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.

inner peace

My eyes flew open at 5:00 a.m. and my heart pounded in my chest from the nightmare. Matthew was alone, sick and desperate in the horrible scenario in the dream. This is a recurrent nightmare - one of my children is separated from me and in need. I cannot get to him. I had this nightmare many times in Honduras until it became REAL and I had to leave four of my sons there. That is another story. But the lesson is the same. 

A partial truth is the calling card of the Enemy. Matthew is sick. He has mono; we got the test results yesterday. He is not alone. He is not desperate. Nonetheless, I got up at 5:00 a.m. and began a battle to release my worries and fears to the Lord.

After making some Cuban petrol, aka strong Cuban coffee; I took up my post on the patio in the cool of the morning. Did you hear me? I said cool. What a change! Wrapped in a fuzzy brown blanket full of holes (Skip chews holes in every blanket we have), I opened my Battle Plan. Jesus Calling by Sarah Young lead me to Psalm 27. Verse 4 is my verse for 2011. One thing is the theme of this blog... I will seek ONE THING. 

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. 

And so I began to realize the two scenarios in Psalm 27. There is an internal truth: David says, “The Lord is the stronghold of my life.” Then there is the external truth: a day of trouble. Evil men are advancing to devour his flesh. He has oppressors, false witnesses breathing violence, an army besieging him. 

While all this swirls about David, his private world is at peace because the Lord is his stronghold. Inside there is light. He is safe. He is sacrificing with shouts of joy. He is confident and singing. He calls out to the Lord. He asks to learn His ways. Both of his eyes are gazing upon the beauty of the Lord. His soul says to seek the face of the Lord. He is hidden in the shelter of the Lord’s tabernacle.

The concluding verse says:

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

Yes, Lord, I will wait. Meanwhile, I will trust and give thanks and gaze.

open hands

This thought floated through my mind as I reached for a pecan I had toasted. Really, the only manner to overcome addiction is moment by moment.

The irony was not lost on me.

I was not hungry at the moment. The pecan was just there at the wrong place and the wrong time. Well, that is my excuse.

A lot of things are up in the air for me right now. As both children enter school in a few days, I am faced with a lot of space and a number of choices. Space is what I have longed for and wanted. When facing space dead on, one can become paralyzed by fear. I’ll never forget snorkeling and swimming suddenly over an area where the ocean floor literally dropped off into eternity. The space massive space threatened to envelop me. It was a moment of terror looking into that deepest blue and realizing how small I was/am.

Gerald May, in Addiction and Grace, talks about the space left behind when one curtails an addictive behavior. “Although this emptiness is really freedom, it is so unconditioned that it feels strange, sometimes even horrible. If we were willing for a deeper transformation of desire, we would have to try to make friends with the spaciousness; we would need to appreciate it as openness to God.”

Living with that space is difficult and exciting. There is no other way to do it than moment by moment.

May goes on: 

The purest acts of faith always feel like risks. Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking. Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly, at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak. It is where our personal power seems most defeated that we are given the most profound opportunities to act in true faith. The purest faith is enacted when all we can choose is to relax our hands or clench them, to turn wordlessly toward or away from God. This tiny option, the faith Jesus measured as the size of a mustard seed, is where grace and the human spirit embrace in absolute perfection and explode in world-changing power. Gerald May, Addiction and Grace, p. 128

Will I clench my hands around the pecan (the idol) or will I relax them and let God fill the emptiness? Will I turn wordlessly toward Him?

convergence

Matt found this little nest in a fern hanging on our front porch. He said he went to water it and two eyes looked back at him. We actually discerned two little birds in the nest. They flew away but left one egg.con-verg-ence: noun \kən-ˈvər-jən(t)s\
: the act of converging and especially moving toward union or uniformity; especially : coordinated movement of the two eyes so that the image of a single point is formed on corresponding retinal areas

The reason I want convergence in my life is my desire for my life to point to ONE THING. The one egg in the little nest on the masthead of this blog is symbolic of that ONE THING. It is captured in the psalmist’s heart in Psalm 27:

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. verse 4

One way I seek this one thing is to bring all the parts of me to the bountiful table of grace. Early on in my life and walk with Christ, I only allowed the parts of myself that were “together” to come feast hiding those more unattractive, needy parts. The Pharisee in me ruled this table. Through pain and suffering, God has allowed me to become more grace-filled to invite all of me there. Sometimes when I see a particular area of sin or a “me” that I don’t much like, I visually invite that version of me to the table of grace. 

Before you freak out, this is not a Sybil-like experience, but the realization that I am made up of various parts. There is the part of me that is so terrified of snakes that I left a toddler (safe in a pack n play, ok) and ran for my life when one flopped out in front of me.  Matthew (now 20) played while I cleaned up the yard. About 15 yards away, I unwrapped the spigot that had been covered tightly for winter so that it did not freeze. As I unwound the wrapping, a snake fell out of it. No conscious decisions were made, I just fled. I looked back after about 30 seconds and saw my toddler in the pack n play and ran back and grabbed him. Screaming. Flailing. Crying. In that moment, I had to face the facts that given life-threatening situations, I may or may not protect my children first. Scary. True.

So that scared mother who had failed her baby... she has to come to the table of grace. The ugly parts of me that love to gossip. The liar. The manipulator. The smart aleck. The cynic. These parts must partake. In fact, the pharisee must come and eat. 

As these parts converge at the table of grace, I experience wholeness in Christ. 

honoring loss

As the arroz con pollo rounded the table, each person spooned a mouthful of Honduras on their plate. With the taste buds stimulated, our memories came alive. In this way, we honored the fifth anniversary of our return from Honduras on Tuesday, August 2.

We lived in Honduras for a little over four years and over that time four boys lived with us as foster sons: Franklin and Edgar (brothers now 21 and 19), Rodolfo, 12, and Junior, 9. We deeply cherish our experiences there. In fact, this blog exists to honor it and share the hope we have gleaned from it. You can find another post on the fourth anniversary of our return under “remembering honduras” posted August 2, 2010.

And so on the fifth anniversary of our return, dear friends we met while in Honduras shared a delectable Honduran meal to honor the day. Jennifer and Denny dropped in on their way from Austin, TX to Washington DC. They ooohed and ahhed over the chismól, a Honduran relish. I marveled at God’s providence in providing dear friends to accompany us on this important day.

Earlier that morning, overwhelming gratitude had greeted me at 5:00 and I sat with the Lord on our patio and told Him how thankful I was for all He had done. I recounted the people who have walked with us well through loss, grief and finding hope. Some of the ways He has healed me floated across my mind and I opened them like a loaf, gave thanks and ate of the bounty spiritually.  He spoke back to me through His Love Letter with Psalm 21:6-7:

Surely I have granted you with eternal blessings and made you glad with the joy of My Presence. For my daughter trusts in Me, her Lord; through the unfailing love of the Most High, she will not be shaken.

As I got ready for bed that night, something in my gut said that this day was incomplete. I did not want it to end. Curious about that, I asked myself some questions. I realized that while most of me felt that gratitude and joy, part of me still held some deep sadness. I had honored the majority but avoided the sorrow. Honoring sadness and sorrow is a conundrum of hard work, discernment and just plain difficulty.

In fact, I would rather iron than sit with my sadness. On the anniversary, I had some quiet time and I could have chosen to attend to the sadness of soul. Instead, I pulled out the iron and caught up on about a year’s worth of ironing. I mean, it was ok and all but really it reveals to me the lengths I will go to in order to avoid feeling sorrow.

Haven’t we already done this, Lord. Haven’t I cried enough tears already? Do I need to be sad again? Is it ok for me to forget the loss, the feelings of desperation? 

Over time I had walled off the sorrow and for the sake of survival, given in to letting it sit behind a shell unattended. To truly honor the day and the preciousness of the loss, I had to knock a little hole in the shell and let the sorrow leak out. 

This morning, I wrote a letter to Junior who will turn nine in October. The youngest of our Honduran boys, he was almost four when we left. Couch it however you will, our leaving inflicted a deep wound to Junior, our other boys and maybe even other people. We as a family have certainly suffered and grieved. Grace and perhaps time will re-frame our sons’ losses and one day I pray they find healing. But the pain in my heart asks, why did we have to leave, especially young Junior? Why isn’t it enough that we want him and he needs parents. I won’t be able to answer those questions today. In fact, understanding is not required for me to trust God. Surrender is imperative. Naming the pride in me that says my plan would be better is compulsory. But understanding is a luxury I won’t have this side of heaven.

Dan Moseley writes, “losing someone significant involves a loss to the body as well. Loss is a physical experience. The body has ways of knowing that seem to ignore the mind and heart... When we spend time telling the story of loss, we are trying to cause the body to come to terms with the loss.”

I am telling this story today in hopes that my body, my spirit, my soul can converge in more healing. I am telling it to honor our time and experience in Honduras. I am telling it to bring glory to the Sovereign Lord of the Universe. Grief or sorrow over the loss will always be with me but perhaps I can avoid self-pity and a plethora of other pitfalls by the telling.

Moseley goes on to say, “It could be said that through remembering we come to ‘full body’ knowing. When we tell of the one we have lost, we are integrating our body, mind, heart, and soul so that all of who we are fully experiences the truth of the loss.” 

I wrote the letter to Junior more as an exercise for my heart and soul. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to give it to him. Writing it honored him as a human being and as a son I had the privilege to mother for a season albeit brief. May God help us as we attempt to walk out His will and love from a place of wholeness and truth. 

Update on 08.5.2011 by gigi

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6