dear God. this is my pouring out.

It's not so pretty as I'd like it to be, this mess of a life, God.

I fell asleep trying to talk to You. Things get stopped up around grace, around responsibility, around confession. I don't think I have been shutting You out, but I've not been actively seeking You. I know because I don't feel consumed with You, though I can't escape Your still voice in me, constantly reminding, speaking of Your love for me.

enough

I woke this morning thinking about grace. I think I fell asleep thinking about grace. About accepting it, living in it, owning it. About how easy it is to lose sight of it.

Easy because I sometimes don't know what is true.

Easy because I don't have courage to stand when I do know it is true.

Because living by faith in the Son of God is harder than trying to crucify myself dead enough to deserve to live.

Christ is either enough or God is a liar.

And I don't think God is a liar.

...

Every other day these last two weeks, I have rammed up into issues with my identity. Part of me says this is because I am not doing something I am supposed to be doing; this is because I am willfully sinning. But the "sin" has no name for me to confess, and the "supposed to be doing" is so vague I wouldn't know where to begin.

I have been living under a burden of undefined expectation.

And it's a heavy one.

I am Eve lately. Believing I can be more. More than God created me. More than I already am in His grace. If I could just grow faster, deeper. Isn't there an acceleration program for Spirit-work?

I want my life to be "Christ plus..."

looking up

God isn't just the things I say about Him.

It is coming on to Easter. I am less ready for this than I was for Christmas, and I wasn't ready then. I hate the calendar. My life isn't happening in tandem with the seasons. The season I'm in is forever and no time at all.

I forget every single day that God lives outside of time. And every day, if I don't remember He lives, I go into a tailspin.

I haven't stopped running since I got back from my parents' house a month ago. And with two kids, I don't have any down time forcing me to think. But I feel. Oh do I feel. It is why I have been taking pictures lately. I barely have time for that, but it is the only way I can try to express some of what is happening in me. I don't write unless I can't sleep.

This is the hardest thing I have ever done. I'm not even sure what "this" is. Being a mother? Loving my children? Holding onto my sanity? Trusting God?

I'm not actively shutting Him out, but I'm barely running to Him right now. I'm barely doing anything beyond the immediate right now. I thought I'd been through it with my health issues before, but this stretching is unbelievable.

I think it is making room in me for love.

resurrection - the waiting

sometimes dying is
more beautiful than
living

and sometimes it hurts.

especially because we all die
alone

until we live full in Jesus
until we are raised together with Him
until we see God.

so we die
and we live

in this hope.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?

{ Rom. 8:18-24 }

...


This post linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part III

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life."

- Proverbs 13:12

I am told I met my Pete in February, 2004.

A coworker wanted me to go on a blind date with an online schoolmate of hers who was coming to town. There was no way I was going to subject myself to that. Not with everything that had already happened relating to boys and dates and the rest of my life spent waiting, because at the rate he was going, my friend was never getting married, and he sure wasn't coming back.

He told me so. I got the "never" to my face. And I was told not to expect God to change his mind.

I vaguely remember one day in the midst of the dark when I walked into the dining hall at the campus where I still worked after dropping out of school. I had a question for my coworker; really, I was looking for an excuse to be there. I knew I wasn't wanted by anyone in the room.

I asked my question; my coworker answered my question. I can remember a shadow behind her, someone moving quiet out of the light. I heard a familiar laugh across the room, too loud, too painful. I left as quickly as I could.

...

Pete told me much later that he went home to Connecticut and couldn't get me out of his mind. He said he'd never seen someone in so much pain. He said he'd prayed for me. I still say if I'd met him then, I'd never have fallen in love with him.

...

The spring came and went that year with me watching a calendar with silly hope. Each month had a focus on something beautiful, and for the life of me I can't tell you now what the themes of the months were, except June. I know what June was.

It was love.

Every month before, something had happened to fulfill the monthly theme. I was on a high with God, giddy that He cared to involve Himself in my life, giddy that anything could happen, that He could bring my friend back in spite of everything. He had told me to love him, after all.

There was only one thing that could happen in June that could meet the requirements of my love theme.

During the last week in June, I completely collapsed at the office with convulsions that sent me into the hospital. In the ER, I was given an IV containing what I was told was the same fluids that were in my body. I didn't realize it carried 5% dextrose into my bloodstream. I didn't realize it was going to make me weaker because of my sensitivity to sugar.

The first few days saw me accepting my suffering with hope. I read my Bible. I thanked God for the window in my room. I had landed in the old maternity ward. It was a safe place. I felt surrounded by love. I knew I was where God wanted me.

I had visitors, and the nurses were kind. They woke me every morning to draw blood, testing for God-knows-what. The person who got my room after I was moved was rather annoyed by all the callers for me.

Oh yes. I was moved.

And that is where the nightmare began.

...

I had known Pete for about a month at that point, but the month had opened such a friendship between us that I risked a call to him from the ER. I didn't know who else to call. I was still a kid in so many ways. I think it takes growing up to recognize how much you need your parents still, and too often, they're gone before you realize it.

He came. Every day except the three that he was gone on conference.

It was on one of those days that the hospital staff moved me. The nursing staff came in wearing masks at about 11:00 p.m. of the third day of what would be my nine-day stay. They were testing for something highly contagious, they said. I was being moved to isolation.

I was terrified. My sister had gone home that night, something she wouldn't do again for the rest of my stay.

Knowing he would still be up studying, I called Pete from my new room and talked until we were both too tired to stay awake. The room with a window that looked into a wall. The room on the hall where everyone was throwing up. I could hear them through the walls. It was in this room that I met Fear. It was in this room that he seared my soul with a perspective change that would forever challenge my childish view of God.

...

During my time at the hospital, I had been praying, begging God, really, to send my friend to see me. I asked Pete to ask him to come. I thought he might take it better from him than from me.

I wanted to ask his forgiveness. For what, I don't know. Loving him against his will? I still don't really know. I just wanted my friend back. At that point, I didn't care whether I "ended up" with him or not.

Every day I battled within myself over whether I should ask God for him to come. I expected him around every corner, waited for him to appear in my room - always looking, always waiting.

As I grew weaker and weaker with the dextrose in the IV compromising my blood, I began to wonder if I'd ever see him again. Finally one night, I fell to my knees, surrounded by fear, surrounded by the awful sounds of retching, by the weeping and the eerie hospital-quiet, and I begged. I begged God to send him. I turned my hands upward and surrendered my desire to God, for a final yes or no.

Pete found me beside the bed that night, too weak to climb back in. He helped me up and tucked me in as I faded into oblivion.

The last thing I remember from that night is his tender kiss on my forehead.

...

To my knowledge, my friend never came to the hospital. It was the closing of a door I didn't understand then, the opening of heart-questions for me that that simultaneously pulled me to God and drove me from Him.

How could He love me? What proof did I have that God really cared about me? What proof would I ever have?

In the weeks after the hospital, I cried through Job. I begged my friends for answers about God's love, about what it looked like, about what He meant. Pete stood firm that God loved me, that He didn't have to prove His love.

But how could I believe that?

...

I left the hospital with Fear, who would become my constant companion. Before I left, God had asked me to speak the name of Jesus to one of my doctors. I did. Before I left, one of my nurses came to me and told me that she was a Christian, that my witness had challenged her to live more loudly for Christ there in the hospital.

Before I left, the doctor told me I still had no diagnosis.

I left the hospital angry with God. How could He? How could He use me like that and leave me weaker, broken, without answers, without love?

The anger frightened me. As the days passed, I slowly shoved it away, behind the safer "Praise God, I'm out of the hospital. I'm in a wheelchair again, but it's okay. I'm not there anymore. My friend didn't come, but God is still bigger." The habits were there already. The patterns were set. I could act God, if I had to. And I had to, because nothing else made sense to me. "God" was all I had ever known.

I didn't know what else to do.

It would be years before the anger would surface again. It would be years before I faced those doubts and asked those questions, years before I opened my heart again.

It would be years before I faced God again.

I canned the calendar.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I
Love Stories: God and Me, Part II

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part II

The journals.

They witnessed it all. They caught the tears, the dark-etched pencil (I never use pen for my handwriting), the play-by-play of my first love, my first deep heartbreak. I don't know now how many I filled.

...

As a teenager, I asked God to guard my heart for the man He had for me. I had as many (or more) crushes as the next girl, growing up. Maybe it was because we moved so often. There were plenty of new rooms with new faces for me to walk into and select which face to dream about. Dreaming about a Prince Charming is an occupational hazard for a teenage girl. At least it was for me.

During my first year at my second college, I got serious about God. More serious than I had been when I gave my life to Him for missionary work in the third grade. More serious than I had been when I rededicated my life for full-time Christian service at camp when I was eighteen. More serious about Him than I had been a full year at Bible college.

Wanna know why?

Because there were other people around me who were more serious about Him than I was. My competitive streak was up.

He'll use anything to draw us in.

But I was serious. So serious that September 12, 2001 saw me on my knees, finally giving my whole life to God for real, to do whatever, go wherever He would ask. At the time, I fancied New York City. A switch to a nursing career. Saving lives. Helping orphans. Even going to Africa. You know. The obvious ministry stuff. I was determined to want God more than I had wanted anything else, ever.

Two weeks later, I got my "whatever, wherever" from God when I started collapsing without explanation or diagnosis. There would be no glamorous occupation for me. Things were going to get messy.

...

Questions began to surface. The questions that come from suffering. The whys. The constant search for explanation. Little victories that I had performed well rejoicing in suffering crashed down as the suffering intensified. My circle of friends dwindled. They were tired of trying to answer my questions, I think. They were trying to survive their own Freshman year.

But there was one friendship in particular that would forever change my life. He was probably the fourth real guy friend I had ever had. And he was a good friend. A true friend. He was the first person I ever loved with God's love.

And my girl's heart fell in love with him. Hard.

He loved me too.

The logical end of the love that grew out of our friendship should have been a happily-ever-after.

I looked in the mirror one day after he left on a school trip, and I saw it there, the thing I'd read about but never quite believed. I was glowing. I looked in the mirror and I saw what he saw. I was sparkling. I was beautiful.

I never wanted to lose that feeling. I was amazed at the love God had given to me. Of course it had been Him. I had asked Him to guard my heart for the man He wanted for me. I simply assumed He had kept me for this one.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

...

My second year at my second college was the loneliest year I have ever lived.

My friend who I loved, who loved me, rejected me out-of-hand. He ignored me. He "was over it now." He pursued my best girl friend.

His reasons were many and complicated, but I watched that year as he systematically destroyed every part of himself that reminded him of me. I felt as if he were deeply ashamed of me, of my feelings, of my love, of our friendship.

My heart shattered.

...

God asked me to love him anyway. He wanted me to speak to Him the truth that was in my heart about my feelings. He wanted me to love my friend as He loved him. He wanted me to see him as God saw me, to give him the same grace I was learning to receive myself.

My sister listened to numerous friends who questioned my choice to love, who questioned my motives and my confusion, but instead of counseling the end of it all, she encouraged me. It was the first time in the whole of our lives that she had seen me reach outside of my own self-centeredness to care for the heart of someone else.

And the love God placed in my heart for my friend was a lifeline that drew me through my pain and confusion into God's heart.

I learned that love doesn't always look like hearts and flowers and sparkling eyes and the honeymoon stage.

I learned how incredibly we can hurt God when we rebuff His offer of relationship.

I learned how deeply He could love someone. I learned how deeply He could love me.

I learned that love - real love - cannot be killed.

All these lessons I held to my heart, waiting until God would be finished teaching me what He wanted to teach me, waiting for Him to answer my prayer and bring my friend back to me, give me the love and the wedding I longed for.

I journaled and I journaled and I journaled, hoping that one day my friend would read the words that told the story of my walk with God through the pain, hoping that he would be able to see how much I'd loved him in spite of it all, praying that one day I would pick up a pencil and write on the page how amazing God had been to bring us together, finally.

I wanted to believe God would give me what I wanted. But I never could quite bring myself to it. Something inside could not be released.

...

God had told me to ask Him for my friend, so that He could say "no" to me if He wanted.

I really, really hoped He would say "yes" if I surrendered. I even made a vow to Him. My part of the bargain, if you will. Just so He'd know I was serious. I intended to keep it too.

I vowed that I would wait for my friend until he was married to someone else. I knew then what I'll admit now - I just didn't want to hurt him more than he'd already been hurt through his own choices. I hoped one day to offer him my love, full and free - no bitterness, no hard feelings.

Still, a vow was a vow, and keeping a vow made to the Lord was terribly important to me.

So I vowed. And I ached. Oh, I ached. And I waited.

I would still be waiting now, but for God.

I had learned much about His love, but I didn't know it. Not deep. Not yet. I needed to know Him.

...

NOTE: For some of you who read, this post will be quite a throwback to conversations and old places in my friendships with you. For some who didn't know, it may explain a bit why I was the way I was during this period of time in my life. Please bear with me. It is a part of my story I cannot erase. I have written as much from my own perspective as I can; I have shared here what I may not have shared with some of you. Thank you, real people who have walked with me, for being in my life on many sides of this.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Today

Wednesday.

The week is blurred on both sides; it is only the moment that comes into focus, like a permanent shallow depth-of-field.

I hear the windchimes outside the house that will be ours for only a few more weeks. Already, we are moving stuff three streets over to our new/old/new house. Pete needs to put in the lighting there. We need more hours in a day.

But the windchimes are singing here today. Loudly. The wind that blew out the clouds overnight and brought the sun in this morning is determined and cold, frolicking as if spring is here, teasing.

I'm a little disoriented. Wistfully disoriented, I think. I feel a bit trapped inside my body today; I am annoyed with my physical limitations. The world is blurred. I am awkward. My legs don't work very well. Neither does my voice. I am weak today.

I've cleaned my inbox, quieted enough to string answers together and reply to a few letters. I don't sleep well in daylight so I haven't napped; I slept until 9:30 this morning, because Pete stayed home to help with the little ones. Now he is feeling ill, and the babies are sleeping.

Finally, I am alone with my thoughts.

...

Wednesday.

Ann Voskamp is hosting her "Walk With Him Wednesday." I have been thinking of how to love like Jesus, but all I can scribble here (is it scribbling to type the words, really?) is vivid memory-etching from Sunday's dim-lit worship, nameless faces, hearts indwelt by Christ.

He came to be me, came to be them, that we might all be washed in grace, clothed together in His righteous. I don't know them. I didn't have to know them. I didn't have to be hurt by them or forgive them to recognize Him in them.

The Motrin has eased the throat-pain now. I try not to be distracted by the fresh chill. I turn up the heat.

Ann has written of love during her family's sick time. I didn't know when I began this post. "One can't love too much," she says. But one can love too little. I am not good at this sort of love. Giving or receiving it. Both require stepping outside of oneself. And that is hard to do, when I am falling apart, body and mind.

But not soul. I can't remember the last time I felt well. I pull myself up, remember my mom's encouragement - "endurance," she has offered me many times. "Sometimes, you just have to get through it."

She is right. The living cannot just stop. Time goes on. Needs don't go away.

I wish for someone to bring a meal tonight. I think I can manage it, though, if I stand long enough. I need to get it before the baby wakes again to eat.

The loving can't stop for weakness.

It endures, doesn't it?

I remember the strep infection I got when Piper was four weeks old. I had a fever, 104 degrees. I was barely conscious, still waking to nurse her, burning hot flesh against my husband in bed, freezing too deep to get warm.

This is not so bad as it was then.

The sun is setting. Day is nearly finished. We'll be up for a few more hours with Bredon's colic now.

...

Wednesday.

Loving like Jesus. It must be done here, in the now - whether I am ready or not. This is how He loved. His eternal God-love met with flesh-limitation, and He sought rest too, bearing burdens, yielding His body to meet our desperate need, giving His life as He traveled with no place to lay His head.

It must be done in today, this loving like Him, leaving yesterday's failures there, taking no thought for tomorrow's grace not-yet-measured.

This love seems stronger than all the other times I love. It is life-giving, life-laying-down. It requires much, more than I know how to give; I grasp what strength I have and hope He will bridge the difference.

And if He doesn't? Well, I know about that. That's when I free-fall. That's when trusting His heart gives me strength to say anyway that "God is good, isn't He?" Sometimes that is more of a question than a statement. And sometimes it is just what I know, because I know His love deep now.

...

Wednesday.

The learning to love like Jesus happens quiet. It is not glamorous like I'd hoped. It is daily, kairos framed in chronos.

Kairos because it is outside time, because Christ-love never fails. Kairos because Jesus is God, God has no beginning or end; God is Love - I cannot fathom the infinite.

I grab another water bottle from beneath my desk. I need to keep drinking, swallowing help over my sore throat, so Bredon can have enough to eat. It is nearly dinner time.

Time to love, I think.

------------------------


This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I

Once upon a time...

That's pretty much the way all good love stories begin, isn't it? The fairytale kind, the ones that star a beautiful princess and a handsome Prince Charming. (He is always "Prince Charming," because giving him a name humanizes him, and we can't have a Prince with flaws, now can we?)

Here I must dispense with my Dickensian rambling and begin my love story. Which does not require a once-upon-a-time. The princess is a normal gal with beauty issues, and the Prince - well, He has a name, a human name. "God with us."

...

I never know quite where to begin this story.

Sometimes, it seems that it must begin way back before I was ever born, in my mom's desire for a baby girl, in her long wait, the womb-knitting, and the beginning of her birth pains. Sometimes, it goes all the way back before the foundation of the world, with a Father's love for His Son, with a God-love for the world that gave.

But all of that happened long before I was aware of God, long before I was old enough to suspect His love. No, I first encountered the love of God between my year at Bible college and my Freshman year at the four-year school I attended until my health forced me to drop out.

Not that I hadn't been taught about its existence before. There is not a time in my life that I can pinpoint that I didn't know intellectually that God loved me. I grew up with God. I grew up with parents who loved me, and who taught me that God loved me. I grew up in church, and if there's one thing they teach you in Sunday School, it's that "God so loved the world..."

I memorized John 3:16 forty-eight times.

I knew that "the world" God loved was me.

But there is a difference between knowing someone loves you and knowing you are loved, and all the head knowledge in the world isn't enough to span that eighteen-inch gap of sermon-illustration fame.

I said a salvation prayer when I was a young child, on a day my parents never recorded, sometime around four years old. I remember kneeling beside a bed - it had a hush puppies bedspread; I remember the butterflies playing with the puppies on it - and asking Jesus to be my savior. I knew enough at that point to understand that sin was something I didn't want to have, so the expedient thing to do was ask Jesus to forgive me, which I figured would pretty much take care of things.

Such was my faith as a child.

It seems that from the beginning of my life, I was meant to be God's. I can't explain it, His pursuit of me that has spanned twenty-eight years and eternity past. In many ways, it has been for me a consistent deconstruction of what I thought I knew about God.

I used to think He displayed His love for me by answering my prayers.

There was the time I sat down under a tree on our 25 acres and asked God to send a deer walking by after dinner. I was putting out my fleece... or hunting for venison? The deer didn't come the first night, so giving God a second chance, I changed trees. I went a little further down the path toward the back of our 25 acres. Still no deer.

I figured at that point that God wasn't too interested in proving Himself by answering my prayers.

So I began to think that He loved me by indulging me. Maybe He wasn't actively answering my requests, but as long as He didn't interfere with what I wanted, I felt loved enough.

I never expected Him to let my heart break...

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am going to write out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.

...

Tomorrow will be my second "Leftovers" post, complete with a McLink-up for readers to share your own reposts.

NOTE - I am offering "Leftovers" as an opportunity to justify reposting a post you love. You're welcome to join this carnival of original unoriginality (since you've already said it!) here at my blog - just follow the steps below:

*REPOST a favorite blog post at your blog
*Please kindly INCLUDE A LINK to my blog in your explanation for your repost ;-)
*LINK the direct link for your repost (not the original post) into the McLinky I will provide here.
*LEAVE A COMMENT so I know you're there.

Hopefully, in two weeks, when I host "Leftovers" again (yeesh, people, if you have a nicer, more poetic, romantic name for it, leave a comment - NOBODY likes leftovers, right?), I will try and have an irresistible button for you (with CODE!) to add to your repost.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

About Dad: How God Fathers Me

I've been thinking about my dad this week. Trying to remember what I know of him that I haven't been told. Wondering what relationship do I have with him, really?

I've always been pretty independent. As a child, I had my own ideas about life. My own decided way of doing things. It was usually the hard way, my dad would say.

But I remember needing him. He was the only one who could take out the splinters I got in my fingers and toes. "Pop's Splinter Shop," he called it, teasing me every time that he was gonna charge me a nickel I didn't have for his services. As if I would have paid him for doing something he was supposed to do. I knew he was joking, but part of me always wondered...

When I got older, Dad tried teaching me to let my teenage emotions roll, "like water off a duck's back." It never really worked with me. I was determined to have my emotions. I learned instead to control them when needed, then process and deal later. I'm a venter, a rambler, and once I get stuff out, I don't feel it anymore.

But I was talking about Dad.

...

In college, I called Dad a lot. So much so that Mom thought I just didn't care about her. I just didn't have much to say to anyone in college. There was so much going on internally. Most of the time I already knew what I needed to do to fix the thing I was calling about. I just needed Dad to validate my decisions.

I have realized in recent years that I was a pretty decent manipulator. I could talk Dad into just about anything - or he simply let me have my head, figuring he couldn't tell me what to do. He and Mom tell me they never really could.

Relating to my dad on any sort of emotional level is difficult. My dad is so pragmatic. It's the Langner in him. I know it, because I have the same pragmatism. I learned it from my grandma, his mom. There are places he reserves for Mom, feelings he just can't find a place for, things he just doesn't feel at all.

Just before he walked me down the aisle at my wedding, he leaned in and offered, "this is your last chance to back out." It wasn't what I wanted to hear. But it was definitely what Dad had to say. He wouldn't have been Dad otherwise and that would have been weird.

When I was in labor with Piper, Dad was cracking jokes that I wanted to hear, but you can NOT laugh in labor. Ask anyone who has done it. You need those laugh-muscles to end the pain. I asked him afterward what he'd been feeling. He said he was fine. He'd done it eight times with my mom. I found out from my mom recently that he loves babies.

I look at pictures of Dad and me when I was a baby. I see things in his eyes, in his smile that I don't recognize. Things that Mom said she saw again after Pete called to ask permission to date me, court me, marry me. She said he was walking around the house, happy.

I had a hard time picturing it.

...

Bonnie at Faith Barista wrote yesterday of "Looking for My Real Father." She shared excerpts from a book she has been reading about how children tend to view God through the lens of what they have known from their parents, from their dad.

I never call God Father. Not in relation to myself anyway. Jesus is God's Son, God is Jesus' Father. I simply don't consider the fact that I figure into that equation.

But I do, whether I realize it or not.

For years, I lived believing God loved me on a purely intellectual level. My response to this love was duty, and the sense that if I performed well, He would give me what I wanted. It was a rather detailed system I had worked out to manipulate the God of the universe into being what I thought He should be.

It wasn't that coherent. But it was how I lived.

God shattered my illusions with the reality of His deep, consuming love, love that wouldn't let me live in my misunderstanding of Him, love that required me to accept Him on His terms, the Truth of Him, the all of Him that spoke out of the whirlwind to Job and asked him if he really knew who God was, the God who came to Job as a man to show him the man wasn't enough to comprehend God's ways.

I can't yet call this God Abba.

...

When I go home, I know my dad is happy to see me. He holds my children, asks for hugs once in a while, and his eyes smile when he looks at me. If I dare to look into them, I see a question that is never asked, a little bit of awe, a deep affection that is never voiced.

I see my "Daddy."

But I'm grown up now. I'm not supposed to need a Daddy when I'm grown up.

And I'm good at being grown up. Most of the time anyway.

But sometimes when I cry, I miss knowing that things were okay because Daddy said they were okay. Because he was home or he was at work and things were normal and under control and Mom could call him and make things better during the day and he could help when he was home at night.

Suddenly, I realize that this is what I can't release when I think about God. This childlike understanding and trust of His sovereignty. The hope beneath my tears that everything is okay because He is God and He is at work and I can call Him and He will come for my heart.

He'll dig my splinters out free of charge, and put a band-aid on it to help me feel better. He'll whisper His words to me when I wished for something else. And because they come from Him, they will come to mean more to me than I could have known when He said them.

...

I pulled Dad out onto the dance floor with me at my wedding. Dad doesn't dance. I knew he felt awkward. But he came with me and went around a few times and smiled and cracked a few jokes I don't remember, in his way.

He offered me himself with that gracious acquiescence to my heart.

This is why grace means so much to me.

...

God loves me and gives to me and fills me with good things in spite of me, in spite of my frequent, childish misunderstanding of His Person.

This is why Jesus' life and death and resurrection is so vitally important. His condescension of God into flesh was driven by an incredible love, a deep Father-affection revealed in the setting aside of His God-glory to become like me, to dance with me where I am. This is grace, His Father-waiting and teaching and helping me to comprehend what I will never fully know until I meet Him face to face - when I will see Him as He is.

I get only glimpses of my dad that I can know as an adult. As a grown-up, I am learning to relate to him on an adult level. But my child-heart still thinks of him as "Daddy." I wonder if I will ever grow up.

With God it is backward. The growing-up means becoming more childlike, becoming like Jesus, the Son of Man who deeply trusted His Abba, Father.

"Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

- Mark 14:36

Greater love...

...

I watch Pete forming a relationship with Piper now, listen to her "Daddy!", laugh at the giggles and excitement only he can produce from her, and I wonder what questions she will have about him someday. I wonder how she will be disappointed by him. I wonder what she will learn of God through her relationship with him.

I hope she will know how much they love her.

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This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

What's In His Name?

Her name was Bethany.

It was such a big deal that her name was Bethany. It still stands out in my mind. I get into names.

She said that God had given her that name.

She said that she had known God intimately, the way I wanted to know Him.

She said that God had taught her to surrender fully and completely.

She said a lot of things.

But she never mentioned the name of Jesus.

...

Want the rest of the story? I'm guest-posting for @katdish today. Click over to "Hey Look, a Chicken!" to find out how God used my encounter with Bethany to reveal my own incredible need for Jesus.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Realizing the Baby

Every year at Christmas when we were growing up, my sister and I set up our family nativity scene together. We argued out which figurine needed to stand where, spent hours figuring and refiguring the perfect set-up, complete some years with leftover pine needles, stuffing-snow, and Christmas lights.

I own it now, because I'm the oldest of our eight. Because Mom got a new nativity scene. Because I have a home and a family of my own now.

There's not so much drama over where to put things. I finally repaired the broken-winged angel with superglue, fixing my old clay-and-Elmer's patch job. I don't worry about things like pine needles or stuffing-snow. I simply put things where it makes sense for them to stand - no analysis needed.

When I set it up this year, Mary caught my attention. Mary, whose heart-pondering celebration of her Baby's birth left her kneeling before her Son, cradling God.

This year as I wait for my own baby boy to come during the Christmas season, I find myself kneeling quiet with her, pondering all the joy and sorrow and love and pain that must be with this new-life-coming. It is a soft-spoken celebration, a tender God-reminder of Immanuel, God with us, God with me...

As I weigh my own desire to clasp my new baby to my heart, I find Him stirring the same tenderness in my heart for Him, and I begin to understand how precious He is, how love for Him begins for me not at a Cross, but at a manger, where a mother once touched and smelled and kissed and caressed God-become-flesh for me.

I find this waiting time His gift to me, a reason to celebrate.

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This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Under Grace

Growing in Grace

Does "growing in grace" mean that I am to grow in my understanding of grace, or does it mean that I am to grow up into Christ covered by grace? Perhaps it's both, for growing in my understanding of grace is essential to releasing myself into it for God to complete His work, perfecting in me the image of His Son.

Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

- 2 Peter 3:14-18

To Him Be the Glory

Sometimes I wonder what effect my choices really have on what God thinks of me. I don't think He needs me to be one way or another - after all, I didn't choose Him - He chose me. Not only did He choose me, He called me out for His own glory, just as He did not call others out for His own glory.

Pete and I have been reading through Genesis with Piper before bed. She's not really interested yet - Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are right up there with Mickey Mouse and Curious George in her estimation. While she may not be engaged, her parents have been talking a bit about the lives of these three men.

Abraham had a relationship in which he walked with God. Isaac seemed to do okay without thinking much about it. Then there was Jacob, who really was a scumbag when Esau appeared to have a sense of honor. Yet God said elsewhere, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

Why would God choose a deceiver like Jacob? Why would He appear as an anonymous man and wrestle with him, tell Jacob he had prevailed against God and man, bless him and care for him, even though he was pretty self-focused and disinterested in relationship with God, except when he needed Him?


A Relational Center

When I was growing up, I asked my dad what made us different from other people who believed in God - what set us apart from the "religious" and authenticated our faith? His answer, "We have a personal relationship with the Lord."

I know now that is a more radical concept than I believed then. Even people who talk about "personal relationship" are too often focused on a legalized approach to "right and wrong" without considering our Helper, the Holy Spirit, sent for us after Jesus' return to heaven. So many churches I have attended preach right and wrong, simply assuming God-relationship. But the insidious fact of this legalism is the neglect of the Gospel, and the Gospel is everything.

The whole point of Jesus' Cross-work was to reconcile us for relationship with God. This relationship is made possible by His Spirit, speaking to us the mind of the Father, teaching us eternal things Jesus didn't have time to teach in His short ministry here on earth.

Too many times, I have wasted spirit-energy in self-searching instead of trusting God to search my heart as only He can do. Too many times, I have trolled down a do/don't list that tells me how to make God happy with me instead of reconciling myself dead to sin and alive to God.

Too many times, I have overlooked the fact that I have been crucified with Christ. Instead, I choose to wear a sin-cloak that is no longer mine to wear, thinking that I can get light out of an LED flashlight I'm throwing randomly around in the dark.


What Shall We Say, Then?

The choice that is left to me is not simply right or wrong. It is life or death. If I believe Jesus, I may choose to consider myself dead to sin and alive to God, or I may choose to subject myself again to a yoke of bondage.

God has much to do in me yet, but He knows and remembers what I often forget in my sincere but sometimes-too-pressured desire to please Him - that I am dust. That my dust cannot handle all of His Godness at once.

I need to grow beneath the shelter of Christ-grace: my death His, my sin His, His righteousness mine, His life mine. Even my faith is not of myself - it is the gift of God - and why should He have chosen to bestow it on me?





(Images © Informal Moments Photography)

Remember: Memorizing Him

I became ill during my second year of college. The Lyme disease cloaked itself as MS, attacking my nervous system, installing lesions in my brain and spine, offering brain fog for memory, collapse for walk-strength.

My grades fell along with me. All I could remember were the things that stirred my heart.

I don't remember what I learned in school that year, but I remember God. I remember how He brought His Word alive to me in the morning hour I spent with my required Bible-reading. I remember encountering His love in Romans, having my concept of freedom blown open in Galatians, finding Christ in Leviticus as the eastern sun shone into my conference room refuge. I read through the book of Mark that summer and wept at its conclusion. That January, I spent five days in the Old Testament, reading it as I would read a novel, amazed at the God who spread Himself across the pages, across the stories, across the years.

Once I had known how to memorize, now God was teaching me to remember. I traded exact wording for heart-phrases I didn't remember learning. My limping heart began to respond to His Spirit, retuning its nerves with my physical nerves, leaving first wheelchair, then cane behind as I learned to walk all over again, using different signals that bypassed the lesions, leaning hard on what I knew of Him.

I still couldn't tell you what someone said to me five minutes ago. I couldn't tell you what I said thirty seconds ago. I can't repeat or quote long passages of anything, reiterate anything I learned for a test.

But I can tell His grace for memory. I can share what I know of His heart, the memories we have created together as He teaches me about walking with Him. My reproduce-words-habit has become memory-habit as He draws me beyond the page into relationship.

The words, like silhouettes against the sunrise, merely frame this incomprehensible Eternal. It is the Word Himself who is printing His image on my heart, and while I too often forget exact words and phrases I wish to remember, He has taught me through the fog to remember His heart.

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This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)