Plans

The plan was so simple: read facebook statuses for a few minutes and then head to bed early to catch up on my growing sleep deficit.  As I sat down to accomplish my plan, a flash of lighting darted in my window followed by a boom of thunder that shook my kitchen walls.  Ahhhhh, a storm.  I stood up and went to my kitchen door to enjoy the storm that surrounded the ranch from every side.  And as I watched, it came closer until the rain began to parade noisily on my tin roof.  I sighed and listened to the cannoning thunder.  As I listened, a different thud made its way to my ears.  Someone was knocking on my door that connects to the girls’ dorm.

            Not excited in the least about this development, I went to see what was up.  I opened the door to find two girls about eleven or ten years old wrapped in their blankets and looking at me with scared eyes.

            “We can’t sleep, Renee.  The lights keep on flickering on and off and the thunder is so loud and scary.”

            My plan for an early bedtime had not foreseen this, but I thought I might be able to salvage the situation.

            “Aw, I’m sorry.  You know what, though?  I love thunder storms because God is showing his power and if God’s on my side and that’s how powerful he is, I know I don’t have to be afraid.  He’ll protect me.”

            They blinked back at me, completely unappeased with my half-hearted attempt to comfort them and something in my heart whispered that this wasn’t a time to dismiss their fears and send them back to bed.  This meant that my early bedtime plan was now on life support.  My only hope was that the storm would pass quickly.

            I let them in my room and we sat on my floor and began to talk.  They explained to me all the things they were afraid of; the figures they saw in dark corners, the tales that haunted their sleep, the imaginings that kept them awake at night.  And they asked.  They asked why I wasn’t afraid, they asked if the things they feared were real, and what they could do when they were afraid.

            And as the storm outside slowly quieted, I told them.  I told them that I was afraid sometimes, I told them that the things they feared were real sometimes, but that we have a shelter in the storm always, a God to whom even the darkness is not dark.  We talked about the devil, his limited power, and his desire to make us fear him instead of God.  But I got to tell them with confidence that my God is greater than this devil who tries to make us tremble in fear.  My God wants us to tremble in awe and worship at his great love that envelops us when he could and should smite us.

            As I told them about my God, they asked more questions.  How was I patient with them?  How could they learn to be patient with others?  How come I didn’t seem to get very angry, but when they promised themselves they would curb their temper, they couldn’t?

            We sat in my room, talking as it grew later.  And when the storm had finally abated and when all of our eyelids began slipping down our eyes, we sank into our beds.

Right before I fell asleep, I looked at the time.  Definitely much later than I had planned to go to bed.

But when I thought about it, I realized I had just gained something better than a few hours of sleep.  I just had the chance to talk to two of the girls personally about my great God.  And this time, unlike so many others, I wasn’t the one starting the conversation, they were.  They wanted to know more about this God.  They wanted to know how he touches their lives.  And if my plans have to be derailed for that to happen, it’s more than okay with me.

"Even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as day,

for darkness is as light with you."

-Psalm 139:12

on self-pity and showers

When I woke up this morning, I swear something was staring me down.  Gorged as all get out and terribly lethargic, self-pity’s tear drop eyes steadily gazed at me.  I squirmed in my bed and I could just feel it.  Yup, today was going to be a battle.  Like any good soldier, I drilled in preparation, reading the Bible and praying, but my heart wasn’t engaged.  The enemy was staring me down from his dark corner in my heart and my soul trembled.

Why such a heaping dose of self-pity?  No reason, no reason at all.  It was just sprinkled in my day like sugar in coffee.

As if my life were a crossword puzzle, I peered around, looking backwards, sideways, diagonal, upside down, searching for all those little “mistakes,” the things that ticked me off.  Once found, I circled them with bright red complaining.  To my trained eye, the day was beginning to look as red as a traffic light.  And self-pity, sitting in his corner, smiled.

I’m a professional pity-partier, and as such, I know better than to voice my woes.  If you voice them, one of two things can happen: an optimist will come and point out all the little rainbows and daisies and hearts and completely ignore your incredibly legitimate sorrows, or a better pity-partier will come and steal the show.  Either way, your pity party is ruined.  So I let my gloomy thoughts chase their tales in my head and self-pity take a light snooze as I did the work for him.

In the afternoon, my pity party reached a high-point as I extolled my virtues and pondered why my greatness wasn’t more widely recognized.  In fact, I even began planning this blog post as a sarcastic piece on that very subject that I could either try to redeem at the end with some sort of something about how Jesus is better, or I could entirely give up and let the piece stand as a full fledged pity party (the latter being the preferred option).

Then, the most amazing thing happened.

I took a shower.

Yes, you read that right.  I took a shower.  It was a profound theological moment as I realized my self-centeredness and Christ’s cleansing work on the cross that has the power to wash away my self-pity.

No, just kidding.  It was simply a shower.  It wasn’t even a nice long shower, it was a military shower.  But by the time it was over, I didn’t want to complain any more.  I sat down to right this blog post, and all the perfectly witty quips about my self-pity fled.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been trying to understand why my self-pity disappeared.  I can’t say that it was shame over revealing my sin; my family knows that I have no problem doing that.  It definitely wasn’t an epiphany.  I think it was gratefulness.

I couldn’t find anything wrong with my shower.  It was perfectly refreshing.  The only “complaint” I can think of was that it was making me take a break from my hard core pity partying, but even that was perfectly refreshing.  Once I found that thing that made me truly thankful, I didn’t want to ruin that beautiful feeling of thankfulness with a pity party.  I just wanted to revel in it.

God, in his kindness, sent me that shower.  I wasn’t looking to be delighted; I was grasping for shadows of discontentment, yet God chose to delight me anyway.  How perfectly loving he is.

In their unexaggerated forms, all of those less-than-perfect things are still present in my life, but I don’t want to focus on them.  I want to spend my time rejoicing in the only perfect thing, my God, and treasuring every gift he sends.

On fear

Early one morning this week I received a frantic knock on my door.  I haphazardly fell out of bed and opened the door to find one of the girls sobbing in the hallway.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “I had a bad dream and I’m scared of monsters,” she managed between sobs.

            I gave her a hug and began to walk her back to bed.  I sat on the edge and began to talk to her.

            “You know what, L—?  Those monsters you’re afraid of, they aren’t real.  The devil wants you to think of them and be afraid because he loves it when you’re scared.  But God doesn’t want you to be scared.  That’s why he sent Jesus to conquer the devil and your fear.  Because Jesus came, we don’t have to be afraid anymore because he loves us and will protect us.  So let’s pray and ask God to give you peace and help you to sleep.”

            We prayed, I lent her a teddy bear to sleep with and then crawled back in bed myself.

            Since I’ve been back, fear has been popping up fairly frequently.  A little girl wanting to shimmy up the tether ball pole, but afraid of falling; one girl afraid of drowning in the pool; me being afraid that if the girls leave and I’m not there to watch them, they won’t be cared for; all of us being afraid of being left alone as teams and children come and go and a few of us stay behind.  As each of us encounters fears, we decide how to react, either to become paralyzed or to move forward in love by faith.

            I’ve noticed that most times our fears aren’t completely ridiculous, and as I work with the girls, I love letting them know that and showing them how to move forward even though their fears are real.  Take for example the girl who was afraid of drowning.  She didn’t know how to swim and the pool went over her head in a few spots.  Her fear of drowning was legitimate.  While I talked to her, I never said that her fear was silly and it was impossible for her to drown, but I reminded her that I, who knows how to swim, would be by her side the whole time, watching her.  This reassured her enough that she hopped in the pool and eventually even dared to join her friends who were a little farther away from me.

            As I look back at this example, I can’t help but think that God likes to treat us similarly.  My worries are many and various, and when I read my Bible and pray to God, I never hear him say, “These are unfounded fears, they couldn’t possibly happen.”  I hear him softly whisper in my ear, “Cast your burdens on me; I will never permit the righteous to be moved.”  He affirms their weight, but asks me to trust more in his power.  When he does this, he’s not simply asking me to believe that trials aren’t difficult or that they won’t come at all; he’s asking me to trust that his redeeming purpose in the midst of difficult circumstances can lend a sweetness to the bitter, a sweetness that surpasses and outlasts all bitterness.  God recognizes my susceptibility to fear and addresses it, not by dismissing it, but by encouraging me to grow through it.

            I won’t lie; recently watching seventeen kids leave the ranch over a two day period brought a plethora of fear into my life.  Some fears were new, some were old, but all were weighed and cared for by my God.  I can’t be sure that the kids will be safe and taught truth.  I have no way of knowing the exact details of their lives.  But I do know the One who ordains their lives, and I know that he is unfailingly good.  One day I may even have the chance to see or hear about these kids, and I know that even then, I may not be able to say, “Ahah!  I’ve found God’s goodness in this situation.”  The undeniable truth is that I am not God.  I will never be able to understand his ways or fathom his wisdom.  But that does not negate his goodness.

Letters from home and long ago

February 19, 2014

True to the way of this world, this week has brought a few more cares and trials along.  In an effort to "lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely" so that I may "run with endurance the race that is set before [me], looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith," (Hebrews 12:1-2), I've been reviewing old letters.

Last fall when I ventured across the pond, some of my dear friends wrote me letters of encouragement in a journal, which I also brought with me to Mexico.  I've been rereading these precious words like a thriller novel because they're so full of encouragement that seemed to be written for these days of hardship.  Don't you just love how God inspires ordinary people to write things that will provide encouragement in a myriad of situations?  Such a joy is God's truth that it applies to all situations of life.  These letters addressed to some distant Renee that used to exist what seems like eons ago (every day lasts a year in Mexico, people.  I'm now an old lady.) apply to this frail Renee who can't bear to think about tomorrow, but who prays to God literally to just live through the day, even the next five minutes.

Today, I want to share with you all some encouragement I rediscovered in a letter from my dear friend, Abby.  I love every words of it.


"Dear Renee,

"This entry comes from something I wrote in my journal back in June while at the beach.  I was watching a dad with his little boys.  One was probably around 6 or 7 and the other 4 or 5.  The younger child clung to his dad as they played in the waves, but the older let go of his dad's hand after a few moments.  When they were both holding dad's hand, they were safe from the crashing waves.  The moment that the older boy let go he was unsteady on his feet and was [k]nocked around by the waves.  After a couple times of coming up spluttering, the boy reached for his dad.  The dad's hand was right there waiting for the boy to take it, wait[ing] so that he could take hold of the boy and finally lead him safely out of the water.

"I thought this was a cool picture of how God cares for us even when we try and do it ourselves.  Sometimes we can think that we can take the waves ourselves.  We can't.  We need to hold God's hand and he will bare us up with his everlasting strength.  I want to encourage you, Renee, to hold God's hand while you are here in France.  He will guide you.

"Proverbs 3:5-8 says: 'Trust in  the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.'

"Know that the hand you hold is the Lord your God.  The one you fear and trust.  He will hold you against the waves.  He knows the waves you can handle and he will protect you from the ones that are too big.

"I am praying for you my dear friend!

"Abby"


"He knows the waves you can handle and he will protect you from the ones that are too big."  I love this sentence so much.  I feel as if the waves are battering me constantly, some old, some new.  I haven't drowned yet, but sometimes I wonder if I will soon.  Will a wave come that holds me under until I have no breath?  Or will the water shoved in my mouth with every wave finally fill my lungs?  I've found grace for yesterday and today, but can I make it through tomorrow?  What about the 98 tomorrows that will follow?

How easily have I forgotten the 6,977 yesterdays!  Each of those yesterdays, God was there, sustaining my every breath, sometimes lifting me above the waves, at other times holding my hand through the waves.

And what of the millions of yesterdays before I even existed?  The innumerable saints who have gone before me?  The God who escorted them by his divine hand into their eternal rest is grasping mine with an unrelenting grip!  No, the waves will not overtake me.

En francais:

Oui, je suis horrible.  Je n'ai pas traduit mes mise-a-jours il y a trop de temps et aujourd'hui ne va pas etre different.  Je n'avais pas de temps, et c'est tres difficile de parler en francais.  Peut-etre un jour, je le ferrai.  Peut-etre non.  Mais je suis vraiment desolee aujourd'hui.  S'il ous plait, pardonnez-moi!

"WARNING:

All words spoken in prayer will be taken as sincere, even if they're not."

I've started to think God should just include that warning every time we pray.

I often think of prayer as a comforting thing.  You can talk to the infinite holy God and he listens!  You can pour out your anguish to an ever-listening ear who can do something about it!  But I forget all too soon who exactly he is.  He's the God who sent his only Son to die on a cross for rubbish like me.  He's the God who consumed Nadab and Abihu with holy fire for getting a little fancy with the incense.  He's the God who commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute.  He's not confinable, but he reigns supreme over everything, and his ways are radical.  His ways are certainly not my ways, they're higher and much more humble.

I'm sitting here looking at my life right now and scratching my head,  How on earth did I get here?  And why am I even sticking around?  I think the answer has everything to do with that prayer warning I mentioned above.

You see, more than a few times over the years, I've read an amazing story, or sung an inspiring song, and thought, "Why doesn't God seem to my as close as he did to the person who lived or wrote this?"  And then I'd get the brilliant idea to pray and ask God to make him the most precious thing to me, whatever the cost.  I just forgot to mention in my prayer the fine print, excluding everything I hold dear from that "whatever the cost" phrase.  And I didn't pray this just once, I prayed at many, many times.  I had no clue how heavy those words would weigh into my life later.  Even if I didn't mean them all, God took them oh-so seriously (and the scary thing is I'm only nineteen).

Without getting into too many of the grubby details, my life's pretty tough right now, with no signs of getting easier within a bearable amount of time.  Put on paper, my trials look smaller than they feel.  Living at work, having no social life whatsoever, working over fifty hours a week, having just about zero fellowship, feeling so, so, so, alone, attempting to raise kids coming from difficult backgrounds with people who have different parenting principles.  The list goes on.  Put in such definable terms, I find it easy to imagine grace when I separate these circumstances from myself. The person going through all this just has to cast themself on Christ and boom! joy will abound and they will conquer all the giants staring them in the face.  It's just so easy, trials are no big deal.  Trust God, it'll all be better!

But when it comes to living every day under all of these weights, grace looks a lot different from the imagined flowing cheerfulness and strength.  The grace given looks a lot less like Superman and a lot more like the ragged dogs that wander around down here looking for trash to eat.  It's a grace that allows me to see my utter helplessness in all of this and pushes me to cry out to God to make it through the next five minutes.  It's a grace that dries my many, many tears and helps me get back up on my feet to receive the next blow.  And I honestly don't think that last sentence is an understatement, because it feels like as soon as I've come to a place of faith to face the next day under this set of circumstances, a few more complications are added.

For a while, I was, quite frankly, mad at God for this.  My life's already hard.  Why did he have to add another thing?  And then another and another?  I was only timidly sure that I could live with all of those burdens, and here's a new and even heavier one!  But thinking about it a little more, I'm a little more at peace with this pattern.  I can't help but think that God is actually delaying the added trials until I've wrestled and found his grace for the original ones.  I am most definitely constantly breaking, but I've not yet broken.  It's a beautiful balance of pain and grace.  Just enough misery that I am so aware of my need for God and so full of worship for his sustenance, but never enough hardship that I collapse.  My hands are increasingly raised in praise, but never thrown up in despair.

Every day, I'm living those prayers I prayed.

"Jesus, be my all!"

"Fashion in me the same character found in Christ!"

"Make me a servant for your glory!"

The words sounded so sweet, so noble; the realities are so bittersweet, so lowly.  But the grace given.  Ahhh, it's so much richer, so much deeper than anything my comfort-saturated soul could have invented through imagination.

So, when you pray, offer it all, even though you don't really mean it.  God will take you at your word and when your prayers are half-forgotten, he'll begin to answer them.  If you're anything like me, you'll watch with initial horror as your treasures are tugged from your tight fist, but you'll rejoice as they're replaced with unspeakable beauty and unending grace.

And don't say I didn't warn you.

NOTE:  I wrote this sometime last week, when things in my life were really hard.  And then, after I wrote it, they, no surprise, got even harder.  And I just believe it's worth saying that, even as troubles pile miles high in your life, if your hope is in Christ, the sweetness of fellowship you will gain with him through trials is worth all of the painful sacrifices. Though my life is harder than it was when I wrote these words, God's grace is still sweeter.  Sweeter than my trials, sweeter than the comforts lost.

En francais:

Desolee, mais je n'avais pas de temps de traduire ma mise a jour en francais.  (Ma vie est pleine maintenant!)  Alors, si vous voulez vraiment savoir qu'est-ce qui se passe avec moi, vous pouvez lire ma mise a jour en anglais (si vous voulez une aventure) ou vous pouvez utiliser google traduction.  Desolee!!!!!