Psalm 118

Psalm 118:5-6 

5 When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD;

he brought me into a spacious place.

6 The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.

What can mere mortals do to me?

vs 19 Open for me the gates of the righteous;

I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.

vs 16 The LORD’s right hand is lifted high;

the LORD’s right hand has done mighty things!”

God is faithful. In so many ways, i am still waiting to see His strong right arm. There are things i would have differently, if i could. But He knows my heart, and He is so faithful to provide what i need, and what our family needs.

Seventeen summers... Busyness: the Thief of Family Happiness

http://www.disciplelikejesus.com/blog/?p=704

The above is a great post that sums up a lot of what i think is wrong with what we're doing in the 20th century religious mode.

A quote from his beautifully written post:

I thought about my own busy schedule; go to work Monday through Friday with some evening work, then Monday night- Deacon’s meeting/basketball practice, Tuesday night- church visitation, Wednesday night- prayer meeting & youth Choir, Friday night- youth group meeting, Saturday- basketball game, yard work and church social, Sunday- teach Sunday School, attend worship, and back to church by 5:00pm for discipleship classes and evening worship. Most days we ate fast food or restaurant food while running to activities. My schedule allowed me exactly one night per week to spend with my family, and guess how we spent it? We went out to dinner, then watched television, a movie or I was on the internet!  At one point my wife worked outside of the home, which would have made things even worse.  Now she was busy providing taxi service to and from school, to basketball, to dance.  Add to that television, video games, neighborhood friends and all kinds of other activities that I couldn’t oversee.


I want a different life than this.  I don't want to drink the koolaid and miss out on what is most important to me.  I believe that all this push for numbers and busyness and programs actually widens the distance between us and Jesus.  Instead of Jesus, we're trying to please pastors or peers all of whom have some fabulous idea for our spare time.  And don't get me wrong, those ideas may all be fabulous - but they are not all even possible for me to say yes to every one, just like i can't say yes to every single charity that looks good and deserving - simply because i have x dollars a month - and 24 hours a day, and seven days a week.


My children *are* my ministry.  I have to say this, because it is not assumed anywhere now.  Children are the afterthought - the thing that can always be put off, dismissed, that you'll have time for later.  This isn't true.


Seventeen summers....


I'm a little convicted lately because i chose to get involved in a community project this summer, and it turned into not just a summer project, but a fall project, and a winter project, and soon it will be spring and then it will be a Big Responsibility.


I also have had some health challenges right now and i'm getting tested for various things, some minor and some not minor.  I know i need to get life insurance just in case it's the bad stuff, but all i want to do right now is cuddle down with my littles.


I think we set some really good habits early on in our marriage, and the last year or so we've tried to see if we could fit into what is on offer in modern church living, and it's just as ill fitting as it was back then.

Listening for sleighbells and something else...

This Christmas we are without a church home, and we're okay.

It does seem bizarre to me that not wanting to participate in the church babysitting exchange (aka nursery and Sunday school) after over a decade of doing so would make me ineligible for participation in any of the other ministries of the church, but that's the fact where i am right now, and as a result my husband and I and our seven children are at home on Sundays instead of church.

God has provided a ton of beautiful activities with friends or as a family or at different churches in the weeks leading up to  Christmas, and now that it's almost Christmas, it's like the snow is falling thickly and we're here in our cozy home.

This is what i suspect - and what i have suspected for months before this weird turn of events.  That God doesn't want *me in particular*, to be relying on a church or its programming for my spiritual priorities.  And as the example above shows, priorities are definitely pushed when you are part of a "community of believers" .  But what does God want from me?

That's what i am listening for, in this season of snow, the quiet and the beautiful skies, the advent candles and the drawer full of stockings that is opened and plundered every day and then packed up again.  While i  have time and leisure to be at home with my husband and our seven little ones - where is He  pulling my heart?  Am i willing to go there?

Welcome back to the world...

Good news is, i'm back.

Bad news is, i had closed this blog down to invited members only while i tried to work through something with someone, and it didn't quite happen.

God knows.  Sometimes it feels like an avalanche, all at once, like Job's daughters and sons and crops and houses, and boils and his wife on top of it all, telling him to curse God and die.

Lately it's been relationship troubles (in a big way) with the outside world, allergies with the littles including a costly 911 ambulance ride, a rotator cuff irritation that's taking a long time to heal, arthritis? already?, a flooded basement and the resultant insurance fixing up that is taking months, and giving us a lot less room for nine people in a regular sized house. Plus a hundred smaller things that make up the fabric of light and dark in a life, including six sick children right now, a sick mom and dad (that's me and T), and a conference three hours away that he has to be away for (again?  so soon?)...

And yet.

When these things pile on, it looks and seems so deliberate.  Like someone would like to break me down, as Kanye West likes to put it... and yet ... Jesus walks with me.

Something so profound.  Does He fix it all, magically, using His God powers?  He could!   He could... or - He can walk with me, hold my hand, speak to me through His word, encourage me day by day to turn my face to Him, to choose to walk in the fruit of the spirit, to let Him animate my responses, my hands, my heart.

It's late, i'm lonely for my man, and i'm still waiting for all my little chicks to be, finally, asleep and hopefully getting better from this cold that's making the rounds.  But underneath it all, i have such a contentment.  He has blessed us with so much, He has been with us through all the bad stuff, and still loved us.  He knows my heart and my own immediate responses, but He doesn't get tired of teaching, reminding me, calling me back to His heart.

I'm feeling a little fumbly lately.  I like to have a path set out before me, and walk the path - and i like a map that shows me where i'm going.  But i serve a God who says "walk with me in the wilderness" and see where i'm going to bring you.  I want the faith of Abraham, to walk with him, not knowing where i'm going.

Listened to Jason Upton today - Come Up Here...


I was dreaming of the holy city 
I was wearing my wings 
Then I looked up and saw a doorway to heaven 
And I heard you calling me 
Come up here, come up now 
My beloved, my beloved 
Come up here, come up now 
My beloved, my beloved, come 
I want to fly 
Like an eagle in the sky 
I want to fly 
Through that doorway in the sky 
And Come


I want to go when He is calling...


Another song running through my head today
Jonathan David Helser - 


Likeness of Jesus


I want the cry of Moses
I want the ears of samuel
I want the heart of mary
Most of all
I want the likeness of Jesus

I want the prayers of Daniel
I want the voice of John
I want the walk of Enoch
Most of all
I want the likeness of Jesus

From glory to glory,
I am transformed,
Nothing between us,
The veil has been torn

I want to be holy as he is holy
I want to be righteous as
He is righteous
I want to be loving as
He is loving
Most of all i want to
Be like Jesus

Thoughts about death and mourning

Yeah, nobody is dying here...

But my sister is writing a novel about losing  a baby, and i just read the sample Wisdom Booklet online, whose theme is "Mourning Requires Visualization", and i guess i'm just thinking...

When we lost our little baby, i drove around, and wished i had someone who would understand.  My husband was distressed, partly just for me, i know.

Much later, when his grandfather died, it gave me comfort to picture my little one, safe in her great-Opa's arms.  It seemed unthinkable to me that Opa could be there and not find her and love her.

and i felt God laugh and me and say "what about Me?"

Of course, God is there, and she is safe with Him.

But this is what I think was behind my thoughts.  the saints in the book of Revelation, who are beneath His throne.  Begging to be revenged and given justice and satisfaction, and God is telling them... wait.

That doesn't jibe with what i want to believe about Heaven, which is that once we die, there is a timelapse moment, and it's all over for everyone else, and only good things happen.  Time passes for those martyrs in Heaven, and even they, up there, are waiting....  That makes me catch my breath.  Because what of my tiny one, my never held treasure?  Is she waiting, too?

Mourning does require visualization.  I agree with Mr. Gothard.  It gave me comfort to visualize my little one in her Opa's arms, and also in the arms of Jesus.  But those other visual pictures that come from the Bible, and therefore must be true, are less comforting.

I wrote a song when i was away at music college, confident in His love and leading.  It was a watershed year for me and for my faith - where i really experienced God's hand and presence, felt His breath, and was changed for the rest of my life.  In that song i wrote "when in times of honest need, have i ever felt deceived? God is wisdom, God is good.  I can trust my Father's love'

And i know it's true, i know He is all of those things - and i know i can trust Him.  But I also know that what looks like need to me He doesn't always see that way - so many times it's been my attitude, rather than my situation that He's adjusted.  I have not found in God a comfortable theology to lay back and grow fat in - rather, it is something alive and active, something challenging and iconoclastic, as He breaks the idols i didn't know i held, and makes me think in a different way.

I am so much less likely to have an immediate judgment than i was, and open to learning.  But sometimes i long for the simple visual.  And when it comes to my sin, He is very able to give me that visual so that i can mourn with Godly mourning over my own shortcomings.  In withholding a simple picture of my child, i wonder if that's His way of standing in the way, so that instead of sorrow, i see only Him.

Recalculating... recalculating...

My sister lent me her GPS when i had a specialist appointment in the Big City.  Usually my husband drives when we are there, but this time the appointment was during the day so my hero (pregnant) sister took all seven of my children, plugged the GPS in my supervan and explained how to use it.

Of course, i got  hopelessly lost and had to ask for advice three times from real people (once in a psychiatric clinic - oops!) - Anyway, i finally got there...

but what was neat about the GPS was, when i took the wrong turn it didn't punch me in the shoulder and say "you dummy!" - it just said in a really calm voice "recalculating, recalculating" and then resumed trying to get me to the place i was supposed to be at...

That's where i am right now.  Not with God - although i know after we lost baby Charis, that is *exactly* how i felt - just kind of numb, and recalculating, and desperately trying to keep driving.  But things have changed for us in the whole outward/Body of Christ set up - and we're... recalculating.

pray for us?

Being transformed, and patient

i'm having a talk lately about sunday school with our pastor (although you're not allowed to say Sunday school anymore - it's called Transformers, and if you say the S word, you have to pay?)

anyway, i wrote a long email about my hopes for my children, the books we've used, what i think works (basically, organized thought and theology and care by the community of believers for all the children in the church and out of it)...

and then T sent them all to Transformers anyway while i was on the stage, helping lead worship - which is fine, i guess...  I talked to the organizer and she told me they had a great devotional planned, but none of my children could remember any devotional - just the games and candy - if you go, you get candy - they set up a little table in the foyer and you only get it if you went to Sunday School, i mean... Transformers.  It is very hard for a family with a lot of little people, to just opt out. Very very hard.

I'm so worried about church wrecking my children for God.  Telling them that "it's enough" to do what they, the church does.  

I don't have any answers, but my heart says to share my own journey with my children as i walk it, to confess sin and share epiphanies and worship whole heartedly - and hope that they seek out truth and ignore the fluff and pap and commercialism.  

i think we are afraid to say we don't know when it comes to God - and yet, how can we know?  He is so big - we are so small - we need to leave room for mystery, for faith.

And it's hard to judge fruit when it's still summer.  And trust that harvest is on its way.  I just keep praying, and being who i feel God calling me to be - and i don't want to substitute something inauthentic for something natural and organic that God may do through the structure He's instituted of a family, teaching their own little ones.