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The Book Thief
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
On Gold Mountain
Bread & Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter
City of Tranquil Light: A Novel
The Distant Land of My Father
The Paris Wife
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Fall of Giants
Sabbath
World Without End
A Stolen Life
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
The Pillars of the Earth
Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation
The Road
Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
Cutting for Stone


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Entries in gratitude (8)

Friday
Mar232012

love song

Today I did something sneaky. I bought Joshua the Hunger Games book 1. It sits on his bed now waiting to captivate him. He’s been asking me for weeks now if he could read it. I need to read it first, I always said. This morning he wistfully told me that he had wanted to read it before his cousin Dan’s birthday. Dan’s plan is to go see the movie for his birthday. Newsflash. Today is Dan’s birthday. 

He’ll get this gift when he gets home. I won’t be here but later he’ll hug me big and say he loves me. He will forgive me for not getting it sooner. We’ll read it together and talk through all the characters and plot twists and turns.

I wait in anticipation for Joshua to get this gift. I’m probably more excited than he will be.

Today I’ve been hearing God’s love song to me. I’ve been noticing all the ways he spells  out his love in the magenta blooms falling like so much snow in my neighborhood. The scent of wisteria wafts in through the windows and reminds me that winter’s reign is done for now.

Tonight we will gather with seven other couples as we did fifteen years ago around this time. We dreamed together back then of a church. We desired to go deep in our faith and plant and give our lives together. As it happens with a mustard seed, God took our tiny dividend and blew it up. Fellowship Bible Church exceeds any of our dreams. 

As I prepared the sacred dip (recipe below), I raised one hand in worship. Who but You, God? Who but you? I thought of myself at 30 years old. I still worked hard at my faith. I hadn’t learned yet about resting. About how Jesus sat down when He got to Heaven and it was ok if I did too.

When I think of all the places we’ve been, I stand slack-jawed at the grace of God. Through victorious and joy-filled days and through the pits of hellish nightmares, God has walked with us. He’s never left us. All along, He’s doled out gifts.

He waits for me to find these gifts. Gifts He’s been anticipating me opening. And I hear the song of His love for me.

Sunday
Aug282011

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.

Thursday
Nov252010

Grateful Instead

This Thanksgiving, as I contemplate the year and what I am grateful for, I am aware of a space growing in my heart. Two years ago, I drew in my journal a root of bitterness. Turns out, I wrote on that root for quite a few months. I attempted to name the things that robbed me of gratitude. These things have another name: resentment. 

Nouwen writes, “Along with trust, there must be gratitude - the opposite of resentment. Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift. My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself as envy. Gratitude, however, goes beyond the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift.” The Prodigal Son.

In my thinking, resentment leads to bitterness. Resentment means bitter indignation at being treated unfairly. Entitlement is the thread in the fabric of resentment. I assume I know the “fair” way I should be treated. Over time, this entitlement weaves a web of resentment. And as these threads entangle us, a web of bitterness is cast. It binds us and deadens us to the miracle of life. 

I believe my resentment started with my parent’s divorce when I was 12. Shouldn’t I have two parents who love each other and faithfully stay together? I began to expect certain things in life (entitlement). I thought I knew the plan God had for me. This great web of deception became apparent to me upon our return from Honduras. We gave our lives away and I thought I knew the end to that. I thought I knew how things would turn out. When we came home, I was devastated on many levels. As I allowed myself to unravel before God, I came to Him with questions and wrestled honestly before Him. 

In my resentment, I had blamed God for the difficulties.

Only by God’s grace, I started to name the rhizomes. In the naming, they loosened. Finally, the root gave way to space.

The pulling up of the root of bitterness - the changing of the lens - the placing blame on evil, sin, and flesh instead of God - All created a womb-space in me, a place for God to come and dwell. Now this is surely not a one-time event but a life-time process.

As grace filled the spaces the root of bitterness left, new growth has bloomed. As grace fills the womb-space, I am seeing life as a gift. In the place of bitterness, I am grateful instead.

Mary's response to the angel changed her life to be sure. She said: “I am the Lord’s handmaiden. May it be as you have said.” Her yes grew from a microscopic zygote to a movement that has changed the world. May I have the courage, May you have the courage to say yes and create a microscopic space for God to come and dwell.

There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home and declared in a voice filled with affection: “You are with me always and all I have is yours.” Nouwen, The Prodigal Son

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