A Worthy Life

answered prayers

There were over 600 of them, names of people that never got their miracles. Waiting for what for many has been a lifetime, the names and maladies of these desperate 600 had been gathered from across Togo by missional seekers offering the gift of hope.

In villages and streets, their stories were given and in return, a possibility of healing and new life.

Many of their fellow countrymen had done the same and, when they were summoned, soon found a temporary home aboard a giant life preserver floating in Togo's coastal port. The staff, all volunteers, of Mercy Ships had been able to restore health, reverse death sentences, and rekindle hope for hundreds of such patients.

But these 600 had not been helped. These were ones whose conditions were too serious or not serious enough, ones who missed their appointed time for treatment, or ones who simply could not be re-found before Mercy's mission had come to an end.

One nurse Ali was not ok with that. She wasn't ok with a gesture of hope but no final culmination of their deepest hopes. So she sent out a petition, recruiting other volunteers into the ministry of mercy; this mission being eternal, one without an expiry date.

She asked for warriors of prayer to lift each name up to the Great Physician, the one who knows their name and their need. Of the 600 names, almost half of them were matched with intercessors. I asked for and received 20 names of children, the first four perfectly matched in age to my own four.

The slip of paper with these names became my nightly prayer roster. Before bed and in bed when counting sheep seemed silly were there were souls to name.

Last week Ali wrote with an update while the ship was once again docked in Togo. It had been five months since her call for aid and that day they were admitting twenty of the 600 who were still waiting. I emailed her then to find out if, by supernatural happenstance, one of those patients might have been one of my 20.

If for just one my prayers were heard, I would have my faith strengthened.

If for just one their miracle had come, I would be reminded that God hears my cry.

If for just one new life was theirs, I would know that last August my own life mattered.

She responded to say that not one, not two, but TEN of the twenty patients they saw last week were from the list I had wept and prayed over!

"WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?!", to quote Ali.

What indeed are the odds that my God would care so much for little ol' privileged, safe, healthy, affluent me that He would send this clanging confirmation that even in a world of need and hurt, He sees ME, He hears ME??

The chances, as it turns out, are pretty good that God does not forget those the world has forgotten. It's pretty good odds that He is still in the business of answering prayers and delivering on miracles.

All we have to do is ask.

p.s. One more answered prayer, Ali is expecting her first baby in August! Would you go and leave a word of congratulations for Ali and, for me, a request that Canada be the first place baby visits after the hospital and grandma's house? :)

tender hearts

Her heart is warm, her smile gracious, always inviting you in, asking you to freeze this moment in time and remember her. She longs to please, her countenance sensitive to her mother's tone. I long to build her up, assure her that she is loved just as she is so that no fragility of heart remains, only a place where tenderness makes it's home.

This discovery was hers, a remnant of once warmer days, newly clothed in icy waters. The beauty here was that the past still serves us in this our present; what once dressed and imbued our dinnertime salads now awakens us to the allure that still blossoms even in winter's harsh grasp.

Her words, a love letter weeks too early for the yearly holiday, came right on time to a mama who just this afternoon balanced precariously on the edge between firm teacher and fiery preacher. She knew nothing of my need to write today for 5 minutes, nothing of the word that spoke the challenge. Just as she tries her best, so I try mine. As her words bring sweet reward to my weary feet, so I trust my example provokes hers to follow where Jesus' trod.

motherhood ain't always pretty...

Sure, motherhood ain't always pretty but it sure can be darned funny...!

Regrettably, I am usually not present at morning devotions, an event that happens over breakfast with papa while I get my last few moments of beauty sleep. My presence for Sunday's devo while on a weekend getaway was regrettable for everyone else. When pops started off with the title, All by Myself, I took it as a personal invite to serenade the family with my best rendition of All by myse-e-elf, don't wanna be, all by myseeeelf! Everone waited until I was done but, alas, there was no applause. When I heard, We built this treehouse... it was, of course, another opportunity to break out in song, We built this (treehouse) on rock and ro-o-o-ll...!

No one has regretted my absence at morning devos since.

We hit up some outlets this weekend and all the girls scored new pea coats for a song (this time, not one of mine) at their new favorite store...Ooosh Koosh b'Goosh.

Somehow passing with flying colors came up this week at school. I am now inundated with requests for the actual test called, you guessed it, With Flying Colors.

With a full collection of books all things Star Wars, I fear I may be evolving into one. And no, not one of the beauties like Princess Leia or Queen Amidala. Nope, I've adopted the weirdo verbiage of Yoda..."Kids, don't forget warm to dress when outside you go!" Let's just hope my skin doesn't start morphing into a lovely shade of green.

My no-fail response when I want to put off a question from my kids is maybe. This week, however, my five year old lawyered up with, "Maybe is NOT an option! YES or NO?!?

Now, I'm being asked my the little people that rule the roost to vacate my computer. Fine, I'll just go find another way to waste time before starting dinner... :)

Embracing with Emily.

supernatural wife

I'm a natural mother, or so people say.

Loving my kids, sacrificing for my kids, serving my kids isn't something I have to will myself to do; it's something that to me seems as effortless as breathing and as rewarding as any other calling.

I do it because it's what comes easy, naturally. I do it because being Mama has always been highest of my heart's ambitions.

By contradiction, marriage is about as natural to me as being one half of a Siamese twin; I don't naturally operate well with some another head directing the same parts of a life shared.

While girlfriends in my youth sighed dreamily about Prince Charming and hoped his arrival might happen any day, I yearned for independence, a life free from yo-yo emotions and a steady resolution towards my plans and my dreams. One day I would settle down, perhaps, but the future held too much to risk sharing it while holding hands.

Ironically, I married before most of my friends. I married while quite young to a man I loved, one who shared so many of my same desires and vision. The pastor who married us counseled my husband, "This one (meaning me, who was sitting right in front of him, privy to this entire conversation!) is very independent (I could almost see the italicization of very in his breath!). This is a good trait though (obviously!), one that when directed well will prove your full confidence."

You can imagine my delight in his use of the word directed.

I didn't want to be directed or steered or led. I wanted to share a life with my husband and friend while staying true to me, not having to divorce myself from everything I was so that I could be everything someone else thought I should be.

I thought words like submission and meekness meant I was to surrender every aspect of the person God had started an eternal work in years before. I thought I had to swallow all of me so I could morph into him.

I understood serving as it applied to my children but when compared to my husband all I heard was servitude.

I understood sacrifice as it applied to my children but when compared to my husband all I heard was inequality.

I understood love as it it applied to my children but when compared to my husband, he spelled it r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

Thankfully, my confusion (and bitterness) was short lived when this pastor's wife shared with me a glorious picture of what my role really entailed and the value I had the potential to bring to my union.

The example was taken from scripture, a conversation between Jonathan and the man who walked into battle beside him carrying for him his armor.

"So his armor-bearer said to him, “Do all that is in your heart. Go then; here I am with you, according to your heart.” (1 Samuel 14:7)

Here I am with you, according to your heart.

I had fallen in love with my husband because of his heart, because of his heart for me and for the life we envisioned together. Trust me, our minds might (and do) not always agree but because I was and am so convinced that his heart holds only the highest desire for me and for our God, my willingness to be his helper grows, my eagerness to support him is authentic because his successes become our triumphs.

Because his heart is for me, I have tremendous sway over the direction his heart chooses to go. And as I respect him, he has full confidence that what my heart desires is locked on the same eternal purpose as his. Sometimes I challenge his heart, sometimes he questions mine; it's a leadership of love, submission by trust.

Even as great as it sounds, rarely does it all come naturally to me (I wasn't born a Siamese twin, after all).

That's why I'm eternally grateful that God's directives for wives never come without the certainty of supernatural aid. Sure, I may never quite perfect being Super Wife but I'll happily settle for Supernatural Wife any day.

 

salvageable faith

A faith in flux. The dark night of the soul. Wrestling...

These are the descriptions of Christians, true believers, who for a period of time, however brief or lengthy, have found themselves questioning the foundation of their faith.

Perhaps this uncertainty comes because of unimaginable tragedy that visited when they had somehow thought their God would shield them from any and all suffering. Perhaps because of popular secular opinion and theories that shatter their already weak convictions.

Perhaps because of an unsettled discomfort that maybe all this is little more than a ruse, a cleverly devised fable that caught fire but is now nothing more than smoldering ash. Perhaps the darkness descends when reality hits after the mountaintop encounter and doubt encroaches where vibrant faith dulls to a flicker.

Perhaps a shaken soul comes with as little as silence from an absentee God, a life void of all the emotion and experience others said were sure to follow a life given over to God. Perhaps it visits when others tell you to divorce your mind from your heart.

Perhaps it pounces with the aggression of legalistic zealots whose desire to purify often comes with pain and punishment. Perhaps it slips in between the sheets of cooling lovers who wonder at the mystery of marriage and how something of God's design could be so difficult, the solutions so muddled in love and respect.

The whys and hows of it's coming are varied; the souls and minds wherein it settles range from the simple to the intellect, the long-time saint to the newly converted sinner.

For some time now, I have found myself possessing a different mindset, one visited by dark nights of the soul and foggy days of wrestling with unresolved questions; this new one far removed from the simple, unquestioning faith of my youth.

Then, I was willing to accept everything I was told and taught, assuming that what I read or had read to me straight from God's word must be digested and absorbed without argument and without dissent.

Now, I am growing more and more willing to be the one asking the questions, moving away from being the one who had to have all the answers.

Questions like mine, confessions like ours are unsettling to so many. Fearful of rocking the boat, of challenging authority, and apprehensive about a faith teetering on the edge, other believers are quick with their cliches, hasty to offer a scriptural band-aid to a heart bleeding on the inside.

Last year my only resolution was to avoid religious extremes, groups and affiliations and trends within the Christian community that take a harsh stand on what we must do or else pay the price.

When my local Christian homeschool community published articles stating homeschooling was God's direct command to parents, I opted out of my paid subscription and occasional article submission. Instead I chose to integrate into the broader homeschooling community, most of which are not religious, and have had my faith strengthened as I reached beyond my self-centered and self-serving insulated world into a deeper, solidified conviction of who I know God to be.

When others around me talked apocalyptic bunkers and self-preservation for the end of the world, I knew that this wasn't what God's word taught. Even had I believed myself to be living through such times, I knew the only appropriate action would be increased missional living so that the truth of Jesus Christ might be known to more and more as we near the brink of eternity.

This year my resolution, keep wrestling.

Though I've seen my faith bruised, "no faith is as solid as a wounded faith" (E. Wiesel).

Though I've seen my faith highjacked by public figures whose lives are but a play of hypocrisy or whose words devalue and debase the truths I hold dear, I cling to the example of One who would address their Pharisaical ways and show Truth more by what is lived than by what is said.

Though I've heard and read words that oversimplify the cost to following Jesus and over-commit on the personal prosperity to be gained, I am persuaded that it is less about me and more about Him and His eternal kingdom.

Though I still question and struggle, I now understand that "if only the will to walk is really there He (God) is pleased even with their stumbles" (C.S. Lewis).

I.will.wrestle, like Jacob of old, refusing to resign myself to a faithless existence, believing though God may be absent He is not non-existent, and drawing still close to Him and His word that I may continue to salvage truth from fiction, light from darkness, and action from apathy.

My faith remains, rooted in the historical validity of scripture, in the proclamation of His glory as seen through creation, and because of this little light of mine that sometimes smolders and sometimes shines deep, deep down in my heart.

embrace the camera.quatro

These are the days of our life...

Rising from bed well behind the sun, spooning oats with cinnamon to warm our sluggish engines.

Squeezing in tight on the couch for math, hoping the answers slip from brain to paper.

Asking a sister to join in her play, knowing two imaginations are better than one.

Slipping out at noon to the gym, grateful for the hour of (ironically) respite.

Bellyflopping on mama's bed, discovering new friends tucked between turning pages.

Choosing joy when sorrow threatens, refusing to go down to the pit...again.

Reading this while laying beside my husband, deciding together how to live and love more like Jesus.

Supermodeling for the eyes that watch me, desiring to show them a better way.

Calling up a dear, old friend, lending her my prayers for circumstances that demand supernatural intervention.

Quoting movie lines here, there, and everywhere, wondering why they can remember enitre scripts after one viewing but not their multiplication tables.

Letting go of perfection, enjoying the good enoughs.

Shedding fear of what others think of me, accepting who I am and who I was made to be.

Creating moments and spaces of beauty and joy, enjoying now, here, them, this....

Embracing with Emily.

embrace the camera.tres

We were pushing the limits of time, coming home from a wonderful afternoon together with so much we still wanted to do: giggle more, sing at the top of our lungs, and not stop dancing until our tired feet stopped twitching beneath bedtime covers.

As always, some things we still needed to do: make dinner, practice guitar, and wrap up some schoolwork.

Instead of choosing one over the other, we joined together to do it all. I serenaded her while she practiced music, she kept me laughing while making dinner, and we both kept our toes tapping all night long.

The days pass too quickly into nights, the years have faded into a decade of motherhood for me. I have hundreds of days a year to cherish them and to teach them and yet today, I just want one more.

One more smile, one more laugh.

One more session of folding laundry together while chatting about the mysteries of blooming adolescence.

One more silly song, one more crumpled sheet found with words from a young song writer's heart.

One more struggle that leads to one more prayer.

One more fight that leads to sudden understanding.

Tonight I can no more push the limits of time than I can freeze the moments of here and now. I wonder sometimes at the coming days and years, how things will change. Will they always be for the better or will there be some worst?

The answers will come, in time, in tears, in celebrations.

For now, I have one more picture, one more time capsule of the pieces of my day that will become the pieces of our past.

And for now, it is my present and I cherish the gift.

Embracing with Emily.

avoiding proverbs 31 in my new year's resolutions

I think that the Proverbs 31 Woman gets too much publicity.

Judging from the sheer abundance of bloggers that have either named their sites some derivative of her description from scripture or boast posts on how you too can be such a woman, I'm probably outnumbered a bazillion to one on this one. It's not that I think this chapter doesn't have merit, it does; it's just that I think we infringe on dangerous territory when we resolve to be everything that we read there.

This past month I've read dozens of blog posts by women who appear to do it all, often because of their self-appointed commission to become like the elusive Proverbs 31 Woman. Juggling mom duties and marital responsibilities, community outreach and hospitable invites, these women have their hands full and overflowing as they walk in simple daily faith with their Lord.

Yet even within these God-given and Jesus-led missions, they confess that they feel or fear a sense of failure or insufficient obedience because they have yet to take a shower and clothe themselves in fine purple linen or select which wool and flax will work best with the pinterest bible verse project they've been hoping to finish for their home.

In a manner of speaking, of course.

Having been inundated with the effervescent characteristics of the noble wife, they wonder to themselves what is remotely noble about bringing in your food from the nearby Costco or duct taping the recent rip in the store bought (read: not handmade) snow pants for the snowflakes that never seem to fall on their friends in Southern California.

Speaking, this time, in first person.

So absorbed with this specific descriptive, well-meaning women devote their lives to checking off each item as if on a spiritual to-do list: provided food for my family (here's to hoping it includes those female servants someday!), check; worked with eager hands (though I'm still working on waking in the middle of the night to run the dishwasher), check; went to three grocery stores far and away from my house (bringing food in from afar), check; made something and sold it (using the kids' lemonade stand as my front still counts, right?), check....

Not that there is anything wrong with any of these, by the way.

It's just that in our singular pursuit of becoming like one woman (who, by the way, probably wasn't even real; doesn't anyone read vs. 10: who can find her??), I wonder if we haven't set ourselves up for a Don Quixote-esque quest of a life God never called us to live. What was meant as a noble description is now used as religious conscription into a lifetime list of tasks to prove my wifely nobility.

Or worse, we use characteristics found there as justification for our own ambition or desires that weakens our impact in our own homes. While admitting life on the home front is frazzled and chaotic, I've heard women continue to insist that they too have a right to or must now secure additional vocations because, after all, good ol' Proverbs 31 Woman brought in her own income. I've heard women defend full shopping bags from the mall by insisting that every noble woman wears luxury designer fashion. There are even blogs that equate the effort to looking pretty on the outside to being spiritually beautiful on the inside and twisting verses to insist that a godly woman is one who looks good.

Please understand, I'm not calling for the resurrection of the 1940s housewife, perpetually barefoot and pregnant and forever ignoring the gifts and callings God may have endowed to you. I'm just testing the waters outside of the poetic world of Proverbs and smelling the burnt coffee in my very real world of La Mancha, questioning my own faithfulness in callings that matter most to my Father and my willingness to let go of those that only threaten to deplete and redirect my energies from where they are most necessary. I'm challenging too the trend to prove our spirituality by works rather than by an authentic heart that only God can see.

I wonder if, beneath the looming shadow of our erected Proverbs 31 homage, we're also losing the significance of so many other women whose lives and histories dot the 1,188 other chapters in the Bible.

Women like Ruth, whose main honorable virtue was remaining loyal to her mother-in-law and picking through leftovers for their daily food, who God chose as the great-....great-grandmother of Jesus. Or further back, Rahab whose notorious profession really had her working it, and yet it was her unabashed, simple faith that earned her too a vein in Jesus' family tree.

I wonder if Jesus' own mother concerned herself more with what she was wearing on any given day or what at-home business she should start than continuing to ponder in her heart the things God had promised.

Perhaps I should be more mindful in my daily reflection of examples such as Martha's sister Mary who left her work to soak up more precious moments with her Lord and Master or Hannah whose heart's only cry was for a child to raise, whose heart recognized the value in raising little ones to dedicate to the service of her God.

In my reading of His word, might I seek His calling and purpose for me, not striving to perfect one that others may find commendable but may for me be complete rebellion against what God is asking of me.

Were I yet eager for another prototype of biblical womanhood, Titus 2 depicts one complete with a checklist of her own. And between you and me, if I was in the proverbial playground with Proverbs 31 Woman and Titus 2 Lady as captains picking for the Modern Maiden playoffs, I'd be all, "Yo, Titus 2 Lady! Pick me, pick me, pu-lease pick me!"

And then all I'd have to do to be an all-star was avoid gossip, stay out of alcoholics anonymous, love on my husband and my kids, keep a good house and be a good wife - a heck of a lot more achievable credentials than what those on the other lady's team got's to do!

This year, I can fill my days with tasks leaving me with a feeling of accomplishment and purpose. Or, I can purpose to concern myself more with the matters of my heart, trusting that a heart for Jesus will overflow in a life that reflects His greater purposes for my life and the lives of others.

Your thoughts?

roar

The pain comes roaring in without warning, my body and emotions are swept up in it's powerful blast. The exhaustion, it comes too, a deep growling as if the beast of affliction were not yet content.

It comes frequent enough, sometimes in spurts, sometimes it lingers as if hopeful to make more than an acquaintance.

It is still my enemy.

Unwilling to fully succumb to what is my cup to bear, I drink bitterly of what I must, eager so soon to indulge in a diet of my own choosing.

I sometimes wonder, why me, for what greater purpose, where is my help coming from?

Until yesterday when I wondered aloud, "Perhaps it's because He loves me THIS much."

Perhaps the giant roar of interruption to my best laid plans, my pursuits for here and now and then and there someday eternally, is a gift. A gift of slower days, less energy to do so that I can be still and know.

What if, for little ol' me, He intervenes to draw me nearer? What if these days of tasks undone and friends unmet and services unrendered are for me?

What if the lion's beastly roar is for me, to allow me to lie down and draw soul comfort from the Lamb?

What if He loves me that much? Enough to pull me from a Martha's fury of activity to evoke a Mary's heart of seeking at the feet of the Savior.

What once to me was a dreaded foe is now an unlikely ally, working in me something deeper and purer and heaven sent than all my grandest desires and noblest pursuits could ever accomplish here on this terrestrial ball.

Because He loves me so...

It's Five Minute Fridays, a welcome break from vacation mode for me to write.