breathe

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. 

up side of shame

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.

like a child

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.

guts to hope

Few things speak hope like a puppy or a beautiful child. K still lives at Rancho Ebenezer and is 9.Not everyone understands how you can spin two lassos at the same time, one of hope and one of grief. Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

To hope takes guts. 

To hope is to join Adam and Eve again in the garden. A desire fulfilled is a tree of life. The phrase “tree of life” takes us back to Eden. The tree was in the middle of the garden. Next to it grew the other tree. The forbidden tree. We ate. We died. And we have struggled with hope ever since. But it also calls us to remember the end. We, as overcomers, will feast on the tree of life which is in the paradise of God (Rev. 2:7). The leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).

When we hope, we risk heart sickness. The vultures of disappointment surely have eaten more than once of our flesh. The reality is that often our hearts are sickened here on the other side of the Garden.

My family had hoped…

To remain in Honduras to love the children in our ministry

To build an addition to our school

To be there until Edgar graduated high school

I’ve heard of other brutal choices missionaries had to make to leave the children they were loving. I know what it is like to walk away. When the rubble of life overwhelms, you have to make a devastating choice. On the wall in our den in Honduras, I painted a tree. To me the tree represented life. A day came when we had to walk away. We placed the precious children back in the arms of the Shepherd who loved them before we had even seen their smiles. 

The grief that followed threatened to take my very breath away. 

My grief is not over. Grief doesn’t end. It evolves and blends and changes. It changes you. The things I grieve are far too precious for the grief to one day be “done.” Gradually, I am trusting God with my pain and my sons in Honduras. Over time, He is showing me that He is the Defender of the Weak. And He shows me that the Weak is mainly me. I can trust Him with the Weak – my Honduran sons – more when I can trust Him with the weak in me.

When I ask Him about evil – and I have asked - we don’t get much farther than. “It exists.” And, “I AM is bigger.” And, “I am more glorified because I can turn what men meant for evil into good and glory and purpose.” 

Faith has grown in my heart where I have allowed the Father to hold me in the pain. My strength and hope speak of a loving Father orchestrating a larger story here on earth. Often I don’t understand the “scenes” of this story, but I trust the Screenwriter.

When a desire is fulfilled, it is the hors d’oeuvre for the feast of heaven. Until then, we have hope.

We must so hunger for a different tomorrow that we risk losing today to gain it. Dan Allender

great things

A week ago God gave me a vision of what He has done for me. During worship, the glimpse came in less than an instant. My throat closed. My eyes teared. My hands went up. My spirit gave thanks.

Our family had entered our church just as the worship started. Who knows why in this instant God graced me with gratitude! And words cannot contain what that instant was like or what it did in the realms of eternity but I testify to it today.

In the instant of gratitude, I remembered.

I remembered a pregnant unmarried 23-year-old woman. Her nurse practitioner, Anne Moore, had just told her she was pregnant. She knew her life would never be the same. But Grace lead her to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. And they reminded her who her Jesus was and how He would care for her. 

That woman was me. 

Twenty years later with hands raised, I looked around the church at the two little boys with me and remembered and gave thanks for Matthew, 20, at UT. Matthew means “gift from God.” He is all of that. Grateful is a small word to describe a swelling heart underneath the flood of grace for his life.

I remembered a marriage that began with such a small seed of hope... mustard-seed hope. Two children, really, stood before their pastor, Scotty Smith, and pledged some heavy vows - vows they barely understood let alone had the gumption to actually accomplish. But Grace has chosen to give us twenty years together, three beautiful biological children, four Honduran sons and countless other “adopted” children. Jessi. Jason. Joey. Margaret. Anna. Erin. Sean. Robert. Jordyn. And many others.

I remembered a broken family returning from four years on the mission field devastated by the separation from the four boys who lived with us as sons and brothers. The loss threatened to shake our faith and take us under an emotional tsunami. But Grace unraveled us and wove us together again. 

My heart enlarged to receive God’s Spirit in gratitude. And all of that was BEFORE the the sermon! 

Lloyd told us the story of the demoniac in Luke 8:26-39. At the end of the passage is a heart-rending scene. After Jesus cast out the “legion” of demons into pigs, all of the people in the region were overcome with fear and asked Jesus to leave them. The freed man begs Jesus to let him go with Him. But Jesus sent him away saying, “Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you.”

They handed us all cards on which to write what great things God has done for us. This is my card... this blog posts describes in part what all God has done. It is part of a stream of grace. This stream is what Jesus has done for me that I could not do for myself. He reached in to a dead spirit and said, “LIVE!”

So often I let the chaos of life or the results of my sin or the consequences of the fall, suck the life from me. I am overcome with fear and often I ask Jesus to leave me. I am learning to let Jesus into those moments and not rage out against my perceived unfairness of life. He reigns in the chaos of this world.

I receive my marching orders: Go and describe what great things God has done for you.

I PROCLAIM and DESCRIBE to you a God who is at work... a Great God who is never surprised by sin or chaos or the fall. He loves you. Don’t in fear ask Him to leave.