My Whole Heart

I recently returned home from a mission trip to Door of Faith Orphanage in Mexico, and it was in the weeks leading up to my departure that I truly worked through giving God my whole heart for the first time. Though prior to this trip I believed I had given Him my heart in its entirety, I have since discovered that the piece of it held by my seven year old son was still under lock and key and not even God had been invited in. For all my confessions of a heart fully surrendered to the Lord, it turns out I had surrendered only the part that involved me as a stand alone woman. I stood at the foot of the cross entirely alone with my son held back from God by my own arm. I dared not surrender his life and well being into God's hands, but instead kept him tucked away into the facade of my own personal control in this life. God has now shown me, however, that I've never been less in control of not only my own life, but also that of my son's and every other loved one to whom I'm emotionally connected. I can no more control the future of my child than I can the stars of the universe and to think otherwise is not only grossly self-deceptive, but also extremely foolish and prideful. How dare I assume the position of God Almighty as my son's ultimate protector, and yet I've done it determinedly and faithfully every day for as long as I can recall. Bear in mind that I'm not dismissing my authority as his parental protector; I'm referring specifically to the protection that can come only from above, and it wasn't until my departure for another country that I fully surrendered authority and control and gave the Lord my whole heart - I gave Him my son.

My Place

As my husband roared with laughter, I turned to look at him in genuine shock. "What? Why are you laughing?" I asked in puzzlement.  "You just said you needed a weekend retreat! Why do you think you need a weekend retreat?" he asked, still laughing.  "Well, because I do," I replied back matter-of-factly as I dramatically threw myself down on the bed.  With my face buried in pillows, I tried to explain in the most theatrical tone I could muster. "I'm confused," I whined, voice muffled by the pillows cradling my face.  "About what!?" he asked as he unsuccessfully tried to contain his laughter. "Stop laughing. I really need to have a weekend retreat out in nature where I can just pray and ponder and figure everything out" I said. "What do you need to figure out!?" he asked in bewilderment as he leaned down to patronizingly caress my hair. Ordinarily I would have slapped his hand away and told him to stop the condescension, but I was so entrenched in my own pity party, I couldn't even find the strength to make him stop. "Everything!" I cried as I threw my arms out in exasperation, knocking pillows off the bed in the process.  "God is just not making things clear enough," I said, and to which Sam replied, "isn't He though?"  "Ooohh....clever response," I thought to myself, and although I was tempted to give his answer consideration, I decided instead to continue building my case.  "No, Sam, He's not. If He would just come right down here and tell me what to do, I would do it, but He keeps changing things up on me and throwing weird things like my current job into the mix.  Moreover, I'm not making money doing what I love and what I know He has called me to do, so how can I put my entire self into the ministry when 45 hours a week I'm working somewhere else! It just doesn't make sense and God just isn't giving me direction!" and with that I exited my own stage and waited expectantly on him to agree...or applaud...or request an encore.  He didn't.  Instead, he said what my heart already knew - "until you embrace where you are and learn to love it and work at it as God would have you do then you're never going to find your place because it will always be the next better thing around the corner.  Your place is right here, right now."

Just Get It

Have you ever worked so hard at doing something to glorify God that you wound up working overtime on glorifying yourself rather than Him? An often completely unintentional "oops," but one that happens all too frequently among believers who wish to lead others into a heart relationship with God. Sometimes we get so busy being "glorifying" to God that we lose sight of what truly glorifies Him the most - letting Him lead.  In trying to stand firm in our faith and devoted to our Lord, we accidentally get caught up in "my way" rather than God's way, and the results are rarely the glorifying outcome we started out trying to produce.  I've come to realize something in recent months and it's that you can't bring glory to God for another person. That's the other person's job, yet so often we try to multi-manage lives and wind up living everyone else's life but our own.  It's absolutely exhausting, but it doesn't have to be if we'll just stay focused on living our own path, bringing glory to God through our own life, and staying true to our own convictions while accepting that everyone's convictions are not always our own.  It sounds easy enough, but it's more difficult than it sounds when you're madly in love with Christ and want the whole world to feel what you feel. Instead, when you find yourself wanting to show God to another person, your zeal might really only wind up showing off you rather than showing God.  In our quest to "help" people "get" God the way we do in our own hearts, we wind up preventing them from "getting" anything at all, and in the process we accidentally put ourselves in the role only God can fill.  You can't cause another person to "just get it" as you do; they have to get it on their own and on the timetable set between them and God, so just get this - trying to force someone to "get" God the way you do usually results only in repelling them away from the very God you're trying to cause them to get.   

Until I Didn't

As I threw his lunch in the trash and stormed out of the room in anger, my eyes began to well with tears.  I just wanted them both to leave so I could open the gates for the flood that was bursting at my ducts.  In the time span of 24 hours I had been dealt an emotionally crushing blow in my personal life that left me far less together than what I wanted.  This was not the time for wise cracks, jokes, and ungratefulness.  Sam looked at me in surprise and with a confused half grin on his face as if to determine whether or not I was really angry, and, perhaps whether or not I really just threw the lunch I made for him in the trash.  Though I wasn't completely sure why, I really was angry. "Ungrateful, unappreciative family," I thought resentfully to myself as I reflected over the last half hour of our morning together.  I was up at 4:30 to spend time with God and what a glorious feeling I had when I closed my Bible.  "God, no matter what happened to me yesterday, today is going to be a great day!" I affirmed with my Lord and  Savior, but it was less than two hours into the day after that when I exploded in an angry torrent over an unappreciated ham sandwich and baggy of peanuts. What had my day come to now?  It started with loud complaints from my seven year old over the scrambled egg breakfast I began to prepare.  "Mama, I don't want eggs," Ashton declared in an intolerantly whiny voice.  "Well, it's what I'm making, Ashton," I firmly replied, and at that moment Sam walked in with a request for oatmeal rather than eggs.  Simultaneous to this was Ashton asking me to get his school clothes for the day, to which I responded by telling him I was busy with breakfast and "you'll have to get them yourself this morning."  "But, mama..." the whining recommenced.  Meanwhile, Sam stood leaning against the chair talking instead of helping as I grew frustrated over having to prepare two different breakfasts, two packed lunches, and a weather appropriate outfit for my son - all at the same time and against the moving clock. I simply couldn't listen to anymore complaining as my already fragile emotional state threatened to crack.  I just wanted to hear something, anything, from one of them that would ease my building tension, but when it never came I grew angry, resentful, and mean - until I didn't. 

Let Your Light Shine

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It seems lately that God is leading me through muddy waters of humility and murky clouds of submission, but while I used to find such stops in life repugnant and frightening, I now feel a calm peace because I see through my lenses of eternity rather than my physical eyes that see only into the world.  Having said that, however, I, like anyone else, still have to wade through the mud and squint through the fog before I can reach my place of inner peace and trust.  This past week, for example, I was near melting down as I surveyed prospective living accommodations in Long Beach.  As soon as I pulled up to my stop and looked around I was ready to back out and head home, but I decided instead to stop a woman walking with her dog and ask for information. After inquiring about the neighborhood's general safety and activity, she let me know that I would need to keep my things locked up, because "we do have some break-ins," and that I didn't have to worry too much about the local drug dealers because "they pretty much keep to themselves."  Though she also reassured me that she had no qualms about taking her pooch out for a 1 a.m. potty, I simply couldn't move my thoughts past the peaceful drug dealers and not so uncommon break-ins - so I began to pray.  I told God I would live wherever He told me to live, but that He would need to give me an extra measure of trust in His protection because in that moment I was questioning His methods.  It was shortly after this and much more prayer when I realized that the light He has called me to be in the world will not shine brightly in an already lit room; it will shine the brightest in the room where the lights are off.

Time Well Spent

I was talking with a friend the other day about the commodity of time, and as I listened to her present its value to me from an eternal perspective, I became increasingly aware of how I spend my own time.  Since then I have been joyfully driving my husband crazy by letting him know that "I'm spent" (my newly adopted favorite phrase) when I have to spend too much of my time explaining something to him that I feel he should already have gotten.  My newly found appreciation for the time allotted to me each day has been the object of considerable amounts of teasing and playful eye rolling on his part, but I'm not dejected; instead I am inspired and encouraged to take fresh inventory of how I spend each of my days.  Though we all know that yesterday can never be retrieved or repeated or redone, we don't often spend time thinking about actual time as it is handed to us by God. But I think we should.  We take great note of the hundred dollar bill we spend at the grocery store or the donation we make to our church, but we fail to notice the five minutes we spend berating someone we love when they let us down or leave us disappointed.  The difference is - we can earn that hundred dollars back and receive double for what we gave to our church, but we'll never get back those five minutes.  How did you spend your last five minutes as you happened across this blog entry?  Was it time well spent?

Falling Sky

Several months ago I sat in church one Sunday morning and listened to our church's mission team coordinator talk about her trip to Medellin and Bogota in Colombia just weeks before. She talked about many things, both good and bad, but of them all I can only recall the story of heroin addiction and other abuse among children as young as six years old. As she talked my eyes filled with tears and I could see nothing in my mind except my own six year old son, accompanied by the image of a grown man or woman injecting a narcotic filled needle into his precious arm. I quietly began to sob as I sat in my chair and listened to her speak. I wanted to go get my son out of the childcare room and wrap him in my arms, but I wasn't able to move from my seat yet. Little did I know at the time, God was keeping me there to hear every word for a purpose. I kept listening, and as I did I saw more clearly than ever my son's face, but I didn't see it as it is everyday. I saw it as one of the children's faces over in Colombia that was being described from the front of the church. In my mind, he was bruised, battered, addicted, and recruited into a life of crime as a child soldier. He had a bomb strapped to his chest and was sent to be killed as the bomb he wore killed those around him. With just the right amount of heroin flowing through his veins, he did as his recruiters instructed and without arguing. Moments after following orders, his life exploded. This was the horrific image I saw as I listened to our mission team coordinator describe this lifestyle for kids my own son's age, and this is when my heart shattered and my sky fell.