Tag: God

Inevitable Grief

The last time I wrote I had a euphoric Monday and I felt joy bubbling through me and I wanted to share that in my post. But as I went to post my blog, I had a superstition-driven thought that if I post about how happy I am, then bad things are going to happen to make me not happy. And while I don’t believe in superstition, I also know that life is hard, things happen. So I wasn’t overly surprised when the very next day I took my elderly dog to the vet and found out that he has advanced stages of cancer. 

And then, when I said goodbye to my two daughters who moved out of state these past two weeks, I discovered that while I am happy for them, excited about their futures, when I hugged them goodbye and watched them walk out the door, my heart did take a blow. 

I look around me, the world is still a beautiful place. Even as I write at this moment I can see the setting sun lighting up the trees, making them glow, showing off all their oranges and reds and leftover tinges of green. And I know that Jesus and his creation is beautiful. I can hear my two little boys playing a game with their twenty-two year old brother, and I am thankful for my older children and their patience and love and care for their younger siblings. I am aware of how over-abundantly I am cared for. A warm, cozy home. A husband who loves me and takes care of his family. A church where I can experience God’s presence and hear his word taught. 

Joy is still present, hovering on the edges of my life, waiting to be noticed. But I realized today that I am holding a lot of tension in my body. 

When I found out about my dog, the vet said we have a maximum of six months left, but could be a lot less. She gave me some pain medicine to give him (which has really helped) and told me what to look for to know if he’s in pain. We don’t want him to suffer and plan to take him back to the vet before he reaches that point. But how do I know when it’s the right time? Right now, he’s happy to see the kids and sleeps most of the day, but he’s a really low-maintenance dog and doesn’t complain so I’m worried that I will miss out on some clue and might inadvertently let him suffer when he doesn’t need to. And I find myself tensing up. Stiffen that backbone. Don’t relax. Be on alert. Must keep the dog from suffering. Must prepare for the grief of the kids who have grown up with this dog and love him dearly. Brace myself. 

My daughters officially packed up and left. I stiffened my backbone. This is a normal part of parenthood, letting go. Must be there for them as they make this transition. Must help the kids deal with their grief as their sisters are no longer easily accessible. Must keep a positive face on it, the girls don’t need to feel any guilt about leaving, I must not show sadness or it might make them feel sad. Brace myself. 

We have an election this week. I stiffen my backbone. Don’t watch the news. Scroll past all the political posts on social media. Don’t engage. Try not to think about the months to come as the potential for drama is high as one side has to concede to the other. Brace myself. 

And I think all this tension has to do with my poor handling of emotions. I have a history of not doing hard emotions. I ignore them. Suppress them. Distract myself from them. Rush over them. And I am at a place in life where I now realize that repressing the hard emotions means also repressing the good emotions. And these hard emotions don’t go away, they just hide and wait, disguising themselves as anger and depression. So, I know that my method of dealing with hard emotions is not right, not healthy. But it’s a really hard habit to break. 

Frankly, I think what I need is a good cry. Release. Take a pause for sadness. When I think of grief I think of the biggest losses I can think of: death of a child, a parent, a spouse. Pain that is so deep we don’t even want to imagine it. But grief is also for the inevitable losses. The ones we know have to happen, there is no surprise or shock, but they are still heavy.  Saying goodbye to your children’s dog who has loved your family faithfully for twelve years. Saying goodbye to your beautiful wonderful daughters who have grown into amazing young women, ready to take on the world. Recognizing how unhealthy our political environment is in our country and just acknowledging how sad that is. 

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

So, I go into this next week with an odd prayer. Lord, let me be sad, let me feel. Let me un-stiffen my back bone and instead embrace the pain, trusting that it’s ok to feel these emotions, that truly, this is the only way forward. Knowing that joy still hovers on the edges, waiting for it’s time. 

Wonderful Beautiful Monday

It’s a bright crisp Monday morning and I just got home from a two mile walk with my dog through the neighborhood. The sun was making the world glitter and the trees were just starting to show off their new autumn streaks of red and gold. It was cool enough to wear a thick sweater, but not freezing. Basically, just a perfect Fall morning. The song “To God be the Glory” has been running through my head since we sang it in church yesterday and I woke up humming it as I started my day. 

We had a really busy weekend and I’m looking forward today to just being home, keeping the laundry going, practicing piano, starting a new book I’m doing with a women’s bible study, maybe reading some more of my fun book I’m working on too. 

I feel happy. Joyful. And thankful. Because I know that this joy and happiness is a gift from God. It’s not my normal way of starting a Monday. The gift is that somehow God made himself present in my thoughts first thing today. Instead of waking up feeling tired and grumpy from having to get up early, stressing about the busy week ahead, I woke up singing. That was not something that I manufactured and did because I’m just a great person. Only the work of the Holy Spirit can make me wake up cheerful on a Monday morning. 😀

Last night before I went to bed, I finished the last chapter of “The Heart of Jesus How He Really Feels About You” by Dane Ortlund. I loved how the author ended the book. He concluded that instead of trying to figure out how we can take all the lessons we learned in the book and apply them to our lives, instead we just need to follow Matthew 11:28 and “Come to Jesus”. Bask in his love for us, his forgiveness, his heart for us. Just go to Jesus. Be with him. 

When you learn that Jesus is not angry with you. That his forgiveness is eternal, he is rich in mercy, that he yearns for us, that he is gentle and lowly, that his ways of loving and showing mercy are so much higher than our ways of loving and showing mercy. When you learn that he is gracious and slow to anger, that he is a tender friend, that his heart is beautiful. When you learn these things and then realize that you can actually spend every moment of your day with this God who loves you so richly. That you can talk to him and share your life with him, every good and bad moment. That you can spend your days seeing his goodness surrounding you and be able to thank him personally, and continually..Oh, what a wonderful day it is when you can live this out. 

This Monday is no different from any other Monday. There’s work to be done, stress to live through. Things will break. Money will come up short. Kids will fuss and fight. Bad news will show up. But, oh the difference, when you start the day with Jesus, feel his love, see his goodness. What a wonderful, beautiful Monday it is. 

Basking in Kindess

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the kindness of God. I have been adapting to being a stay-at-home mom whose kids are now all in school all day. Trying to figure out what I should be doing with the extra windows of time I suddenly have. I teach piano lessons one full day a week and one evening a week, and it takes at least three full days to keep up with all the laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning and errands, plus room to handle all the non routine things like doctor’s appointments etc which left me with one day during school hours where I felt like I really could be doing more with my time. And I’ve worried about it. Should I go volunteer somewhere? A homeless shelter? A soup kitchen? Tutor kids in need? I had no idea what I should be doing. And I felt like God had something in mind and it would be obvious when I found it. 

Now, do I like volunteering? It really depends on what the task is. I am very capable of talking to strangers, but I’m shy and introverted and it takes a lot out of me to make myself do that. I would much prefer to be sweeping the floor in the back room than to be in a position where I am talking to lots of people. So, I didn’t jump into anything. Just waited. 

But, this goes a little deeper. I think most of my life I have lived in expectation that I am the one who needs to do the hard things. There’s not enough cookies for everyone, I’ll go without. The cat threw up on the floor, I’ll clean it up. We all just had a fun time at the party, now I’ll clean up all the mess. Part of that is just being an adult with kids. It’s the adult’s job to sacrifice and take on the harder, less pleasant tasks. But, I think it goes deeper than that. And I’m struggling to put it into words, but the closest I can come to is, “God is always going to expect me to do things that I don’t really enjoy and that require a lot of self-sacrifce, because someone needs to do it, and I and I am dependable, and in the middle of it all, it will make me build character.” 

So, with all that background in mind, a couple weeks ago I attended a women’s bible study at the church where my children go to school. And during introductions another friend mentioned I played piano, and long story short, the choir teacher for my kids school who was also at the Bible study revealed that she could really use someone to play piano for her choir classes and performances, was I interested? Um, yes. 

And I walked out of the Bible Study that evening just stunned at the kindness of God. If someone asked me what my dream volunteer job was, I would have said anything involving music. But of course, that’s frivolous. No one actually NEEDS someone to play piano for them during school hours… Except for the choir teacher at my kids’ school!

I know this is all part of my journey to understanding the love of God for me. And what a wonderful journey it is. 

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips shall praise You. Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.Psalm 63: 3-4

Upstairs Downstairs Truth

I’m reading a book called “The Deconstruction of Chrisitianity: What it is, Why it’s Destructive, and How to Respond” by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. I’m only up to chapter 7, but it’s been a good book so far. 

In the book the authors acknowledge yet another author, Francis Shaeffer, who came up with the concept of upstairs and downstairs truth. And that’s what I want to talk about. So, the idea is that in this stage of history that we are in, we have come to organize truth in a two story house. On the bottom floor are things like science and math. Facts. These are unarguable, unmovable. 1+1=2. No one is going to reasonably argue with that. Then, in the second story of our house we have things that fall more into the category of preferences. I think chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla. I like Fall better than Winter. Green is the prettiest color. These are opinions and are going to be different for each person. You like green, but I think purple is better. So far so good. The problem arises in that our society has placed religion in the upstairs part of our house. You believe in God? Ok, that’s fine. I don’t. But, whatever makes you happy. Which, maybe you’ve seen that COEXIST bumper sticker that uses each letter of the word to represent all the world’s main religions? The idea being, you believe in Allah, and I’ll believe in Buddha, and they can believe in God, and we can all be happy together and support each other in our preferential beliefs. 

Except that, as Christians, we believe that our faith belongs in the downstairs part of the house. Jesus is real, his word, the Bible is unarguable truth. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6. We don’t believe that religion is preferential. If you don’t believe in Jesus then you are not saved. This is unarguable fact, like 1+1=2. 

I’ve been thinking about my own faith journey. I had some traumatic events when I was very young and my response was to retreat into my own little world of imagination and books. But, even at that age, I knew Jesus, and I took him with me into my own little world. I remember when I would daydream and create stories in my head, there was always that standard that my stories I made up and lived out in my fantasy world (stories that helped me makes sense of the world I was living in and make sense of the things that had happened to me), those stories always acknowledged the presence of God. And when I think back on the theme of most of the stories I made up, the heroes I imagined were very Christ-like. 

As a child who grew up on the mission field and whose parents were in full-time ministry, I saw a lot of the bad side of organized religion. I saw hypocrisy, abuse, and more hypocrisy. I saw a lot of legalism. Manipulation. Essentially, a whole array of things that should have turned me away from my faith. Things that should have made me think, well, if that’s what Jesus is like, then I don’t want anything to do with him. And here is where my testimony is, my story of how God kept me from falling away. Somehow, Jesus made himself known to me at such a young age and was so a part of my inner thought life, that when I saw all these things that were wrong, I knew that those things were not Jesus. Those things were people acting in such a way that proved they obviously didn’t know the true Jesus. 

I have known since I was very young that Jesus is fact. Not a preference. He is the truth and everything else is measured against him and his word as found in the Bible. And when Christians don’t act in a Christ-like manner, I know it means they’re not walking in step with Jesus, not that Jesus doesn’t exist. 

Reading about the Upstairs Downstairs method of organizing truth has been really helpful for me to understand where people are coming from when they approach religion as being a subjective experience. And it also helps make sense why people can get so angry about “fundamental Christians”. If my viewpoint of the world is that Jesus is a flavor of ice cream that I can choose to like or not like or just ignore if I want to, I can see how someone standing there telling me that Jesus is the only way would feel annoying. I pray that the Holy Spirit will move and open people’s eyes to see that Jesus is fact not preference, that he is Truth, not opinion. 

Devastation in our Part of the World

For those who don’t live in the same part of the world as me, our big, breaking, horrible news is the floods and destruction that have hit our region due to Hurricane Helene. East Tennessee and Western North Carolina have been hit so hard, that my brain can’t wrap around it. Entire towns gone. Our main interstates and highways and bridges, washed out. There are still communities, today, where people continue to remain trapped in their homes, waiting for help. The city of Asheville was completely cut off. The death count is at 166 but there are still people missing and unaccounted for. 

I have been watching my news feed throughout all of this. Seeing in-the-moment pictures of the destruction, people calling out into the internet void for information about their community and friends and family. I want to use words like heartbreaking, and devastating, but those words feel cliche. 

East Tennessee and Western North Carolina are our family’s go-to place. We take drives there, vacations, adventures. I was at a basketball tournament in Asheville in January for my kids. My daughter and I had a weekend away at Biltmore last year. My husband and I have spent several weekends away tucked into different remote mountain communities. We joke about just abandoning all our responsibilities to go have breakfast in Maggie Valley. When I was thirteen, I attended a camp at Lake Junaluska where I had my first real encounter with a loving God. When people talk about where your favorite place is or where you want to retire, I always think of these mountains as the best place to be. 

And now, I don’t know what to think or feel. I don’t know how these communities are going to put themselves back together again. I don’t know how the families who have lost everything are going to recover or even manage the day-to-day living. I don’t know how all these roads and bridges can get fixed in any kind of timely way. The problem is so humongous that my brain just shuts off any time I try to think of it. 

I do know that so many people and organizations and churches and rescue people, and mule trains, and ham radio operators, soup kitchens, stores, everyone is reaching out to help. And I pray that this help can connect with every individual who has been affected. I pray that every person who has not been found and is waiting for rescue will be found today. I pray that every person who has been separated from family and friends and who are anxiously waiting for news will hear that news today and it will be good news. I pray that everyone who has gone to help will be able to coordinate and work well together. 

The world is frightening. Terrifying. Natural disasters destroying people’s lives. Wars tearing the fabric of our humanity apart. Unrest. Instability. Famine. Starvation. After a while, our hearts and brains can no longer handle the knowledge of so much devastation, and we turn our brains off. Go numb. Try to distract ourselves with entertainment. 

How do we live in the face of so much suffering? 

I don’t know.  But I will hold onto Jesus and take it one minute at a time and pray that I can somehow find a way to help someone today. 

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. 

Two Books, Darkness and Light

These past couple of days I finished one book, “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab and started another book, “The Heart of Jesus How He Really Feels About You” by Dane Ortlund. One book about the Devil, the other about Jesus. 

“The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” is about a young girl who makes a deal with the Devil that results in a very uncomfortable immortality. I have to say, I was expecting throughout the book for something to step on the toes of my theology. I kept waiting for it, but it never happened. The author did a great job of portraying the Devil exactly how I feel scripture portrays him. The author also never denied the existence of God, but also, the characters had no real curiosity about Jesus, or belief in his Goodness. He was dismissed and ignored as irrelevant to the characters. The author managed to keep you sympathetic to the main character throughout, even though what we actually saw was the main character slowly losing her humanity and turning into a mirror image of the “god” that she served. And what is really interesting to me, is that I don’t get the impression that the book was trying to portray that as a tragedy. 

I walked away from that book feeling like I had just read a novel that portrayed the beginning of the verse in Ephesians 2:5 where we are described as being “dead in our sins”. The main character in “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” desperately needed help, but she was completely unable to see where the source of true help and life comes from. She was truly dead in her sins. 

I put down that book and felt sad. It supposedly had a triumphal ending, but there was no goodness. No life. 

So then I picked up the next book, “The Heart of Jesus…” by Dane Ortlund and was overwhelmed at the difference between the books. Death and Life. Darkness and Light. Hopelessness and Joy. Here is God who loves, who serves, who is reaching out to heal and forgive and bring wholeness and peace and fulfillment. And it feels too good to be true. And it is so amazing that you want to share the good news with others. Did you know that Jesus is gentle and lowly? He is humble and tender, understanding. He is approachable. He desires us to know him and rest in his love and forgiveness. 

While the first book clearly portrays us being dead in our sins from Ephesians 2:5, the second book tells us all about the rest of that verse,

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:4-5.

“The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” is well written. It doesn’t hesitate to tell you all the details of living a fallen life, I would not recommend this book for teens. But, its portrayal of a life of sin is pretty accurate. It does not glamorize sin or the devil. But honestly, it was not uplifting. It was depressing. And I think what was more depressing to me, is that I didn’t get the impression that the author ever felt that the life and predicament of her character was morally wrong. It just was. 

If you want to read a book that brings joy and hope and amazement, I would definitely recommend “The Heart of Jesus…”. It’s the kind of book I feel like I need to read aloud to my children. And buy copies of it and pass it around to others. I feel like I can spend a lot of time with this book. Go get yourself a copy! 

Fail, Repent, Try Again

At the beginning of the school year, my 8th grade daughter had an assignment where she had to describe each person in her family with one adjective. She was telling me the words she used for each of her siblings and it was really fun. Then she told me that she chose the word “Perseverance” for me. Since I have never thought of that as one of my defining traits, I asked her why. She said it was because I kept starting new diets and new exercise plans. I didn’t give up. I kept trying. 

That flabbergasted me. I would tell you that my inability to stick to a healthy diet and exercise plan is one of my biggest failures in life. But through my daughter’s eyes of grace she saw it as perseverance. Mom never gives up. She keeps trying. 

I see my relationship with diet and exercise kind of like that Greek mythological guy who gets cursed to roll a large boulder up a mountain, and every time he almost reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down and he has to start all over again. I don’t see this as a battle I am ever going to win. But at the same time, I’d rather spend my life pushing the boulder up the mountain, then sitting at the bottom and giving up. So I tell my kids, once again..Ok, nobody offer me chocolate or ice cream or anything that tastes great, cause I’m going off sugar again. Who wants to go walking in the park with me? I’m trying to walk every day…again. And the kids just nod and accept it. They’ve seen it before. 

But apparently, while I thought I was modeling “how to fail repeatedly”, at least one of them saw me modeling Perseverance instead. 

I’ve had quite a few people tell me I should write a book. Maybe about parenting? And that sounds like a horrible idea to me. I’ve sat and thought about it before. What advice would I give newer parents? I can’t come up with much. Love your kids. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I feel like my parenting journey has been fully rooted in the verse, “My grace is sufficient for you..” I’ve made silly mistakes and I’ve made mistakes that have caused horrible damage. I have some deep regrets. But, God has been faithful. He has been kind enough to show us what we are doing wrong and given us the opportunity to ask forgiveness and repent and try to turn to a different path. He has been gracious to my children and put other people in their lives who have helped them overcome some of the wounds I have inevitably caused. And somehow he has allowed all of us to walk a path where all of my older children still like talking to me and spending time with me, even when they now have the freedom to choose otherwise. That is God’s favor on our lives. 

I would say that my parenting style has been a constant pattern of fail, repent, try again. I guess I could say our marriage is kind of like that too. In fact.. Maybe this is a pattern for life? Fail, repent, try again? And somehow God works through all of that and instead of calling it failure, he calls it perseverance. And he gives us grace to try again, and somehow takes all the messy debris from all our mistakes, and turns them into good. And while I hope that I will see some victories in this life, the good news is that, unlike the Greek guy who is cursed forever, I know that one day I will be with Jesus and all the battles will be over and I will be fully victorious. And until then, with the grace of God, I will persevere.

Thoughts on Feminism

When I was twenty an older woman I knew said, about me, that I would make a good wife for somebody. She didn’t say it to my face, but it was gleefully retold to me by a mutual acquaintance. It was not meant as a compliment. The implication was that I was weak, submissive, and had no leadership qualities. The woman who said it was a successful businesswoman and ran a matriarchal type household. She was definitely the one in charge of everything. At that time, I did want to get married, and I think I shrugged off the insult part of the comment without much trouble. I knew that I had different goals. And the woman who said it was not someone I wished to emulate. But the core of what she was trying to say was I was not a feminist and thus inferior. 

I want to talk about feminism. This is the definition I’m going to use, found on humanrightscareers.com

At its core, feminism is the belief that women deserve equal social, economic, and political rights and freedoms.

To give you a little background, my Grandmother Picazo went to college as a math major and had a lifetime career in Christian radio missions, my Grandmother Rigby was a nurse and a career missionary her entire life. My mother was a missionary, and then went back to school and became a Physician Assistant and worked in the medical field until her retirement. My mother-in-law has her doctorate, is an ordained minister and was a career missionary. 

I come from a long line of strong, educated, women. When I was growing up there was always an assumption that I would go to college and have some type of career. I honestly didn’t think about kids too much when I was young. Just assumed I’d probably have two, like my parents did, but it was not something I gave much thought to. I went to a christian university right after high school and studied music. And then I had a breakdown, struggled with panic attacks and anxiety, and decided, with the blessing of my parents, to take a break from school for a while. I went overseas, spent four months in Haiti and then six months in Chile. All the time, wondering what I was going to do with my life. 

During college, I made a vow to God that I was going to follow him wherever he led me. I asked him to be the one to choose my husband for me and I approached life with open hands, trusting that God would take me where he wanted me. 

I ended up getting married at twenty and then shortly after that my husband and I felt that God was asking us to trust him with our family size so we went off birthcontrol. 

Twenty-five years later, ten kids later, I am sitting here, thinking about feminism. 

I homeschooled my kids for somewhere between twelve and fifteen years, depending on how you count it. The homeschooling community is a very diverse place and I ran into all kinds of teachings and belief systems that had me scratching my head. One of the belief systems that I ran into was that feminism was bad. Women should be under the protection of their father or their husbands at all times and should be content living out their role in the home, leaving all decision making to the men in their lives. 

I disagree. And when I hear people bashing feminism, I want to remind them that without feminism, women would not be voting in the upcoming election. We wouldn’t be able to have our own bank accounts. We wouldn’t be able to own property. We would not have freedom to pursue higher education and fulfilling careers. We would be essentially enslaved to the men in our lives. I don’t think this is a just, safe way to live. We live in a sinful world, and while the idea of being raised by a gentle godly man as your father, and then marrying a perfect man who always takes care of you exactly the way you need, sounds good in theory, in reality there are girls being raised by abusive fathers and women trapped in marriages to abusive men. Without feminism, these women would have very little recourse to escape these situations. And that’s not even addressing the women who do not want to be married in the first place. 

I believe in freedom. I am a stay-at-home mom. I have been for twenty-four years. My husband and I have a very traditional marriage. We hold to the belief that he is the head of the house. I have ten children. We felt that God asked us to trust us with our family size and when we felt that we had reached that size, we took measures to not have any more children. I feel that I have been especially blessed to have the privilege to stay home and raise my children. But, here’s the thing. I chose to have this lifestyle. I believed that it was something God wanted and so I chose to obey that. It was not forced on me. I had choices. I could have chosen to not get married. I could have chosen to insist on our marriage looking different. I had a choice about whether I would have children or not and how many I would have. I chose to hand that over to God, but it was still a choice. Without choice, it’s slavery. And for those who see my lifestyle as obedience to God, I would say that without choice, it’s not really even obedience. Can a slave be rewarded for obedience when they had no choice in whether to obey or not? 

I have five daughters. I have tried very hard to let them know they have choices. And at the same time, let them know that following God is always going to lead to the most fulfilling life. 

I hope that my daughters look at me and see someone who chose to follow where God led, and as a result has lived a blessed, fulfilling life. And I hope that they look at the examples of their grandmothers and great grandmothers too and know that following God looks different for each person. 

As We Forgive Those Who Sin Against Us…

This summer I’ve been struggling with how to move forward in relationships where wrongs have been done in the past. How to move forward into something new. It’s all been a part of a long journey God has had me on, learning the right way to handle someone sinning against you. 

When I was young, my automatic response was to not dwell on whatever happened, try to forget it as quickly as possible, and just pretend it never happened. I did not have the emotional stability and security to explore feelings of rejection and betrayal. I needed those people to be my stability for me and if I suddenly didn’t have them, it felt like I would be the utmost alone and that felt like death. So, I did not acknowledge or dwell on sins against me. I just brushed it off as quickly as possible and moved on. 

God finally got me to a place where I could stand back and be objective and say, wait, that was wrong. That should not have happened. I should not have had to go through that. That process was really hard to go through, because suddenly I had a lot of things to grieve. Things that should have been processed years ago had all built up inside and slowly deadened all my emotions. And when I finally started opening up all those memories, there was a lot of grief to wade through. And anger. And some hard conversations where I had to say, you did this, and it really hurt. 

And then the next thing God took me through was learning about forgiveness. Getting to a place where I truly wanted only good things for those who have wronged me. And also, being careful to set up boundaries of what I would and would not allow in my relationships. 

But then, I felt stuck. I acknowledged the wrong, I forgave. I established healthy boundaries. But how to move forward into a healthy and happy relationship? 

Then this morning I woke up and for some reason was thinking about my marriage. I was thinking about how, when we first got married, we weren’t very good at loving each other. We made a lot of mistakes. But, because we made vows to each other, we pushed through each mistake. Asked forgiveness. Learned. Changed. Adapted. And now, a couple days short of our 25th wedding anniversary, I know with a certainty that I am loved and cherished and protected by my husband. It’s a love that we’ve grown into. And it’s a work that God has done in our lives. 

And I suddenly had the revelation that it’s that way with all of our relationships. We are not static people that stay exactly the same forever. We are all growing and changing. And even though I may have a history of hurt with someone, it’s possible to go through a healthy process of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, because both people are changing and growing. I’m not saying this is the case for every relationship, if the other person has no interest in changing their behavior, it may be better to love them from a distance. But I think there are many relationships, especially within the body of Christ, where God is equally working on both people, taking them through the process of becoming more like Jesus, and teaching them how to repent, forgive, reconcile and move forward into even healthier connections with each other. And that fills me with joy. Jesus is in the work of redeeming. Taking the bad and turning it into something good. Allowing us to live a life where forgiveness is an option. And love can grow stronger and deeper. 

God Shows up Everywhere

I have been reading a lot of books this summer. Fun books. Books about kings and kingdoms. Magic lands. Wars and governments. Friendships, romances, the ties between family members. Very enjoyable. Not what you would call scholarly. But I have found that reading these books has had real spiritual value for me. As I find my heart responding to different aspects of the book, I have asked myself, what inherent truth is coming through that calls to me. What longings are these books stirring up? Why do I wish that I was this character, living out this story arc? 

My worldview is that God created all things, and that we are created in his image. There is nowhere you can go in nature and in dealing with humans, where God is not going to be revealed in some form or another. And as I’ve read through these books whose authors may or may not be knowledgeable about God and the Bible, whether it was the author’s intent or not, God shines through, if you’re looking for him. 

As I read about nobility, and loyalty, sacrifice, deep frienships, I find a yearning inside of me. I want that. I want my life to have some great meaning. I want to swear loyalty and fight for my King. I want to feel protected and sheltered because I have a ruler who is strong and cares for his people. I want to set off on great epic adventures rescuing the downtrodden, retrieving the lost. I want my life to be rich in color, deep in meaning, full of people whom I love and who love me. 

And I think this is what God created me to do. To live a life of deep meaning. Where I learn to rest and trust in his Lordship. In his Fatherhood. In his love. Where I learn to relate to the people around me in honest, candidness, learn to trust and be someone who is trustworthy. Where I open my eyes and see the needs of the world around me and engage in battling for a solution. Where I see the people who can’t fight for themselves and decide that I can be the person who fights for them. 

I read books and they make me want to be more. Have more. Experience more. 

Read a book. But don’t just stop with the simple enjoyment of the story. Ask yourself questions! Why did I like this book? Why do I like that character so much? What inner longings and yearnings does this book touch on? How does God’s nature show up in this book? Where is the goodness? What does this teach me about myself and my tendencies towards good or evil? 

God shows up everywhere, you just have to be looking.