Why Am I Telling You All Of This?

So glad you asked...

Those of you who know me personally are aware that I am anything but mysterious. I used to wish I could be an enigmatic, elusive personality that people were dying to figure out. Yeah...that's never going to happen. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my opinions on the outside of my mouth, which gets me in a world of trouble. Wide open though I am, there are places in my heart that are seen by invitation only, and I am particularly careful about displaying the details of my life during periods of transition.

You see, my hubs and I have moved more than a few times in our almost twenty-one years together, and we have been the butt of more than a few jokes over the years. For so long the pain of being misunderstood overshadowed the beauty of knowing we had obeyed God. There were times I would forget that when it is all said and done, His delight in me is what counts.Yet somehow my heart has reached that wide-open place of acceptance. I have accepted who we are and the unconventional path He has called us to walk and I no longer look for the unexpected curves and contours of our life in God to mirror that of someone else. The virgin Mary would have never found another whose path resembled hers. And the truth is we are all "incubating" the life of Christ, but we must free one another to be the unique expression of that immense life, no matter how different from our own it may be. Oswald Chambers said this:

“God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all of where that is.”

What utter freedom, what unending abandon there is in that truth. He decides for me. And you. And no two paths are the same. The community of believers should be like an art museum where we gaze with wonder and appreciation at the breathtaking differences in the lives of each believer. And that is why I have opened this part of our life for you to see. I have written much about following Him at any cost and now I am giving you a peek at what that looks like for us and for our family, at least right now, at this moment. It's weird. It's unconventional. But it's real.

What about you? What is God doing in you right now?

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Welcome to My Castle...But Watch Your Step

Lately, I have been considering the blogs that I am drawn to, the ones that I will read regardless of my busy schedule. And do you know what they all have in common? In each one the author is putting him or herself "out there" and what they write is real and authentic and I can't help but find that irresistible. I'm not talking about the embarrassing kind of self-disclosure that makes you want to crawl under your couch and hide, like when you watch The Office. I am talking about a real person who knows they are flawed and yet they let down their humanity like a drawbridge, inviting you to cross over the mote of outward appearance to see what the castle is really like inside.

I have avoided writing about my own personal life in any real detail for the past year or so because it is hard to give someone a tour of a castle you hardly recognize. The past twelve months have turned out to be one of the most surprising years of my life. My husband of almost twenty-one years stepped out of vocational ministry to pursue a business opportunity which turned out to be a vehicle that God used to pull us off to the side where He could tell us some things we needed to hear. And some dreams I thought were finally becoming tangible seem to be drifting off in the big, gray horizon, and I have been standing on the shore like Tom Hanks in Castaway, talking to myself and hoping that someone would show up and rescue me. It has been a costly year for us in more ways than one and a year that has shaken the foundations of my faith. And it's not over yet.

Our home, that has been on the market for eighteen months, has sold and we are set to close in twenty days. That means we have to move in nineteen days. And we have no idea where we are going. I said we have no idea where we are going. I would like to point out that this is actually the second time that we have been all dressed up with nowhere to go so I am not freaking out. I am going about my life, teaching my sons, writing, accepting speaking opportunities when they come and packing boxes, all the while breathing in and breathing out, expecting that God will show up before moving day and tell us where the heck He wants us to go.

I have written a great deal about risk, adventure and the perils of shore-hugging but what I want to say today, at this moment in my life, is that I am feeling a little seasick. And if I have ever given you the impression that launching out into the deep is only exciting and never frightening...well, I apologize. Sometimes it just plain sucks (sorry, Sabrina). I just wanted to set the record straight. Because I am nothing if not honest and authentic, and while that may not make everyone comfortable, I can at least lay my head on my pillow at night and know that I have been real. And real is seldom easy, usually uncomfortable and almost always messy. Welcome to my very real and very messy life. I will keep you posted...

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9-11-01...If We Were to Ask God

"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." -Ralph Waldo Emerson


All of the ceremony of a day like today stirs us to pause and to remember...

Where we were.

What we were doing.

How we felt.

And all the needless loss of life that day.

On this day each year, some will be overcome with thankfulness, forgiveness and hope.

Others will still be nursing hatred and judgment and fear.

If we were to ask God how He feels about what happened, I wonder what He would say.

Because He is "I Am" and not "I Was" or "I Will Be", I think He would ask us to look within and see how we have allowed the tragedies of yesterday and the heartbreak of today to change us and make us look like a truer reflection of His Image. And although I am certain the events of 9-11-01 broke God's heart, I imagine that today He is more interested in whether or not His children are looking more like Him and if we are allowing His image to be reflected on the lost and the broken, the sick and the poor.

These are the things I am thinking of today.

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Desert Places

When all of your writing comes from the deep places in your heart, but your heart is aching, dry and arid, it is difficult to string together words that will bring life to others.

Why write at such times?

It seems that many who write songs do their best work in the dark hour.

Some of the writing that has spoken to me the most has come from people who were transparent when hiding would have been easier, and watching them move forward even when broken has somehow brought life to me.

Hiding is easy and avoiding banal platitudes that are oddly suffocating is far more appealing.

Yet somehow people worth following are the ones who smell like the desert. They have known hunger and thirst and barrenness and can be trusted to bring food and water and life to someone else.

Can you really be an oasis if you have never known the aching need for one?

"All of my servants on their way to the High Places have had to make this detour through the desert...I bring my people into Egypt that they, too, may be threshed and ground into the finest powder and may become bread corn for the use of others."
--Hinds' Feet On High Places by Hannah Hurnard

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Honest Scrap Award

My friend, Cee Lew, from beautiful South Australia has recently awarded me the Honest Scrap Award for honesty and authenticity in my blog writing. This was an honor to me as I have always sought to be both in everything I say, do or write. And Cee is a picture of authenticity herself. Pop over here and check out what she has going on in her corner of the world.

To keep this award, there are some rules by which I (and future recipients) must abide:

1) Say thanks and give a link to the presenter of the award.

2) Share "ten honest things" about myself.

3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.

4) Tell those 7 people that they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving it.

So, here are the "ten honest things about myself":

--I have a deep desire to leave a legacy of my writing that will make a mark on others the way the writing of certain others has marked me.
--My three sons are the joy and delight of my heart and if I do no other great thing, I will have raised three men who will make a difference in this world.
--My faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of who I am and the reason that I live.
--I love and adore dark chocolate and I hate and detest spiders.
--I desire to travel the United States and see every place my heart has longed to see here.
--Then I want to travel the globe and see the rest of this spinning orb that God created.
--I do truly believe that marriage can be heaven on earth and my husband is easily the finest unexpected gift I have ever received. Life with him is an endless treasure.
--Regardless of how dark the path of my life can sometimes be, I really do love life, the mundane or the exciting, and I thank God for this life I have and I would trade places with no one.
--Two other things I wanted to be as a girl were a world-class tennis player or an Academy Award winning actress.
--Besides my family, my close friends who feed and encourage my soul are my favorite things. And really, family and true friends are what make us so very rich.


And now, to offer this fine award to 7 others (and in random order, mind you):

-Erica Orzechowski of Ponderings for her uncompromising authenticity. I have always respected that she is true to who she is. After all, pretending in order to please others is such a waste of precious time.

-Rachel Grubb of So I've Been Thinking for encouraging me to make time for my gift. I can't wait to see where her gifts take her.

-Bruce Goddard of View From A Hearse for making life in a southern town a thing to be treasured and even envied. He writes from a heart that authentically loves where he came from.

-Joylene Green of Therapy for giving real-life encouragement to her readers on living a healthy and whole-hearted life.

-Eddie Taylor for being a man who lives a life others should envy. He follows God anywhere and he is the same man at home that he is in public. There is no other like him.

-Adrienne Scott of In the Meanwhile for being exactly who she is. I have always respected her walk with God and any reflections in her writing of that walk are well worth reading.

-Jen Walsh of Chair Rocker. Many times I have popped over to her blog and read words that I needed so very much in that moment. Her words are always real.

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Truth-tellers

"The essence of friendship: the 'unbuttoning' of oneself that invites intimacy, followed by the ability to step into that close, vulnerable space."
--Sue Monk Kidd

I cannot fathom life without my truth-tellers. Truth-tellers are intimate friends who love you enough to enter into the messiness of your soul and tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Many are the leaders in the church who have no truth-tellers in their lives and for most of them, failure is an inevitability because for those who have no one to hold a mirror up to the soul, pride becomes a constant companion.

I spent this past weekend with two women who are truth-tellers in my life and I came away from their company with a clearer understanding of the largeness of the Love of God and the graciousness of His Holy Spirit. To see who you really are through the eyes of intimate friends that love you enough to speak uncompromising truth is a gift and a privilege.

Do you have such people in your life? Are you willing to make yourself vulnerable to another that they might see you as you really are? Have you given anyone permission to examine your messy interior and help you set things right? If you lead in any capacity, find at least one truth-teller and put them on speed dial. Allow them to help you tend the garden of your heart and then watch and see the bountiful harvest that follows.

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Beautiful Desolation

John 20:29 "...blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

I became a Christian in 1983 at the age of fifteen. I am a strong personality with very definite opinions that I have to bite my tongue at times not to share. I saw God change my life in such an amazing way that it NEVER crossed my mind to doubt Him. Ever. Until recently.

I have struggled with my beliefs in the past six months in a way I have never before known. And it has rocked me to my very foundation. I have made poor choices in the past and then had the unpleasant experience of living with the consequences of those choices, but I can deal with that. It is an expected life equation. In recent months, however, I have realized that God has brought me, by His own Hand, down a road that is unexpectedly desolate and I have been left questioning the very bedrock of my previously unyielding faith. My forty years of life have never been a cakewalk...there has been much disappointment and heartache and I have learned to befriend failure rather than resist it. There is much to be learned at that great destination called "the end of yourself". But this...well, this is different.

The odd thing about all of this is that He has guided me to, and then through, great pools of difficulty in the past, but this time is different because I am also at a place in my own soul of great burnout. Having soldiered through four remarkably painful tornadoes in recent years, I failed to take note of the effect of those cyclones on my heart and soul and then take appropriate measures to see myself through the necessary healing and restoration. And so now I am in a helicopter of His design, being given a birds eye view of the damages. No one enjoys pictures of the landscape after the storm rips through because it leaves you feeling, well, helpless. Exactly.

The other ugly truth is that I have been more loyal to my notions of Him than I have been to who He really is. I have been serving the American God who takes care of my every practical need and fills me with such great joy and who keeps me from all the pain and anguish that others around the globe live in daily. But that is rather like looking at a the Grand Canyon through a pinhole and thinking you have beheld it's beauty and immensity.

It is times like these that I wish like anything that I were an opaque work of art on His pottery wheel rather than the transparent window that I am by His design. I want to run away and hide so others cannot see what I am seeing inside of myself because to my eyes it is offensive and humiliating. In truth it is a thing of beauty that has not yet taken shape and He loves for others to look on as He works His miracles. So I thought I would let you have a look at what He is creating out of my own desolation.

And thank you for taking the time to stop by.

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Are You For Real?

I have been thinking about the one overriding quality that draws me to certain people, to certain blogs, to certain leaders or even churches. It would definitely have to be authenticity.

If something is authentic it is free from misrepresentation.

It is genuine.

It is real.

Things that are authentic usually are of great value because they are rare or because they bear their maker's name.

All people are valuable. Authentic people are valuable and rare and their Maker's Name is easy to see because pretense does not overshadow the work of art itself.

God, help me to be authentic. And genuine. And real. So that Your Name will be written on everything I do. And say. And touch. And so that Your Name would not be misrepresented by my life. Amen

Is this your prayer, too?

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