The miraculous and the mundane

     Have you ever experienced a time in your life that you literally feel like you are dangling by a thread?  Like at any moment that thread might break?  Well, I'm there.  After the week we had last week with Levi's accident and being in the hospital I anticipated that this week might be difficult.  But I was thinking the hard part would be the transitioning of Levi and his injuries.  That part has been far better than I could have hoped, he is healing wonderfully.  He is a strong little man and God is healing his body quite quickly!  For that we are so grateful and thankful!  And because of that fact I feel horrible for worrying about anything else! 
      I feel so ungrateful for what I'm about to say, we experienced a miracle when God protected Levi, we experienced a miracle when his little body began to heal so quickly, but now we need another one.  And I feel like I am being so selfish and spoiled to even ask for another... it's not like I feel like I need to earn God's favor, not that because I am good He will show up... that's not it at all, but more along the lines of He was so faithful to care for Levi, in that HUGE trauma and circumstance, that I feel like asking for Him to show up in this situation is petty and pathetic.  So I was honest with God, I journaled and confessed my unbelief and lack of faith.  I confessed and asked for God to continue revealing His character to me so that I could trust Him more.  I feel so silly even typing those words.  I mean I JUST saw God show up in a beautiful way a little over a week ago.  You would think I would have the faith that could move mountains.  So why do I question His providence in this situation?  How could I doubt His character now?  
     My flesh is so weak, I am such a human.  I have such a short memory, and I am reminded of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.  God parted the Red Sea to save them from their enemies, how much more miraculous could that be?  And not one chapter later His people had forgotten.  They were complaining and fearful for how He would provide for their daily needs, as if He would save them from Egyptian armies and leave them in the wilderness to die.  So I keep reminding myself that God is still the same God that He was in the hospital, in the middle of my worst moments.  He is still the God who cares, the God who sustains, the God who provides, JEHOVAH-JIRAH, the God who sees.  So I guess the point of this whole post is this, God doesn't just show up in the obviously miraculous, He will also show up in the everyday and the mundane.  And we don't have to wonder if our problems are big enough for Him to care about because it says in Matthew that he cares for the flowers and the birds, and how much more does He love us!  He is faithful, ALWAYS, He is not like us.  He is totally other, He is consistent, we can trust in Him.  The two pictures I posted below are from this past week, the first one from the hospital with Levi, in the moment that I was so sure of God's faithfulness.  And the bottom is one from this week, after choir practice, God's reminder that He is with me in the storm and the calm.  Great is Thy faithfulness! 
God, give me faith, more faith!  I confess my tendency to humanize You.  I know that You are wholly other.  I confess my fear that You may not show up.  Forgive me for forgetting how You have already shown up for us in so many miraculous ways.  I will lead my heart and my mind in Your ways and follow You and trust You!  You are worthy, You alone.  Help me not forget! 

When the very worst could have happened

     This week has been the longest and most excruciating of my life. On Tuesday morning the biggest fear in a parents life became a reality in mine, our son Levi, sixteen months old, was struck by a car pulling out of a driveway.  My husband was the first one to get to him and that image has haunted him for days.  Within moments we were at the hospital and within moments after that he was being airflighted to a children's hospital.  To say it was horrifying to watch them load him into a helicopter would be putting it far too mildly, however there were a few things that God put in our path that made this easier.  First of all within 15 minutes there were 10 friends there with us praying and assisting in getting us what we needed.  We overtook the emergency room with a prayer circle and there was a peace that filled my heart in that terrible place of fear.  Second, the emergency room doctors and nurses as well as the helicopter nurses were beautiful people that held us, cried with us, and assured us that he looked great as far as they could tell. As they were strapping him to the stretcher to load him into the helicopter the nurse looked at me and with big tears in his eyes said "I'm praying too".  I hadn't realized it, but in that moment I had been praying out loud, not consciously but completely led by the Spirit.  When I got in the car to head toward Memphis after the helicopter took off I remember thinking to myself, "This is what all of those days of praying, studying God's Word, fellowshipping with other believers, filling myself up is for.  This is when you must be full to be able to be completely poured out and know that God is good and faithful."  I am forever grateful for that moment of blessed assurance.
     As the next hours progressed we learned that Levi is indeed a strong and miraculous little boy.  He made it out of the accident with a couple lacerations on his head, road rash on the lower part of his body, and a few fractures in his pelvis.  Though he is in pain, he is on the mend and will heal completely.  As we were in the hospital God placed not one, but two nurses that I went to Union with in our path. (Remember that we were in Memphis, a huge city and about 100 miles from our home town).  And that was just one of the dozens of confirmations that He gave us that He was present.  He had not left us, nor Levi, not for one second.  While I was sitting in his hospital room, watching him resting peacefully, praying and praising God for protecting my boy, God gave me a couple of songs that resonated in my mind over and over.  The first was the song It Is Well.  The lyrics I prayed and sang over my boy...
When peace like a river attendeth my way, 
when sorrow like sea billows roll, 
whatever my lot, You have taught me to say,
 it is well, it is well with my soul.  
     And in that moment I could reflect on my heart and sing with all my might It Is Well.  Not because Levi is well, not because I am well, but because God is here and He makes all things good.  And I was responsible for reminding my heart of that, You have taught me to say "it is well with my soul".   A second song that rang so true in my heart and mind is the Chris Tomlin song Angel Armies,  I believe that God gave me this song to help me remember how Levi was protected that day, 
I know who goes before me, 
I know who stands behind, 
the God of angel armies is always by my side. 
     And I have no doubt that God was by our side, by Levi's side, throughout every single moment.  So, I write all this to say, we are home, Levi is healing quickly, we are so grateful for the prayers of each and every person that lifted sweet Levi before the throne of God, and we know beyond a doubt that He has a plan for this!  To God be the glory! 

Some pictures of sweet Levi for your viewing pleasure :)

What I'm learning now...

    You know those seasons where you feel as though you are being stretched beyond your limits?  Those seasons where you are stretched so thin you know you must be completely see through, transparent?  That's where I am now.  If I'm being honest, I don't want to be here anymore, I want to be in an easier time.  I want to stop being stretched and pushed.  But that's not what God has for me now, for now this is where He chooses and wills for me to be.  You see, I am a fixer, I am a problem solver.  If there is an answer to be found I am going to search until I find it.  If I can resolve the pain, I will... if there is an alternative to hard things, I am going to seek it out... if there is a way, I will seek until I discover it.  That sounds all good and fine until there are no answers.  Until you come upon a problem that has no solution, there is no alternate path to take, there is no resolution.  That's where God has me now, and I think I am learning why.  When you are a problem solver, a fixer, you tend to try EVERYTHING else before you take it to God.  That is my issue, my pride, I think I can find the answers, I think I don't need Him to help me.  Pride is such a problem in our culture, we are told to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and work harder.  We can do it, without the help of anyone else.  We don't ask for help we just keep it all bottled up inside, like asking for help is admitting weakness.  So, this is where I am, no solutions, no resolutions, no answers, just an impossible situation.  And then I turned to The Lord, Jehovah-Jirah, the God who Provides, the God who Sees.  And this is what I am learning...
     God never tells us to figure it out on our own.  He tells us to come to Him in humility...
2 Chronicles 7:14...if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land. 
Psalm 25:9 He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble His way
     So this is where I am, I am confessing my sin of pride and asking God to continue to teach me about humility and vulnerability.  And I am learning to pray, pray first, talk later (if at all).  Take it to the only One who can really satisfy my heart.  And ask, ask in faith.  Because God tells me...
Psalm 84:11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield, he bestows favor and honor.  No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.  
Matthew 6:33 Seek first, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 
Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. 
     There it is... the truth in all of this, the answer to all things.  Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. That is my goal.  I am learning to delight myself in God first, not myself, not my dreams.  Those are important to God too!  He wants to give me the desires of my heart.  BUT FIRST, I seek His Kingdom and His righteousness and learn to delight in Him!  
Thank you God for this place.  This hard place, this place of uncertainty, this place of stretching.  I know that You are here, I know that you are near to me.  I ask for you to continue to teach me humility, continue to teach me to delight only in You!  To take my dreams, fears, and desires to You and trust in You to deliver.  You are worthy of all my trust, all my hope, all my faith, You alone.  I am Yours. 

When I think I'm going under 

part the waters Lord

When I feel the waves surround me,

calm the sea

When I cry for help Oh hear me Lord

and hold out Your hand

Touch my life

still the raging storm in me

Songs in my heart

     The past few weeks have been such an odd combination of excitement and fear, contentedness and longing, peace and anxiety. I feel one thing one minute and then the following I feel something totally different. Now as a woman I am no stranger to emotions, raging hormones and a tender heart make sure of that. But these feelings have been more deeper than just "being a woman". These feelings have been drawing me, almost magnetically or like gravity, to the Lover of My Soul. I have needed to be close to Him every moment of my day in order to assure that my roller coaster of emotions didn't hijack my family and take them along for the ride. I haven't felt like reading, that took too much emotional and mental energy, I haven't felt like talking, that would mean that I had to figure out how I was feeling in that very moment and that was simply too difficult a task. So, like an old pair of pj's on a cool night, I turned to worship. Worship, praise music, lyrics that speak directly to my soul and reverberate my emotions back to God, has always been a language I fully engaged in. I love it. So here are a few songs and lyrics that God has placed in my heart these weeks to cling to like a life raft in my river of emotions... I hope that they speak to your soul as they speak to mine.



Jason Gray- Begin Again

Arise, my love, the winter's past, the spring has come!

He makes all things beautiful in time

After the fire, what remains is the love that will not change

And makes all things beautiful in time

It's never too late for a new start

No matter how your life's been torn apart

When you're at the end, you can begin again

There's never been a night so long…

There's never been a life too far gone

When you come to the end, you can begin again


Sovereign Grace- All I have is Christ

I once was lost in darkest night, yet though I knew the way.

The sin that promised joy and life had led me to the grave.

I had no hope that You would own a rebel to You will

And if you had no loved me first I would refuse You still


Now Lord I would be Yours alone, and live so all might see

The strength to follow Your commands could never come from me.

O Father, use my ransomed life in any way You choose

and let my song forever be, "My only hope is You". 

Hallelujah, all I have is Christ! 

Hallelujah, Jesus is my life!





God, let my soul forever be desiring You. Draw me Lord to You!

Hope

    Sometimes life is just hard, ya know?  I mean, really, sometimes there really isn't a solution to the problem, sometimes there is no reconciliation, sometimes the pain doesn't end, sometimes there are just hard things.  The past few months have been a barrage of hard things... now let's not get caught up in the comparison of hard times, hard times are hard times for the person that is experiencing them and to compare pain is meaningless and demeaning.  Many of us have heard comments that tell us, in essence, just keep moving, be stronger, get through it.  Now, in some sense I agree with the ideas in these comments.  What is the alternative really?  Just stop living?  Curl up on your couch with whatever numbs you and hide?  That is not living.  That is not why God has us here.  So what do we do?  When times are hard and there are no answers, when surviving is about all we can muster up the strength to do.  We turn to our hope.  I ran across this scripture today from Lamentations: Lamentations 3:21-22 Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. 

     And there it is,  I dare still hope when I remember the faithful love of God never ends!  What immeasurable grace! I have begun asking God to give me "see through vision".  That he would make me brave, not because of anything to do with myself, but that I have a hope that gives me strength for the hard times!  He makes me brave, His love, His mercy, His grace... I can face the hard because He is in my corner.  Not passively watching but embracing me and strengthening me!  James says to consider is pure joy when we experience suffering of various kinds, why? Because we know the testing of our faith produces endurance and steadfastness.  Trials, hard times, desert seasons, are our training grounds! God is strengthening our faith in Him! There is beauty, even life, in the desert! The picture posted below is of the Bad Lands, the infamously dry and vegetation-less desert.  However, during very rare seasons beauty springs up out of the dry hard ground!  God make my faith like that of these beautiful flowers that have strengthened and adapted to the desert to bloom and produce something awe inspiring! May these hard seasons not be kept inside but made useful in being shared! 

All you need is LoVe

     Lately I feel as though every time I turn around there is something about love in front of me.  Pinterest is full of pins about how to love your husband, how to love your kids, how to love your body, and on and on.  I have had several conversations with girlfriends about how to love others better.  I have had a conversation with my husband about how he receives love and feels loved.  But if I were being honest with myself many, if not all, of these conversations that stemmed around how to love others better were simply ways to get others to love me more.  I know that seems convoluted, but bear with me.  I want to know how to love Travis, my husband, better so that he will feel loved and feel like he should love me more.  I want to know how to love my neighbor better so that whoever notices will think higher of me and love me.  Most of the things I do during my day are either directly, or indirectly, serving and loving myself.  Strange and humbling realization to say the least.  
     Jesus says in Matthew to "love your neighbor as yourself".  You see the Bible already assumes that we love ourselves.  Even if we say that we don't love ourselves well, that statement reveals that we think we should love ourselves more and others should love us more, and in a way that is loving ourselves.  We say things like, "I need to take some time for me, to love me".  We already love ourselves enough to clothe ourselves, feed ourselves, get rest for our bodies, exercise, etc.  All Jesus is saying here is that we should do the same for our neighbors.  He is not saying that self loathing is the way to live.  He is saying we already do things for ourselves that we can do for others.  You clothe yourself, clothe others.  You feed yourself, feed others.  You give yourself grace, give grace to others.  Most of the rules we use to judge others are rules that we, ourselves, don't even live by!  So my challenge from God this morning was this:  feeling anxious about something? Serve someone else;  feeling depressed by a situation in your life?  Love someone else.   If I could spend half of the time I spend thinking about myself and all of the ways I want to be loved, thinking of how to love someone else I would reach thousands of people with Jesus' love.  So there it is, my truest conviction, my current and perhaps unending struggle to love others the way that Jesus commands, the way I love myself.  

Give me Your eyes for just one second
Give me Your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me Your love for humanity
Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me Your eyes so I can see

When you are weary

    You know those times when you are bone-deep tired.  Not just physically, like you have worked your body super hard to it's breaking point, but when you feel like that is also the state of your heart and mind.  You have worked so hard, for so long, that you have reached your breaking point?  Do you remember that feeling?  Those heavy, exhausted sighs, as if somehow taking in enough air will reinflate your body and mind... remember that feeling when you were finally able to rest? 
      I remember a time like this vividly, I was a child, maybe 9 or so, and I was swimming in a lake with my family.  I was pretty small, but could swim well enough that my mom wasn't too concerned about me.  There were some adults having an inner tube race in the deep part of the lake, they were facing backward at the starting line and I swam in the way of the oncoming traffic, they took off and I was quickly pulled under the water by the passing inner tubes.  I remember frantically kicking my feet and scrambling to find the surface of the water, I was turned around and terrified, I couldn't touch the bottom, but couldn't find the top.  I don't really remember who found me or if I eventually swam my way back to the part of the lake I could touch the bottom.  But what I do remember is the feeling I got when I finally reached the shore and my mom was there to hug me and make sure I knew I was safe again.  My lungs felt hot and heavy, my legs were tired from thrashing in the water, my eyes burned (partly from the water in the lake, but mostly from crying) and I took that first deep breath in my momma's arms and it felt so amazing.  Then I remember sitting with her on the shore and feeling so relaxed and at ease, I was safe, I could rest.  
     I tell that story because there have also been seasons spiritually when I was drowning, or at least I felt like I was.  My feet were kicking as hard as I could kick, but without knowing which direction the top of the water was, they were completely useless.  I was striving so hard, working with all my might to get back to safety, to find the shore.  Along the way I even tried holding on to other things, people and objects, to keep me afloat.  Only to find that I would either drag them down with me, or that I would lose my grasp and they would disappear.  All I had to do was stop thrashing, stop fighting, some swimming, and cry out for help and God would be right there to lift me from the water and onto the shore.  I remember the night that happened for the first time, I was sitting in my living room crying out to God completely empty and exhausted.  I finally surrendered, I gave up my fight and held up my hands for God to save me.  And He did, simple as that, He was there... there wasn't anything magical about the way I did it.  It wasn't some out-of-body-experience, just a feeling of exhaustion, then surrender, then rest.  I took that deep breath, the kind that shudders in your chest, and then just rested in His arms.  I was safe, the problems and circumstances were still around me, but I was safe in His arms.  Jesus would fight those battles, I could just lean back and rest in His embrace.  
     I'm not really sure why I feel lead to talk about this today, maybe because I am feeling weary and exhausted from striving.  But I just felt like I needed to remind myself, and share with others, that there is rest for our weary souls.  We don't have to strive so hard, we just need to find the arms of our Savior and rest there.  
"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.."-Jesus