullness as our portion and cup—can only be drunk with the pure lips of a heart fully given. surrendered. longing with everything and more.

He is infinitely patient as our steps falter, as we falter, but in His clear call to come there is no mistaking that it must be ALL of us that comes.

We say in our heart of hearts that this is our ultimate destiny, meaning, purpose and we are willing to sacrifice all else to see His Glory. His Beauty. His Heart.

Praying His Heart

Thank You, Lord, that you have made it so. Your Heart can only be known by those who give You everything. I rejoice that there is no half-way with you because You are highest and best and so can ask for no lower place in our lives than highest and best.

Oh Lord, seal this commitment to our hearts and root out where we are holding back from You. Give us sweet and compelling glimpses of the Beauty, the Fury, the Uncontrollable rush of Your waters pouring over us as we lose ourselves in You, Your Heart.

Amen

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: Bearing the Heart of a Sojourner

2011-10-23T22:01:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

a journey to His Heart means bearing the heart of a sojourner

Exodus 23:9 (ESV)

You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

Philippians 3:20 (ESV)

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

We cannot come to His Heart when our hearts are rooted here. In the here and now and the stuff of this life. The two are entirely incompatible, living for this world and living from and for His heart.

We must learn to bear the heart of a sojourner.

And the great beauty and mystery is that coming to His Heart does just that. As we learn of Him and drink from the well of all that He is, we lose our taste for here and long for Home and live the journey to that Home.

When we become satisfied with the temporal, the base, the cheap momentarily thrills of life, our fire dulls to the seeking and we lose the way.

And so we look again to the Savior that we await and the Home he has prepared and is leading us to even now and we remember that he had no where to dwell but lived the heart of a sojourner and so leads us on that best and highest path.

Bearing the journey in our hearts must, must, must come. It is all the restless and the surrender and the sense of lost~ness that stirs our hearts for His. Allowing ourselves to feel and know that we are not home here is what leads us, truly, to our Home.

This is the ache, bearing such a heart. It is a beautiful ache and we must plead that our hearts know it, for from the ache comes a fullness in Him and His heart that would be impossible otherwise.

Praying His Heart

Oh Lord, teach us the heart of a sojourner. We long to long for Home and are learning to long for the ache that this world is not where we belong that we might long for where You are which is ultimately Your Heart. Oh Lord, we plead for you and ask for the desperation and weariness to be real in our hearts so that we might be spent of all that doesn’t satisfy and come to You, the Only One who can.

Grant us our heart’s desire, YOU, we pray.

Amen.

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: when pain and grief are real {Day 22}

2011-10-22T21:45:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

when the hardest of life’s questions and the darkest of its realities hit, how do we come to His Heart then?

Psalm 62:8 (ESV)

Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.
Selah

Isaiah 42:3
a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

Isaiah 53: 4-6

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

_________________________________________________________

Where else can we go but to a Suffering Servant who is also Savior when pain and grief rub us raw?

When tears are real and deep and even more when they are stuck within us as red, hard, hot, lumps of pain, who else will understand?

It may very well be that those who love us most disappoint us so profoundly in the midst of the pain SO THAT we will come to the Only One who can heal.

I have walked paths of grief young and real and hurting that couldn’t be hardened and numbed and I can not say that I have always come to His heart where healing is alone.

But, I can say that with each deep pain the journey long I have learned a bit more who will touch a sobbing heart…physical arms that bear His touch must be received, but at the end of the day, in the dark of the night, it is the meeting and the entering of the Abba heart into all of the cracks and holes and tender to touch and soothe the bloodied inner stuff that must be known for if a battered soul wants to become whole.

It is not easy. I fight the hardening most here and the self-pity rages that no one cares and I lash out against a world that is not Home and I run and flee this Heart meant to meet me in the midst of all so wrong.

But, it is worthy. He is worthy. The soul will be restless until rest be found in Him {St. Augustine} and heart will remain raw and tears will fall with none to dry and self will curl in upon the inner life and all will be wrung out and nothing make sense…

if we do not allow Him to love us in our pain and grief.

if we close our eyes and shut our ears and stuff our noses and purse our lips and withdraw our hands, we only really give pain the final say. we believe the lie that He does not have our best at heart and we let go of all that has proved Him faithful over and over…

But, oh, His heart, ever calling and drawing and promising from a God who cannot let us down to come and find all we need to be more than conquerors and live, really live, all that we long to.

Praying His Heart

Oh Lord, You alone give life and heal and make hope real and truth transforming even and especially in the midst of our pain. Teach us to come in Your ever-patient allowing disappointment so that we come to You way, the Only One who satisfies. Praise you that you wound to heal and allow all of that scalds the heart-skin that we might come and find what we never could have without the grief and tears.

Help us, we are desperate for Your touch!

Amen

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: The Great Beyond {Day #21}

2011-10-21T22:30:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

We’ve taken a few days to delve into the tragic story of the heart…how perfection was marred by pride, lies, hardening and fears, but, I am loving to now dwell on all that is Beyond…

Go:

There is a GREAT Beyond…

I am more and more mesmerized as all that is in me is brought ALIVE to it.

I have walked the tragic story of the heart and know all that knots it up and squeezes out the life, and messes with every emotion…

I know and have lived the devastation of the pride, the anger, the fear, the grief, the hardness, the doubts…all of that mad mess…

And more and more I am seeing almost instantly, as though all else that drudges up is but the finest vapor…

His Heart.

Beyond everything is His Heart. Reaching, oozing, pouring, spilling, shedding, flowing Heart. The Heart of God that can never be outrun or pushed away or missed when deepest self desires what alone can satisfy.

Beyond everything that would strip bare and break down and crush and make you think that none of it is good, is simply His Heart. An infinite depth of everlasting love and goodness and mercy and grace and HOPE…oh, the sweet taste of hope.

I smell the sea and it is full of all He longs to give and it beckons my soul to run for it—this beyond where death is no longer and tears are dried and the Son is all the Glory and He asks to come now and touch eternity.

Beyond all of the beyonds of every path and road and journey and dream and wish and prayer is the Greatest of All. Him. His Heart. Clear and True and Oh, so, so real.

Stop.

Praying His Heart

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

~ Ephesians 3 : 14-21

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: what about the fear? {Day 20}

2011-10-20T21:49:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

when fear creeps, love is the only antidote

1 John 4:18 (ESV)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

In the story of the heart, fear is like the smallest dark speck of matter that when breathed in, contaminates all of the air.

It’s the vacuum, void of life, that comes with the smallest thought of a life without God who IS love in it.

Never free, really, as long as this world is full of anger, hate, greed…never free when what is seen is the vision.

But always and ever free when the UNseen becomes the seen and the Heart of God beats with our own. His love pours in all of the light and all of the holy and all of the good and all of the mercy and grace and we are Home.

We are Home in His Heart…free to breath as deep as the sea and lift our eyes as high as the sky and smell the air and taste the ocean depths and open ears wide to the Song of Heaven.

Praying His Heart

Praise You loving Lord of All and of our hearts. You long to cast away all fear. Praise You that there is a Home in Your heart where fear is barred from entering.

Oh, pull us in tight! This world is full of fear and the madness that comes with it and yet the hunger and desperation are for Your Perfect Love that is the only True Reality.

Fill us with this Perfect Love that Your Glory might be seen and your Love fill this Earth.

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and

31 Days to His Heart :: how the heart gets hardened {Day 19}

2011-10-19T10:55:00.001-07:00

Thank you for visiting Fan the Flame!

May YOU be blessed with a touch of Him TODAY…He who desires and is Fully Worthy of ALL of our hearts!

when keeping the heart is a matter of diligence, hardening it is a matter of neglect

Deuteronomy 4:9
"Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—

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One lie was all it took.

One thought of life outside of God was all that was needed. And the whole of humanity for all time was marred and crippled and broken and lost, lost, lost.

And so it is with each heart’s story. Born broken and yet so purely longing for love, we set out to find our way and soon, oh so soon, in our story all that fallen state of the world inflicts us with wounds upon wounds.

And love is all that can heal, but sometimes love seems so far and the wounds hurt.

So we harden.

We harden to hope. to faith. to joy. to peace. to LIFE. to love. to Him.

We harden with every lie we continue to believe and every sense of abandonment we feel or bucking assertion for independence and we steel our resolve and find OUR OWN way, apart from God. and far, far from His heart.

If your heart is anything like mine, it takes so little and I am lost in a wasteland of the tasteless, colorless, void of sound, motionless.

I am lost, so lost, to what my eyes have seen of Him. of all He’s always done for me. of all He is doing to preserve my life in Him. and lost, far, far from His Heart.

A hardened heart can not soften itself. There is no amount of willpower or positive thinking that can make it truly soft again.

There is only one solution. Only one touch that can melt a heart of stone in an instant.

Beholding the Beauty of His Heart. Looking, gazing, knowing in desperation that there is no way of fixing self. Starved for Glory, for Him.

Just as one doubt, one lie, one wayward flailing step for independence can lead to a hardened heart, SO one turning, one choosing, one embracing, one believing, is all it takes to fully soften and restore.

All because of the infinite depths of His Heart :: soft and strong, full and free, everlasting and embracing, overwhelming and ours.

Praying His Heart

Thank you, Lord, that the story does not end with the hardened heart. Thank You, Praise You, that You are Greater and ever extend to soften, heal, restore, always inviting to come to You, Your Heart, and find life.

Lead us ever in the way of softening. May we experience the desolation of hardness so that the longing for Home might increase and overpower all else.

For Your Glory, Your Love, in our midst, Amen.

Linking with

31 Days 2011:: The Community Collection

and