My friends in Haiti are isolated from the world again after the gangs fired on a commercial plane and the airport was closed this week. They were ousted from their homes for over a year while fighting raged around them and they went into hiding. They have shown up for teen and preteen kids who are watching their friends die, and who are still healing from their pasts. I am so blown away by their faithfulness.
I speak to several woman who are raising kids while dealing with debilitating illness and chronic pain in themselves. They show up for their families in the ways they can while desperately surviving their own health journeys. I know they often feel like they are failing, like they can’t do what other moms can do. But I stand in awe of their faithfulness to keep showing up.
Several years ago, my husband and I were camping in Moab, Utah with our one-year-old son. Camping is probably a generous term—we did have a pop-up camper and weren’t really roughing it. We did, however, drive about half an hour outside of town on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere, and then parked the camper at the top of a rocky hill. The views were spectacular, and we would only see another car on the dirt road about once every few hours. It was a little taste of the wilderness, with only us and our little camper. No cell service, no toilets, and no other people around.
This seemed like a fantastic experience until we decided the next day to head back into town to get a few groceries. After piling in the truck, my husband tried to start the vehicle, but it wouldn’t start. The truck’s battery was dead. And the wilderness experience that seemed like a lot of fun became quite scary.
I started to panic, wondering how we would ever get out of there. No cars came by on the road, and it was at least a day’s walk to get back into town with a one-year-old and only so much food for camping. Finally after a bit of worry, my husband brilliantly figured out that he could use the camper batteries to jump the truck battery, and we were finally moving again.
But what about the figurative wildernesses in which we find ourselves where we can’t figure a way out, and we sit and wait with no resources and no hope? Wildernesses are a real experience in life, and one which often catches us by surprise. I’m not sure why, as so many of the people in the Bible went through years and years of wilderness, sometimes figurative and sometimes quite literal. There are stories of prison, hardships, desert-living, wandering, frustration, hopelessness, disbursement and aching for home.
I get questions a lot of times about why I love and serve God even when He doesn’t always give me what I want. A lot of people wonder why I continue to pursue relationship with Jesus, and consider it old-fashioned or burdensome. So, I wanted to write a post about why I choose Jesus.
It’s definitely not because of the people who call themselves Christians—although some are a wonderful gift to me and I’m so grateful for them. But the people in the Church are messy just like everyone else, and when we expect them to be perfect or to never hurt or reject us, we will be disappointed. I know, though, that people who believe in Jesus recognize they need something other than themselves to do life. So, as they are dependent on Him, they love people well. When they are relying on their own self-righteousness or rule-following, they end up in a place of religion which is toxic and downright abusive sometimes. The word religion means to bind over and over again. When we bind ourselves up in trying to please God without the power He has given us to do so, we are in a bigger mess than if we deny Him entirely.
I also don’t pursue relationship with God because I was raised to believe Him and brainwashed into doing so. In fact, I have had many reason NOT to pursue relationship with Him over the years, and it would actually be easier for me and make more sense to drop the whole thing! I could make more money, have easier relationships and not experience nearly as much rejection.
Instead, I love Jesus because He loved me first, not when I met His standard or expectation. He reached out to me in love with no strings attached. I don’t have to accept His love, and He experiences rejection more than any other person I know as many refuse Him.
There’s a little boy I see every morning when I’m dropping my daughter off at school. He comes to help drop off his older brother, and always shows up in his Superman pajamas complete with cape. The thing that always strikes me as hilarious is how he walks next to his dad. He’s this tiny little man, but walks like he is 10 feet tall—he definitely has the superhero walk down. His cape flows behind him, and he takes large, commanding steps no matter where he is going.
I love watching him and it makes me giggle a little to watch him stride through the parking lot. This morning, though, God spoke and asked me how I would walk if I knew and believed the super power that dwells within me? That caught me off guard. You see, I used to always walk with my eyes on my shoes (which might explain some of my clumsiness). I didn’t feel that I had worth, and I walked like it. I didn’t understand Who I had, or who I was.
You see, when you have Christ’s Life within you, you have the power of the Living God walking around with you. He says He will be everything you need, and we have all of Him to meet all of our problems, dilemmas and circumstances. I think when I realize that I am the chosen dwelling place of God Himself (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that makes me His.
We cry out from a broken heart,
Shards lying all around us on the ground.
Our tears pour out—
It feels like they will never end.
The pain explodes from within us,
Our chests feeling like they will break apart.
Lying face down on the ground,
Our desperate plea for help and rescue escaping our lips.
Our Kind Shepherd is here,
Never leaving, never abandoning us in grief.
A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief Himself,
He will not turn away.
"Why would anyone listen to me? I’m a late-30’s chick who hasn’t experienced everything in life, doesn’t have all the answers and can’t fix anyone." That’s what flashes through my mind anytime someone tells me that God has spoken to them through me. But isn’t that the coolest thing? I have Jesus living in me, and Jesus has been tried in every way, is the Way and can give new Life!
“You stand and fall by your definitions.” That’s something my friend and mentor Mike Wells used to say a lot. I’ve been working on a book about identity recently, and have realized how identity is really your definition of yourself. And this definition of yourself is often quite errant. We fall a lot because of a misguided definition of ourselves based on messages and hurts from our past mixed with an enemy who is doing all he can to keep us stagnant and stuck in ourselves.
I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who just want to “figure it out” and they think this will bring resolution. Whether it’s analyzing their relationship with parents, understanding why they might have made the choices they did, or recognizing the issues an ex had which made the relationship impossible, it’s all an attempt to bring an explanation and thus hopefully, peace.
Whatever today brings. Whether it be the same old thing again or a new chapter you never wanted to begin. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. If you are looking at the same battle you’ve fought a thousand times in a thousand ways with no energy left to fight. Or if you are approaching a new life that’s scary and you don’t know what it will bring.
What is it about hope that allows us to face seemingly impossible situations without turning away? It almost seems an arrogant gall, but it’s really an idea that maybe things will get better, that I will get through this and that things will be better on the other side. But the real definition of hope to me is one that’s tied to Jesus, for hope without a God seems rather shallow.
One of the concepts that my friend and mentor Mike Wells talked about a lot was recognition versus creation. When we are a branch on the Vine, we don’t create fruit—it is a natural outcome of the Life of Vine flowing through us. We don’t have to generate something and figure it out and make it happen.
God’s faithfulness is absolutely astounding to me. Daily I have doubts, worries, screw-ups and yet He stays faithful. I question what He does and how He does it, but He remains steadfast. And not just a put-up-with-you kind of faithful as He remains faithful in His lovingkindness.“Faithful is He who calls you and He also will bring it to pass.” 1 Thess 5:24
Some days waking seems a burden. The weight of a thousand worries meets us as soon as our minds are roused from sleep. The “what-if’s” come hard and fast, leaving us feeling hopeless. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse leaves me? What if my kids don't make it into that school? What if we don't have enough money?
I was reading this morning about when Saul (the guy who liked pulling Christians out of their homes and carting them off to jail) comes face to face with Jesus on the road (Acts 9). He’s headed to do more damage and is very determined to stamp out this crazy faction of Jesus followers. The Christians would have been terrified to see him coming.
You guys, allow me to be really honest here. I hear so many stories throughout my day that are hard and scary and brutal. When it comes to allowing my kids out of the house, all those stories come back to me and it is VERY difficult not to think about them and try to prevent any of these things from happening to my kids.
