In the Heart of God

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My heart hurts.

The news is covered in tragic tales of loss.  Fathers and husbands, sons and nephews.  All over the web, the newspapers, social media. While there is mourning, there is even more judgment.  Hate.  Ignorance.  People “choosing sides” in what they post and comment on.

The news media digs up back stories as if petty theft justifies a murder.  And I can’t help but wonder if it were me, just which “me” would be portrayed.

The 20 year old ace student who drank and worked a lot.

The “lost” and underemployed 23 year old, who grappled with the way the world worked.

The pregnant woman, on top of things with her white collar job and hunger for God.

The stay at home 30 year old mother, the financial wreck and seemingly unstable woman who cries at church and sometimes feels overwhelmed with her three year and ten month old who need her.

All of us have complicated identities.

All of us, every one, are this hodgepodge mess of success and defeat, sin and grace.  And we’re all either worthy of death or worthy of redemption.  And while the news tries to piece together stories of victim’s pasts for some kind of seamless judgment as sinner or saint, our God says we can be both.

We stand in front of Him, sin-stained and unworthy.  Repugnant before the King of Kings.  But He reaches down to cover us.  He wraps His arms around us as the prodigals, and clothes us in “garments of salvation and (arrays us) in a robe of His righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10B NIV)

We become “His children, (and) we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory”  (Romans 8:17A NLT) when we choose Him to stand in the gap for our insufficiency.

Heart of God

We live in this evil ridden world where problems aren’t as simple as the Confederate flag or lack of education, financial inequality or gun ownership.  It’s complicated.  We’re born into a fallen world where the inheritance is sin.

Sin begets sin begets sin begets sin.

In Matthew 6, Jesus points out that if you’ve ever been angry at your neighbor, you’re guilty of murder.  If you’ve looked at a woman with lust, you’re guilty of adultery.  With generations of sin introduced to the habitat of sin, we can’t help but be very lost, very hurting and broken sinners.

The world is way more complicated.

One of the greatest successes of Satan is the belief in “End Times” that bring judgment for all sinners and despair for all believers.

When we vilify our neighbor, and simplify and dismiss the world as headed toward the proverbial “hell in a hand basket,” then we’re not concerned with sharing the Love of Christ.  We no longer have compassion for our fellow man, or hurt at the suffering of the loss of unity between God and people, and people with one another.  In fact, we step away from the Heart of God completely, and begin to think that there are those not worth saving.

Christ came with the clean slate for all who dare to call upon His Name to be saved (Romans 10:13 NIV), “for it is by grace (we) have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:8A NIV).

The person of Jesus reserved His greatest judgment for those holding God as untouchable to those most broken and hurting, and held great compassion for those who have yet to know the Love of God.

As believers, our sin and brokenness are just as despicable, but miraculously we are covered in grace, and our stories need only to be His.  We can not stand in judgment over the lost, feigning to know the complete hearts of men, but rather, ought mourn over the loss of Life.

This is when we are in the Heart of God.

Mitigating Weakness

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We live in this world where we think we should be perfect.  News stories embroiled in controversy and judgment.  Instagram filters and photoshop for so many teenagers, let alone magazines.  Advertisements shrieking beauty and attention and money, selling the elusive perfection.  Expectation, expectation.

Criticism.

We apply for schools, or work, or meet new people, or God forbid, date.  And have to give this account of ourselves.  Life necessitates us committing to exposing ourselves.  Looking for work is terrible:  listing your life in blurry dates and bullet points, searching Indeed.com and wondering if your resume is ever actually read by a human being.  Character examinations, cover letters and the challenge of explaining your career decisions and gaps in employment in first interviews make us paranoid.  We begin to question ourselves for every move we make.  We’re afraid to take chances, make mistakes.  And dating is even worse.

But life is messy.  We are imperfect.  And our stories have much more to tell of grace and eeking by than they do high on the mountaintop successes.

As I grow older, I find that God is so patient and loving with my flaws, my shortcomings.  My bossiness and a lot of ignorance.  My sharp words and fear of confrontation.  My hate of change, and a mild inheritance of OCD.

In His infinite wisdom, He created each of us perfectly.  All of our character is intricately designed to worship Him, to love Him.  To honor Him.

Paul says that “when I am weak, then I am strong.”  (2 Corinthians 12:10B NIV)

As we mature, we begin to understand that our messiness, our insecurities and our brokenness are capable of honoring Him too.  In laying bare all of ourselves– our strengths, our weaknesses, our desires, our fears– at the foot of the cross, Christ can begin to do His transformative work.

Our hesitancy can become intentionality.

Our directness can make us powerful truth speakers.

Our irrational fears can motivate us.

Our neurotic attention to detail can benefit a mindful servant’s heart.

Our ambivalence can be set aflame.

Our uncertainty is transformed to trust.

Love transforms us.  Perfect love doesn’t question itself and pick apart the flaws, but flings itself into the ocean of selflessness and is.  No beginning.  No end.  There’s a beautiful poem, “Saint Francis and the Sow,” that says,

“though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…”

All parts of us can be healed.  Can be loved.  Can bring light and love to a broken, messy world that is desperate.  We are worthy of second interviews, second dates.  And lifetimes of commitment.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (NIV)  Isn’t it incredible that God, the Creator of the universe and each thing in it, knows our every detail, and loves every bit of us anyway?  He knew.

He knew.

Find Beauty

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Our little family has planted a garden of vegetables and herbs over the course of the last month.  Thanks to copious amounts of downpour, it’s taken over three weeks to get our little garden beds and potted herbs all the way planted.  We talked about stages of seeds while we placed tiny eggplant and flat cucumber seeds into the ground.  About how incredible it is that the seed must sit in the dark ground, heaped with manure.  And die.  In order to become this growing, flowering, fruit producing sustenance for  us.  (Also how the basil seeds planted into the carpet would not produce any kind of flower because it wasn’t cared for properly.)

Dirt

I recently watched a CT scan video on the changes that happen to a caterpillar in the chrysalis.  Science is wonderful.  Without damaging the insect, we’ve discovered how the structure of a caterpillar is completely broken down.  While we’ve traditionally called the insect a “soup” in this stage, it’s incredible the breakdown that occurs.  Organs change; muscles break down at a cellular level to rebuild and “imaginal discs” show themselves in the formation of the adult butterfly.  The caterpillar must, at a cellular level, completely de-compose in order to move to its next stage of life.

While human beings don’t undergo the intensive metamorphosis that seeds or caterpillars do, Christ does tell Nicodemus that we “no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”  (John 3:3 NIV)  And that we must “count (ourselves) dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 6:11 NIV)

These words seems to have lost their shock value, and have been twisted and misunderstood over time.  Born again means stepping into the realm of our “God inheritance” as a child of God.  And dead to sin doesn’t mean we devalue our human experience, but that we embrace and trust enough to make Jesus Lord in our lives.

Once we step into our God-ordained identity and begin the transformation, we still struggle.  We still have problems.  Life is still hard.  In a culture where prosperity theology runs strong, we often ask ourselves what we’re doing wrong or why we deserve hardship.

But Psalm 10 says, “In his pride the wicked does not seek (the Lord); in all his thoughts there is no room for God.  His ways are always prosperous; he is haughty and Your laws are far from him; he sneers at all his enemies.  He says to himself, ‘Nothing will shake me.  I’ll always be happy and never have trouble.”  (v 4-6 NIV)

David says its the “wicked” who are trusting they’ll always be happy, and never have hardship.  How often do we fall into this mentality?  We trust our jobs, our planning, our competence, our strengths.  And if things are good, we’re not often down on the ground, face to the Earth, begging God to be Lord in our lives.  We think that we can “handle” things, that we aren’t desperate for God to act in our lives.  And we expect that the jobs, the health, the good fortune to last.

But life isn’t about one stage, or one season.  Change is the only constant in the natural realm.  And security doesn’t exist outside of God.

Paul encourages us in Romans 12, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” (v2a NLT)

We are called to be the seed in the manure, the caterpillar in the cocoon.  To find beauty, even in the midst.  And God, who is ever faithful, will work His wonders.

Plant

A Thank You to the Selfless Ones

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I dedicate this post to my mother, who is truly the best.  She is strong, patient, merciful, and passionate to a fault.  She is incredibly beautiful, incredibly selfless and continually growing more comfortable in her own skin. She’s a true Love Warrior and my life counselor.  She’s at least eight people’s hero.  Oh, and she cooks good, too.

I eat chicken breasts when we have dinner as a family.  I like to eat chicken breasts.  This is indicative to the stage of life I’m in.  My children are babies.  I have two of them.  I can find chicken for $1.99 a pound from a wholesale warehouse, from as reputable of a large scale chicken farm as you can find.  So I eat chicken breasts.

My mother eats chicken thighs.  She, also, likes to eat chicken breasts.  She has grown, birthed, fed, trained and raised up eight children, and has been eating chicken thighs as long as I can remember.  And her mother before her ate chicken thighs.

There are so many people wanting to be heard these days.  So many causes to rally around, so many voices crying for attention.  Turn on the news for a few seconds, pick up a paper, or check your Facebook homepage.  There are so many people, defending so many positions, asking for so many prayers, so many dollars, so much support.

And then there are the selfless ones, like my mother.  The ones there to listen, to empathize, to cry.  They seem to be few and far between these days.  In a world where “I want” comes first (and is often loudest), attitudes of love-service are hard to come by.  But I’m certain they’re there, ushering other people’s needs ahead of their own as they’ve done for years.

The diversity of the gifts these selfless ones foster are endless.  In the past thirty years, my mother has cheered on and welcomed a writer, a nurse, a machete-wielding forester (my sister has reached the apex of feminine strength), a building engineer, an airline mechanic and a restaurant manager into the pool of life.  And she’s still stewarding two more.  As her peace with herself grows, she encourages us in the path of trust as well.

These selfless ones don’t need their voices shouting above the crowd.  Instead, they’re the ones whispering in the ears of their little ones, “You can do it.  You are strong.  You are powerful.”  Picking them up when they fall, and raising them up to love themselves, to use their gifts, and to be the men and women they were called to be.

These selfless ones don’t need a “mom blog” to reassure them that one day they’ll have time for continuing studies and pedicures.  Instead, they look to and walk with the God of Hagar in the desert.  “The God who sees me.”  They’re comforted by His love, His Will and His guidance, knowing that He’s there for every step.

The selfless ones know there’s no “secret” to the easy life.  That it’s hard work, much prayer, and a lot of grace.  Even when grace is just being able to look back and say, “I made it.”  From the other side, it must seem a blur of tears and smiles, and laughter and hurt.  But so beautiful.

While I trudge through and soak in the young mothering days, conscious of how fast they’re passing, how fast my babies are growing, and wondering if I’m doing any of it right, I know I will embrace that day.  Saying, “I made it.”  Knowing I’ve had a hand in nurturing some of the finest souls I’ve ever been honored to meet.  I will smile, and, I hope, eat my chicken thigh in teary silence.

 

 

 

 

Art in the Sand

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I woke up at 4:15 this morning.

For those of you with a teething baby who doesn’t sleep through the night, you know what an accomplishment this is.  No snooze button.  No alarm for that matter.  Just.  Feeling rested somehow at 4:15 AM.

I then realized I was warm and wet.  Three year old Zay had peed in the bed, the inevitable result of having ice cream too late.  Yes, I cosleep.  A lot still.  And sugar affects him.

I got out of bed, checked the time and cleaned the bathroom.  Then I showered.  And I did the dishes.  Loaded the dishwasher, scrubbed pots and pans.  Wiped down counters.  Left only the floor to be done.

I did my grocery shopping with two children.  Three stores.  Finished by 11:30AM.  Did more laundry.

Later, my husband, Saint James, got home from a long work day.

He wanted to shave and cut his hair.  The washer flooded, leaving bleach water all over my clean kitchen.  I threw clean towels on the mess.  The bathroom has hair everywhere.  Isaiah, who woke up at 7:30 to a warm shower, “shaved” too, and needed another shower.

Bathroom ruined.  Progress in laundry ruined.  Kitchen ruined.

I sopped up bleach water with some lemon Pine-Sol.  Cleaned the floor on my hands and knees.  Started more laundry.  And cleaned the bathroom again.

Mommas.  This is what we do.

There’s this beautiful form of art where people do these intricate drawings in the sand.

Impermanent Sand Painting
A Beautiful Meditation by Andres Amador

People marvel at the beauty of it.  Why would they do such a thing?  How patient these artists must be.  How flexible to work with open hands, knowing the results won’t last long.  Aren’t they wonderful?

Mommas.  This.  Is what we do.

Tides of laundry come just as we finish.  Waves of dishes, at times we know are coming.  Sizes are outgrown, toys need to be rotated.  Always in flux, always in motion.

Do you marvel at the beauty of it?  Do you wonder at the wonderful person you’re becoming?

Of course, things are always in flux.  This is life.  Change is the only constant.  The pains and the details, the broad brush strokes and the joys, the irritation, the triumphs.  All of it.  It is beautiful.

 

Seeing the Dirt

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Zay, my sweetest snuggle bug who has evolved into a spitfire ball of energy and questions, is constantly doing disgusting things.  Par for the course in the life of a three year old boy, I suppose.

This week it was, “Don’t lick that standing water!”

“Don’t open the toilet seat with your flashlight!  Don’t close it either… just don’t touch the toilet seat.  With anything!”

“Don’t play in the dirty laundry!”

“Don’t touch that poopy diaper!  Why do I even have to say that?”

His answer is always, “Why?”

Par for the course, right?

As he grows with me, and walks in step with me, he learns what he should and should not do.  What is acceptable and when.

I can’t help but think of my relationship with Father, as my boy looks to me and tests me to see if he can lick sitting water off of the trampoline.  Don’t I do just the same thing?

Trying to obey and do the right thing.  Growing in understanding of what I should and shouldn’t do.  Trying hard to be intentional about what I’m around, what I see and who I talk to.  And how I interact with the world around me.  Looking to God with much prayer for much needed direction.

Phillips Brooks has been quoted saying, “The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.”

The longer I walk with Him, the more I see that  “all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6A NIV).  Not because I’m this gross, dirty thing, but because my best, in comparison with Perfection, pales.  Significantly.

The longer I am in relationship with Him, the more I realize how many questions I have.  For I have much to learn.  And much to grow in.

Give Thanks

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My husband is Saint James, the Patient.  We are in the young parenting, third of life crisis mode where life travels a thousand miles an hour, there’s constant poop to clean up, never enough money, always work looming, a whirlwind house after we clean, dinner at 9 PM with two kids under three (judge away), omnipresent mountains of laundry, identity crisis “Is this what life is, really?” and did I mention the constant poop? phase.

When I get a million and one (hyperbole is my thing, okay?) questions of “Why?  What now?  What are you doing?” before noon time, and Saint James comes home from work and asks me “What are we doing tonight babe?” I forget that he is the man I stood at the altar with, pledging a life of love and service to each other before my Creator.  I confess, in these times, I see him as a third child needing direction and my blood sworn enemy.  Oh, for sure he’s earning that sainthood title with ever growl and snarl that hurls itself from my curled lips.

How selective our memories can be, moment to moment.

The all remembering Facebook “memories” reminded me that this week three years ago was the day I left my sweet boy for the first time while I returned to work.  Although I was leaving my seven week-old in the arms of my all too capable life counselor, my heart ached.  I cried to God, asking that He would someday allow me to be the one who stayed home with him.  This week, a year ago, I found out that the child with the beautiful heart, was a girl.  The child that I had no idea how to provide for as benefits changed at my workplace and Saint James took a new position at his company.  Again, I cried to God, asking that He would somehow provide.  And maybe allow me to be the one who stayed home with them.  Some way.  Some how.

I went to a late breakfast this past week with a beloved friend, my spiritual mentor.  She asked me about life and reminded me of the joy of answered prayer.  After much begging to God and financial finagling, personal uncertainty and a very challenging summer, I am staying home with my babies.

Three years ago, I had cried to her at a work lunch that I would never be able to stay home.  And here I was, crying to Saint James,to please watch the babies for just an hour so I could think straight without constant questioning.  And poop.

I find myself playing the role of the Israelites more and more.  Psalm 105 says “They asked, and He brought quail, and gave them bread from heaven in abundance.  He opened the rock, and water gushed out; it flowed throughout the desert like a river.”  (v41 ESV)  God performed miracles for these slaves freed from captivity.  He answered those years of begging, crying prayers.  He met them in the finagling,the uncertainty and the challenges.  And they complained.  With growls and snarls that hurled themselves from their curled lips.

We need to remember.  To give thanks.  In every season.  For answered prayers.  For unanswered prayers.  Or prayers we think are unanswered, but are more “wait and see.”

Because it’s not answered or unanswered prayers that make us happy.  It’s not getting what we want, or think we want, that brings us joy.  It’s the relationship with Father, who knows our hearts and transforms us.  Hebrews 12 says, “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” (v1 KJV)

Day to day, I’m trying to adjust my eyes.

Defining Me

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My pater familias likes to remind me that we are “human beings.”  Not human doings.  Personally, I need a lot of reminding.  When I was in school, I needed to remember I wasn’t just a student.  When I was new to the workforce, I wasn’t just some ignorant kid.  When I was in government consulting, I still wasn’t defined by my job.  And when I left to work in a kitchen, and then life asked me to stay at home because of work changing and changing family dynamic, I wasn’t defined by that either.  And I’m still not defined by all that I do.  Or don’t do.

We live in a world hellbent on identities.  Who we are defined by what we do, what we accomplish.

The problem with this, of course, is that circumstances change.  We live in a world of constant motion.

We’re single.  Married.  Painfully divorced or separated after years.  Together for longer than not.

We leave our jobs of five, ten, 15, 40 years.  Or are fired.  Or walk away in search of better, different.  We are left unemployed through sickness, or layoffs, or life.

We have more babies than we were “supposed to.”  Or choose not to.  Or life doesn’t work out the way we thought, and we’re on hold.  With relationships, let alone children.

We suffer, be it when our hearts break in a million tiny pieces, or we have an invisible disease that’s killing us from the inside.

We’re happy, and in love, and our hearts are raw outside our body for the first, or the tenth time.

In the English world, in this post-postmodern society, we define a lot with the statement “I am.”  And we put stickers on the back of our car to make sure the world knows these things that we “are.”

But God chooses none of these things to define Himself.  When he reveals Himself to man for the first time after the fall, He is the divine être, the source of all being.  And “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made”  (John 1:3 KJV)

“I AM” says the Creator of the universe in Exodus 3.  Can you fathom the smirk on His face reading a “Jesus is a Democrat” bumper sticker?

We get so caught up in defining and redefining ourselves.  I get caught up in defining myself.  The French/Communications major who can’t get her three year old to understand.  The words.  Coming.  Out.  Of my.  Mouth.

What my identity appears to be.  Of what kind of box I live in as a white, married, heterosexual, Christian female mother and how much that box can limit if that’s the way I define myself.

Vomit.

In Galatians 3, Paul reminds us that “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  (NIV)

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God chooses over and over to define Himself not by color or race, not by sexual orientation or political standing.  But by His character.  His love.  His grace.  His perfection.  His Word.  His sovereign Will and judgment.  And Hebrews 13 assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We don’t have to concern ourselves about what we’re “doing.”  Or have fear or take pride in being identified by this moment.  Or the next.  Not by our circumstances, successes, failures or accomplishments.  We’ve been adopted as heirs to Christ, and the most important identity we can take on is His character.  His Name that never changes.