It Wasn't A Gift I Asked For

With moonlight caressing my face and tears of hopelessness and helplessness soaking my pillow, the gift was quietly present.

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

When anger tumbled out of my mouth in a torrent of words spilling from a trampled soul, the gift belonged to me.

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Forgetting the darkness in my heart and judging the shadows in my neighbor’s, the gift whispered its presence.

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

While coveting another’s talents and sulking in scarcity and ingratitude, the gift shimmered its offering.

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Arrested by penetrating love shining from my crucified Savior’s face, the gift announced its name.

Mercy

Mercy flows on the parched landscape of my soul.

Mercy transforms ashes to beauty.

Mercy triumphs over judgement.

Mercy illuminates my beloved uniqueness.

The gift I didn’t ask for comes wrapped in extravagant mercy and overflows with love for me.

Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Friend.

Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

 

My Everyday Choice

Concerns tumble in my heart like water over rocks, noisy and clamoring for attention.  Long held dreams…unfulfilled, concerns for family members…unresolved, questions about my future…..when?  I am feeling forgotten.  I am afraid I am not enough.  Perhaps I’m a “B” version of a woman?  Doubts cavort in my heart.

I pray with the “Pray As You Go” app on my phone. Jesus tells his listeners, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”  He says again, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you….do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”(John 14)

 

His words suggest I have a choice, “Do not let…”

He says, “Believe also in me.”

I get to choose.

Believe God or the cacophony in my heart.

Will I “let” fear strangle my spirit?  Will I “let” doubts dull the colors in life?

Or…

Will I “let” serenity still my troubled spirit?  Will I “let” calm quiet my heart?

Today, I choose to believe God.  I receive the peace Jesus gives me. It will be what I breathe, today.

More Than Enough

 I’ve been pondering my responses to the hurting and lonely people in my world. I have struggled to know how to be a neighbor to them beyond the usual prayers and help I offer. I’m burned out trying to fix people.  I have felt guilt for holding some at arm’s length, fearing they would suck the life right out of me. I realize I don’t have enough of anything to slake their soul thirst or satisfy their physical wants.

Meditating on the story of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of about 5,000 men with five loaves of bread and two fishes, I noticed my thoughts about people’s needs are similar to the disciples’ reactions of many years ago. Jesus told His disciples to feed the people gathered around him.  The disciples looked into their treasury.  They assessed what food was available. They concluded their resources were not nearly enough to feed a hungry crowd. 

When Jesus asked what had been found, they handed to Jesus a little boy’s lunch basket containing five small loaves and two tiny fishes. After Jesus blessed the miniscule offering and divided the food, the disciples distributed it to the people…..and it was more than enough!

I stumble over this example of little becoming abundance in the hands of God.  I experience tension between the neediness I notice in my world and what I have to give. Or want to give. I am frustrated with my limitations.  Every day I bump into cries for help. I examine the time, money, resources and energy I have to offer after I tended to the responsibilities in my own life.

 I am not enough.

This thought gently persists: What if I offer my simple words, my scant resources and my small talents to Jesus for blessing and breaking? If I live in that humble space of willingly giving to Jesus my offering for the neediness around me, would a miracle of “more than enough” occur?

I give what is in my hands…the miracle of supply is in His.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Shoes

I love the confidence I feel in a brand new pair of stylish shoes. I like even more my feet to be comfortably encased in my pretty new shoes.

I’m noticing that change is a lot like a new pair of shoes. Attractive and uncomfortable until the feet and the shoes yield to the other to support a comfortable journey for the shoe-wearer.

In a spiritual direction session I was bemoaning the changes in my life; the laying down of familiar rhythms of job and service. I left my nursing job of seventeen years and yielded to another teacher the Sunday School class I taught for twenty years. I am experiencing changes in relationships as our children are successfully launched and our parents retired. I’m noticing changes in what I am drawn to, as previously fulfilling activities are not appealing to me yet new opportunities are not very productive.

When my director prayed with me, she invited God to steady my trust in Him as He pruned away the old fruit to allow for the growth of new.  These few words lit a candle in my soul.  The discomfort with the way I was wearing change shifted to an understanding of a pruning process.  This new knowing is infusing this season with hope as I wait and grow.

 My season of pruning is uncomfortable, yet I am attracted to new fruitfulness.  Tentative tendrils of growth are unfurling towards what I’m not sure. It is enough to know that the vine of my life is in the Master Gardener’s hands and He is nurturing my fruitfulness.  According to Jesus, this will be for God’s glory and to show that I am His follower. 

 

 

Changing shoes for the next leg of my journey is exciting and scary. Some days I long for a comfortable fit, but mostly I embrace the invitation to surrender to God’s pruning shears and remain in Him.

When Longings Disturb My Soul

Tossing and turning in my bed, I tried to get comfortable and shut off the list of good intentions I ignored the previous day. The same accusations played on the turntable of my mind. You failed at body care, you did not practice your writing, you didn’t work on your vocational goals and you aren’t disciplined enough in your pursuit of God.  You are an imposter.

I counted my blessings.  I redesigned a dream house. Sleep remained elusive.

 

 

I asked God to help me pay attention to my thoughts and feelings. I noticed the accusing thoughts were around commitments I made to care for my health and to explore longings of my heart.  It occurred to me that I was experiencing stress caused by tension between what I believed to be true about how I was living and God’s truth, the riches of His grace lavished on me as His chosen, adopted, forgiven, redeemed and blessed daughter.

My response to my version of truth was instinctual.  I just have to try harder to live according to my vision of what I want my life to be. 

And how has that worked for me? Not well at all.

 

In frustration I wonder why I can’t be content with life as it is, comfortably routine. Why can’t I keep my desires buried? Why do I pay attention to that restless longing for more of God and more for my life?

 

More questions infiltrated my sleepy fog. What if my longings are from a good God who desires good things for his girl? What if I depended on His power to walk in His truth for my life? What if I could extend grace to myself for the mystery in my unanswered questions, trusting my good God for what is around the bend in my future?

When the light of morning woke me, the questions of the night still simmered in my soul. During my morning jog God stirred these practical promptings into the mixture:

 

Could you take a few small steps daily towards growing in these longings I’ve deposited in your heart?

Would you be willing to embrace your desires, that deep thrum in your soul, and trust my goodness to help you satisfy them?

Tackle a hard thing every day.

 

Notice your journey instead of fretting about the speed you are traveling. Or asking when you will get there!

 

Another expanse of grace opened for me. Small daily steps will move me towards satisfying the longings God places in my heart.  I will follow His heart and mine into my day, depending on Him to show me the way.

Whispers In A Photo Album

 

I walked on memory lane a few weeks ago. Following our granddaughter’s birth, her daddy’s baby pictures invited perusal. As I turned the pages of the photo album, I remembered the love in every cell of my body for the babe and the bone-tired exhaustion. 

 

I noticed the twenty-six year old me, brown eyes sparkly with joy and a big smile. A darling brand new mama. I noticed I looked prettier than I remember feeling in those post-partum days. What I recalled seeing reflected in the mirror was my body stretched and saggy with post-partum weight loss and my face pale with sleep deprivation.

My fifty-three year old eyes now see a pretty woman nurturing a healthy baby, loving a hard-working man, and creating a peaceful home. That young woman was good, full of love and dreams. She also had insecurities and self-criticism that kept her from being present to the daily opportunities and gifts in her life. I am sad over what my inner critic took from my twenty-six year old me.

 

As I wandered through the old photos, questions percolate in my heart. What might my someday older self say to me about this current season of my life? What grace would she offer?  What clarity?  What encouragement?

 

I hear God invite me to embrace my uniqueness, my strengths… and my limitations.  He offers me grace to be a learner and offers his presence as I examine my fears and insecurities. He reminds me of my belovedness as His perfectly human daughter.

 

These days I am grateful for my progress in releasing the need to control life. I am learning to accept imperfection when trying new things.  I am learning to move toward my fear rather than deal with the disappointment of lost opportunity.  I am learning to extend grace to myself just as God does for me.

 

 

When I am seventy-five years old and looking at old photos with my granddaughter, I want to see a woman who felt as beloved and beautiful as she was. And still will be.  And am right now… perfectly imperfect.

Dreaming Big, Starting Small

 

Our daughter has a saying about curtailing overeating that goes something like this, "There will always be a last bite, so I decide my last bite will be within healthy eating boundaries."  Stopping something enjoyable or habitual is one kind of hard.

There is another kind of hard that has to do with starting.  Beginning.  Made harder perhaps by my love of quick and instant.  My desires seem unattainable or take too long to realize.

The days, months, or years between making changes and getting the results I want seem dull and long and hard.  And perhaps the result of my work will not be as I imagined. 

So I stay where I am. Where it is safe. And a month from now, a year from now, I will be exactly where I've been.  Longing. Dreaming. Wondering. 

When I was training for a marathon five years ago, I remember how my sweat sisters and I celebrated shaving seconds... yes, seconds... off our time.  We celebrated tiny indicators of growth in speed and endurance.  We did the daily, mundane work of training and our bodies strengthened.  Twenty weeks later we finished a marathon! 

I have begun another adventure following a nudge from God.  The invitation wasn't written in big, bold letters. It feels risky to me.  I am releasing comfortable rhythms of work and life.  I am changing up familiar routines of  prayer in my relationship with God, exploring new-to-me spiritual practices in relating to God.  These practices involve listening and being with Him.  I'm back in a formal learning environment, taking classes in spiritual direction.  I'm a fifty-something wrestling with technology to do it.  I feel awkward.  Clumsy.  Vulnerable.  I wonder what in the world I am doing?

I celebrate small successes.  Things like successfully uploading assignments to Box, an internet site used by our facilitators to gather our homework;  the joy of reading words that show me this journey I'm on is one taken by many before me.  I notice my growth.  I listen better to my people.  I am more aware of my impact on others.  It's slow going, this trail I am on.  And if I hadn't started I'd still be where I was. 

 

I remember the brush tangled creek bank on our property twenty years ago.  I had a paper bag full of daffodil bulbs from my grandfather.  On a hot August Saturday, my husband and I cleared the bank and using a digging iron, made holes for the bulbs, dropped them in the rich soil and waited.  Summer.  Autumn. Winter.  Spring.   Science can explain the biology of daffodils.  We simply placed the bulbs in an environment for growing and trusted the process of growing things. And in the Spring, we had a glorious bank of sunny blooms!  Bountiful beauty!  They reproduce themselves and multiply!  It's called naturalizing.....it happens naturally.

And so I step out in hope of realizing a longing of my own.  I plant myself in an environment for growth.  I trust the Gardener, my beautiful, dangerous, tender God.  And we will see what He does with my seed of faith.  It is risky business, stepping into realizing dreams.  It is also exhilarating, opening an expanse of grace that is refreshingly freeing.

What nudge are you experiencing?  What small beginning are you being invited to?

For those of you interested in what I am up to, in September I began a two year certification process to become a spiritual director.  I quit my nursing job in December of 2011 after months of processing a prompting I sensed from God.  Not sure where I was going next I focused on taking care of our pastor (my husband), homemaking, being intentional about relationships, and growing in intimacy with God.  I started this blog and have been writing in fits and sputters.  In February of 2015 I learned of this training being offered at Kavannah House by Sustainable Faith.  After praying about it with my husband, my spiritual director and a dear friend, I applied and was accepted to the program.  The journey has been rich and scary.  Some weeks I feel as though I am drinking from a fire-hose, the learning coming at me crazy fast.  Other times I am overwhelmed with my own inadequacies.  Mostly I have a sense of being in a wilderness, somewhere between where I was and not sure where I'm headed, in an exhilaratingly liberating way.  It is as mysterious as that last sentence! 

 

I've been invited to contribute to the Kavannah House blog and I am grateful for the opportunity and the vote of confidence in my writing skills.  It will provide some accountability for this procrastinator.  God is working on redeeming my perfectionistic, controlling tendencies.  I am hopeful that as I worry less about getting it "right", whatever "it" happens to be, procrastination will be less a problem for me. 

Thank you for taking time to stop by and check in with me.  I hope I am an encouragement to you to step into all the color God has for your life!