I do. And the beach is the perfect place for it. Sometimes we get clogged up or weary. Sometimes the soul is tired from carrying things it is not meant to carry. Sometimes the body gets exhausted. 

Even God rested. Surely I can admit that I need to be refreshed. 

Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed. Exodus 23:12

The verse above uses the Hebrew verb napesh and it means to be refreshed as if by a current of air. I’ll add a gulf breeze.

It can also mean to take a breath and it is a close relative of the verb in Genesis 2:7 “to breathe” describing the moment when God breathed into us life and deposited our souls. 

Soul and breath are inseparable.

When a newborn enters the world, the first milestone is that first breath. It’s as if all movement in the room stops and waits... is he going to breathe? 

Imagine going from a warm, dark environment where sound is muted and movement buffered by amniotic fluid to this world. The bright lights of a delivery room must be traumatic and that baby must feel frigid. And then he has to breathe on his own. Oxygen is no longer delivered via a nice placental tube. No, no, buddy. Breathe! On your own!

Breathing is our first response to our first trauma.

How is it, then, when I feel stress, I forget to breathe? Recently a dear friend reminded me to breathe. When you exhale, she said, you surrender. Upon inhalation, receive. I’ve been practicing this using that handy but often forgotten and under-rated muscle: the diaphragm. 

When you inhale, the diaphragm should push out and your belly looks full and round like a pregnant lady. When you use the muscle to exhale properly, all the air is pushed out of the bottom of the lungs. Frequently when we are stressed, we breathe out of the top portion of our lungs. 

All this musing of breaths and breathing landed me in Genesis 2:7. 

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. 

So getting back to the basics of breathing sets us up to remember that we are creatures. God breathed us into life. His breath became our souls. We are spiritual beings with our spirits given from the Creator of the Universe.  

My breathing is primal and it reminds me of that first breath when God placed his lips upon mine and delivered life into me. 

This is Sam - artist, philosopher, motorcycle rider.To live with regret is to be human.

Regret means a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done. It can refer to sorrow over the loss or absence of something. The opposite of regret is shamelessness. To live without shame or regret is to deny being human. 

As I look back on 2011, I have some regret, even shame, to be sure. I look at some areas and postulate, “well, that was just not at all perfect.” Some places I had resolved to “fix” or “address” moved about like a glacier. Frankly, I failed in some areas. 

I’m thankful for cycles or seasons that the Lord gives us. Every morning, He says, His mercies are new. A heart that won’t admit regret can’t open up to receive mercy. Conversely, a heart that is willing to feel healthy shame (admission to limits) is poised to receive a showering of grace and mercy. When we admit our failures and humbly reach out for Someone bigger, we can ask for His help and admit that His plan is better. 

This morning my six-year-old, Sam, woke up crying with a sore “frope,” his word for throat. As I ladled honey-laden tea into his mouth, he stunned me with a question. He is full of questions these days like “What is your favorite word” or “planet” or “number.”  He sputtered between sips, “Do you have to get hurt?” Groping  for context I asked a few questions. He gets so frustrated when I don’t understand. I asked him, “Do you mean generally, in life?” He shook his head yes. 

“Yes, Sam,” I said, “living in this world, everybody gets hurt at one time or the other.”

Today I want to recognize my human limitations and accept the help of a God who is infinitely bigger than me and mysterious.

This Christmas one of our Honduran sons, Franklin, visited us. We are so grateful.The prophet prepares the way…

I don’t know what it is about November but it wears me out. Every November I groan as we enter December. Usually about the second week of Advent, I realize that the first Sunday of the season flew by me in a blur.  I lament to myself: I am already tired and the holidays are coming.

The story I want to share is from a November that we lived in Honduras probably 2004. This particular November ended with a visit from my mama. I had my own little Christmas miracle as Mama and I bustled about Tegucigalpa shopping, cooking, visiting and having fun. But that is another story. 

This December began with a prophet staying with us. He called himself a prophet. He walked like a prophet, talked like a prophet, dressed like a prophet; so I guess he was a prophet. Modern Sansabel polyester pants and a cowboy hat replaced the usual goat-skin tunic. Prophets are ok to have around, maybe even necessary, but they are not very good house-guests. There is a reason Elijah and John the Baptist lived in the wilderness. 

I knew it would be bad when I arrived home after a day of shopping in the city (by this time Mama was back in Mississippi) and Matt told me the prophet would be eating dinner with us. I was aware he would be staying with us but I thought he would be eating in the “Big House.” We were living on Rancho Ebenezer and guests usually stayed there and ate their meals there. The prophet had come to lead a conference. That wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was that Matt tried to help me with dinner and burned the tortilla chips he was frying. I slammed a few cabinets and the prophet kept bringing up my behavior at dinner. He complimented Matt on the near black chips. It went downhill from there. 

Like John the Baptist, our prophet came before Jesús …

All that was to say we were tired as a family… tired from November, tired from the prophet. That’s why we decided to visit only one family Saturday. We hosted construction brigades here every other week to build out the Ranch with houses. The abandoned children who were a part of WGO lived in “foster” type situations with a mother and father. Four Honduran boys lived with us. We loved them as sons.

Our family was in charge of outreach to the poor families living in the mountain nearby. We would take the construction teams to visit two families, share a few testimonies, and leave them with some gifts. Out of convenience, we “picked” Sandra’s family. She worked on the Ranch. She was an easy choice because she was at the prophet’s conference. Jesús is Sandra’s brother and in this story he is the prodigal. Jesús is a common name in Honduras. In Spanish it is pronounced “hay” like horses eat and “seus” like Dr. Seus. Just say “hay” “seus.” 

Our family visits Jesús …

Saturday morning the team from South Dakota loaded up and we headed down the mountain to Sandra’s house. When we first arrived, Jesús was hugging the barb wire fence in the shadows far outside our circle of missionaries. He was wearing an earring in his left ear. Nobody wears an earring in Honduras except maybe gang members. He wore a hard expression. I worried he may be a gang member as I scooted our children closer to the circle.

As we shared with Jesús the love Jesus had for him, Jesús began inching toward our circle on their tiled patio. The team began to get excited. Everyone piped in and asked questions. Jesús understood that God loved him. He knew he was a creation of God but not a son of God. He was without Jesus and without eternal security. Our discussion resembled a ping pong match between 14 people. All of us were praying. We felt the spiritual battle for this man’s soul. I could not translate fast enough.

It’s all about the cigars…

It all came down to cigars. Jesús thought he must give up cigars to come to Jesus. We lent our voices in a feeble attempt at explaining grace. We told Jesús about the Holy Spirit that would guide him and work in him to change him. We come to Jesus, we added, broken and needy not tidy and fixed.

The prodigal comes home...

As our family and the team gathered round about Jesús, he confessed with his mouth the belief that was in his heart. We could almost hear the hallelujah chorus. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The only picture I have of Jesús is one that burns in my mind’s eye. I’ll never forget the look on his face…the joy radiating from his countenance as he wiped away tears of gratitude. The internal war had ceased. The prodigal was home. The sheep was with his shepherd.

Deck the hearts…

Sitting in church the next day, I fought a panic attack as they lit the second advent candle and I realized that I had “missed” a quarter of Advent. Not one Christmas decoration decked my halls. But Christ had decked my heart. I pondered the story of Jesús and treasured it in my heart. This wayward missionary was called back to the true meaning of Christmas by Jesús. 

The prophet had prepared the way. 

The prodigal lead me. 

I am in awe of such perfect grace.

The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. John 1:14

I’m still in awe even as I sit here and remember those few years ago how He lead us and cared for us. And now He is still preparing a way and leading and astonishing me.

Merry Christmas!!!

If I am not poor in spirit, Christmas will not come to me. The other morning, I sat reading from my journal of 2011. I felt sad and perplexed that some of my goals had not been realized. I asked Jesus what is up with that. He answered me in my Advent readings with a quote from Oscar Romero. The poem is below:

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even for God - for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

Christmas is a time of giving. We like to think of ourselves as givers. I have been motoring about buying presents, flying through cyberspace bargain hunting. But have I thought of myself as a receiver? 

In Sam’s oral presentation about Christmas for kindergarten, he gushed about how opening presents is our favorite Holiday tradition. He has no misguided self-concept of being a giver. This boy knows how to receive. Tear open the package and dig in. 

As I have grown up, I have forgotten what it is like to receive. If I want Christmas to come, I must open my arms wide to receive the bounty that Christ brings. I must empty myself of all my vein notions and haughty thoughts that I am generous. The truth is that I am needy, broken, destitute. I need grace. 

I want to recover the child-like joy of receiving the Present this Christmas.

The Divine wrapped on flesh and entered our world. We celebrate this mammoth event with Christmas. We acknowledge the waiting with Advent. 

I’ve been musing the incarnation. 

As I talked about it with friends, I realized that even the term “incarnation” should be reserved for the event when the seed of God entered a woman and produced Jesus. It is holy. That holy. But what’s got me going is that God’s spirit dwells in me... a sort of little “i” incarnation. Or, let’s don’t call it that, it’s something else. What do we call it? 

In the timeline, after Jesus ministered here on earth, he ascended into Heaven. He said he would not leave us as orphans and he sent the Holy Spirit a little while later. That Holy Spirit indwells me. That’s what it is... an indwelling.

His Spirit communes with my spirit. The spark of life. The holy in the human. 

This morning before dawn, I lit the Winter Forrest candle and turned on the Christmas tree lights. My hands smelled like OxyClean from the t-shirts I soaked in the sink just before I sat down with my Advent book. And I began to read about Zechariah, a herald of Advent. 

The laughter bubbled up from deep within me as I pictured him gesturing wildly to the breathless audience outside the Holy of Holies. You know he went in there at risk to his own life. They put a bell on his robe and a rope around his leg so they could pull him out if he keeled over. He must have jumped so at the sight of Gabriel there by the alter that he almost burned his robe with the incense. Gabriel announced that old man Zechariah would have a son, John the Baptist. Ole Zech didn’t believe. He said, “How can I know this is true?” Gabriel struck him mute because he did not believe. And out Zech goes to try to tell the audience why he can’t speak and why he is wild with anticipation and why his robe is smoldering.

I’m so thankful Zechariah is included in this story and his unbelief is no stumbling block for the gospel. Zechariah is a herald of Advent to us. And if Advent is nothing else, it is the celebration of the collision of the holy and the human.

Things break.

Here on earth, everything breaks, wears out, corrodes. This morning I found this favored angel from the nativity scene with his wings discarded nearby. Sam owned up to wrestling with Gabriel. A new Christmas scene is written in the McMurray house. 

Last month goes down in history as one of the most horrible in my life. My mother landed in the hospital with a life-threatening MRSA infection. A situation with a family member sat in my gut and my mind constantly replayed the scene. What if I had said that? What if I had pointed out this? Friends in crisis. Conflicts. Disease. Death. Dreary grey weather. November had it all.

Through all of this, God called my heart heavenward. Confident of his presence with me, I breathed prayers like the Jesus one. Inhale and say, “Jesus Christ, son of God.” Exhale and say,  “have mercy on me a sinner.” One day as I ran to my car late to meet someone, a rainbow appeared through the gray dreary clouds. I gasped aloud. Awe. 

On the same day, I drove down a gorgeous Tennessee back road and something at the tree-line caught my eye. A horse? No. I saw the antlers. It was the biggest buck I have ever seen majestically ruling ore the plain. I pulled over and watched it from a distance. Awe.

To see something extraordinary and to try to put words around it is to muse.

Awe is the first step to worship. If I understand something, I will never think myself smaller than it. I am learning that life is hard and there is good in the hard and hard in the good. 

The angel proclaimed peace (wholeness) on earth, good news to men. His wings dazzled the shepherds. They fell on their faces in worship. 

Things may break here on earth but there will come a day when it will all be new.

As December goes by in a blur, I'm taking some time to look for the holy. As often happens, the first Sunday of Advent blew past me. I counted Christmas Sunday and therefore miscalculated the first day of the season. My church has chosen not to light the candles on the Advent wreath so I sat through the service none the wiser. It was Wednesday before I picked up my Advent book and realized my error.

In this season, I need a yellow light to slow me down... Even a red light to stop me. A busy, fast life swirled around a cold, damp stable as the King of Wonder entered his human tent. Why should I be surprised if it is the same for me today?

Yesterday Skip, my dog, and I took a hike by the river. Several times I stopped in my tracks as the beauty of heaven and nature singing took my breath away.

NO ROOM, was the Innkeeper's response.

I want to make space for God-child today in my heart.

In August I visited my friend Val and her mother, Cheryl. This post is dedicated to them.The thing about joy is that it is compatible with pain. 

This past Thursday, the earthly army of believers lost a valiant warrior. Cheryl Mong, mother of my dear friend Val Schubert, went home to the arms of her Savior. She battled fiercely for the Kingdom, for her family, and finally against breast cancer. We surely feel the loss. I would like to dedicate this post to her. She lived a life worthy of the gospel. Her life testified to the fact that pain and joy can reside in the same tabernacle. 

I am aware that a great many in the body are hurting, suffering. I have to suppress a cringe when I hear some good-natured Christian exclaim “it was so God!” when something turned out exactly right for her. Haven’t we all had seasons where things didn’t “work out” as we had planned? And can’t we say that God’s grace was upon us during it?

I went through just such a season of unraveling after our return from Honduras.

Often I felt that my brokenness was not welcome in church. In all fairness, our pastors teach correctly on brokenness and pain. We do not hear a prosperity gospel. Nonetheless, I perceived that “there was no room in the Inn” for my suffering and pain. I watched video stories touting larger than life images of lives given away, healed from bondage, stretched and molded.  God had come through for them.

Yet I could not reconcile that with my experience of giving my life away and finding myself beaten up and mauled. Nobody wanted to see my story on the 40x40 video screen. I know other stories of heartbreak. I will share a few. A young man goes to Mexico to be a missionary and becomes so distraught with the suffering of children that he begins to starve himself to death surviving on one tomato a day. He loses his faith and to this day is an atheist. A missionary couple leaves medical practices and head to South America. They decide to return home because their children are not doing well. Thirty days later he walks away from his family and his faith. Another couple prays for years about adoption and decides God has called them to it. They invest over $25,000 to rescue a baby from an overseas orphanage. The government shuts down the adoption program for no good reason. They never see their money again or the baby God seemingly had called them to. It happens. People walk into situations/ministries that they believe God has called them into and the house falls in around them. Marriages over. Friendships destroyed. Children abused or abandoned. Ministries lost. Lives changed often appearing to be ruined.

Lest we feel like square pegs in round holes, look at Hebrews.  Our forefathers “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:35-38.

Lewis Smedes said something like this: The true test of joy’s integrity is this: is it compatible with pain? Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy. 

Sometimes pain invades our lives and takes our breath away. We don’t often talk about it at church, that life often doesn’t work out as planned - the elephant in the sanctuary. There are times when this Christian life does not look so great. In fact, life sucks. This colloquialism is biblically accurate. 

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33. 

I just want to admit that often my life does not follow the four point plan I had. Whose does? Babies die. Father’s get colon cancer. Marriages fail. Children are sexually abused. Tribulation. Hell yeah, and how. When he says, “take heart!” It’s not take two verses and call me in the morning. It is this: take courage, be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. He has won! 

My cheer comes from knowing that one day - like Cheryl - I will see Him face to face. He is far, far angrier about evil than I am. He will end it one day in a lake of burning sulfur.  He will wipe every one of my tears away! He is my shield and my very great reward. 

And yet it may happen in these the most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness. 

Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger, and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing for nothing endures. It is all sound and fury with no ultimate significance.

The dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can be learned only from the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

Living in the awareness of the risen Christ is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life. It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence. All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ. Everything that happens to us is designed to this end.  - Brennan Manning

D sat before me an incredibly beautiful 40 something year old woman with track marks littering her arms. She had come into the clinic to be followed for a hepatitis C infection she contracted while shooting up heroin. She said she knew something was wrong because she no longer felt the effects of her pain meds. See, she has chronic pain. The damage to her liver prevented her pain killers from having an effect anymore. She said to me, “Have you ever known something in your gut yet you didn’t want to know the truth?” Her eyes, dim and tired, bore straight through me. “Yes,” I answered. Yes I have.

On Sunday we (at Fellowship Bible Church) looked at a beautiful passage of Scripture, Luke 9:37-50. This tale takes us from the Transfiguration where Jesus is seen by James, John and Peter chatting it up with Moses and Elijah and spits us out at an argument among the disciples about who is the greatest. In the middle of this saga, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to be betrayed. They don’t want to know the truth. They can’t handle the truth as Jack Nickolson so eloquently shouted in the courtroom during the movie A Few Good Men.

One of the ways the disciples avoid the truth is by comparing and arguing about who is the greatest. Wow. Toddler-like. And yet, I am like Peter. I just want to build a shelter on the mountain and stay there. But we must come down to the reality of this fallen world. This is where it gets hard. Can I stay present? 

I would judge D with her scarred and hardened veins except for the fact that I get what she has done. In fact, I have done it myself. I have not shot up heroin. But I have used the Word of God - I have used religion - as so much heroin. I have split theological hairs to avoid the darkness of my own heart. I have spouted verses like quick fixes. I have used the Bible as a self-help manual instead of a collection of stories to lead me into the Throne Room of the Present.

How does Jesus handle his disciples, his friends? How does He handle D with her broken liver? How does He handle me with my “big religion?” By bringing a child to His side and saying, “Whoever accepts this child as if the child were me, accepts me. And whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me. You become great by accepting, not asserting. Your spirit, not your size, makes the difference.” (Luke 9:48)

See, he knew the disciples puffed up because they were feeling rather small and afraid. And he wanted them to know that it’s ok to feel small, vulnerable. In fact, that is where life is at: remaining vulnerable and undefended in this present fallen world and letting God take up our defense. He hung out with drunks, prostitutes and gluttons because they knew they were broken. The Pharisees hid their brokenness. He called them “white-washed tombs.” 

I don’t have to assert myself and become puffed up and big because the Greatest Man in the Universe became small and died so that I might live. Jesus says, “Become more by becoming less. Accept the least of these and accept Me.”

I only have access to the Spirit in This Present Moment. Can I be aware instead of asserting myself? Can I accept the least of these? Can I understand that the least of these lives in me? When I accept her, I can give grace more freely and genuinely to others.

Recently I have had to look at an argumentative side of me. I had to accept that I still carry around quite a bit of guilt. As I lay the guilt down and acknowledge my powerlessness, God’s Spirit rests on my spirit. I can accept my smallness and know that He is Big Enough. I can be generous in spirit. 

I don’t have to assert, just accept.

I’m so grateful the Word of God includes stories of confused and hardened men who brushed shoulders with Jesus and had their shells blown off. I can hardly follow this story with all its twists and turns! But this I can get...

Treasure and ponder these words! (Luke 9:44)

I will treasure them. I will muse.