Snapshots of Christmas

It was a Christmas filled with hope, joy, longing, grief, sadness, gratitude, sickness, peace, chaos, friendship, family, snow and Christ. I'm thankful it came, and I'm thankful that it's gone. I will celebrate the joy of Christ's coming all year long, and that's the way I prefer it be done. Thank you, Lord, for the immeasurable gift of Your Son.

Where dreams go to die

I got engaged on December 23, 1994. We were poor college students, working our ways through school on our own.  There wasn't much money to buy a ring, which wasn't a huge deal to me. My future husband said, "Get something you can live with for a while, and we'll get you want you really want later." 

His step mom worked at an antique shop that carried jewelry. He refused not only to choose the ring himself, he refused to even go with me to choose it. He was afraid, he said, of influencing my monumental decision. He wanted me to get what I wanted. So my mom and I went, meeting his step mom there. 

Did I mention we were poor college students? We decided our price range beforehand, and his step mom had a selection for me to choose from laid out on blue velvet trays. I was like a kid in a candy store. I wanted a solitaire, I thought, but when my eyes landed on a what they called a dinner ring from the 1940's that all changed. It was sparkly and unique, and I fell in love with it. 

A saleslady brought out a telephone on a silver tray with my soon-to-be finance on the line where I cried into the phone that I had found my ring while my mom and future mother-in-law beamed in the background.

It was all very sweet and romantic.

They gave us the ring at cost less 10% since we had a connection. The ring was $800, and they allowed us to make  interest free monthly payments until we paid it off. That was really kind.

I still really love my ring. I love that it's old and that someone else wore it and loved it too. I love that it's not a real engagement ring, and I've only seen one other one like it these 16 years. 

I thought about the ring I wanted, the ring that I would get later, and I came across this picture in a magazine. It was an add for Tiffany, and along with dreaming about going to Tiffany in New York City one day, I decided this was the ring I wanted. I cut out this picture and it stayed on my refrigerator for about 12 years. 

Really. 

My grandmother got a solitaire for her 23rd wedding anniversary. I think it was 23 years. She loved that ring. She had wed with a simple wedding band and wore it all the years until she got her new ring, although she continued to wear her original band on her right hand. She loved that ring. She wasn't a jewelry person, really. In fact, she is the most frugal person I've ever met. She wasn't a spender. She was a saver. This ring seemed out of character for her, but maybe that's why she treasured it so.

It was to go to my aunt, my dad's older sister. When she was killed in a car accident several years ago, my grandmother looked at me, covered my hand with hers and said, "You'll get my ring now."

Oh boy. 

Well, that got my husband off the hook for having to buy me one. I figured he could get the sapphires to put alongside her diamond and then I'd have my dream ring.
  
Well. 

As I grew in my faith I started to see everything from a different perspective. Things that used to be important fell away. Some slowly at first, painfully. My temporal love of things that sparkled was a strong one. 

I noticed the small clipping of "my" ring buried under family pictures, notes made for myself and drawings from the kids still stuck to the refrigerator this week. I took the clipping down and sat it on the counter. I looked at it for a long time. 

I didn't want that ring anymore. 

Now I feel the burden of my grandmother's ring too. I can't wear it. It's too big. Too beautiful. She's still here, but not really here. When I have that ring, it will mean that she's really gone. 

I don't think I can sell it. How do you sell something so sentimental. I have no idea of its worth, but even $3,000 could put a well in an impoverished community in India to provide drinking water to people who don't have that luxury.

How can I wear a ring that represents so much relief for so many people?

My own ring appraised for much more than what we paid for it. It too could provide a well. 

I can't get past that. 

And this is where I get stuck. I'm not really sure how to live in this world and yet please the God who wrote the Bible. It seems really easy and yet horrifically difficult. I rely on the Spirit to lead and guide and yet then I wonder if He already did. In the Bible. Already. 


And here we are in the Christmas season, where buying and giving are so important. And again I struggle. Do my kids need more? Of course not. They can't keep clean and straight what they already have. I insisted to my husband who loves to give gifts that I don't need or want anything this Christmas either. That made him sad. So again, I feel like I'm swimming upstream.


My dream Christmas would be to spend a couple of weeks cozied up in a cabin in the mountains, with a Charlie Brown tree strung with a string of colorful lights and strings of popcorn. No gifts allowed. Just blazing fires, warm comforting food, board and card games, playing in the snow and lots of reading aloud from the Bible.


No stuff.


I'm tired of stuff.


So. I took this picture off of the kitchen counter where it had laid as I studied it, feeling these thoughts whirling around in my head. I felt sadness. I felt hope. I'm thankful for the promise that God will complete what He started. 


I watched at this small pictured floated into the garbage can. It came to rest among the morning's coffee grinds, old coloring pictures, crumpled up pieces of paper. It gleamed up at me as beautiful and as sparking as it had from the side of my refrigerator all those years. I stood there for just a moment, feeling a bit like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. Then I closed the lid and went off to address Christmas cards.


I guess it could be said that this dream went to the garbage can to die. And I'm okay with that.

I get my blog back

I guess my blog hasn't actually gone anywhere, but I feel like it has. 

I signed the boys up for soccer class and to free up our week, I scheduled the classes for Saturday mornings.

I didn't really think that through.

Like everybody else in the world, Saturday morning is the only morning I don't have to get up and GO. And when you have to leave the house at 8:20 to get to soccer on a Saturday morning, you realize how much you miss your stay-in-your-pj's-and-blog-and-drink-coffee mornings.

Especially those Saturdays after you stay up until 3 or 4 am with your girlfriends or at Secret Church. 

Those were not fun.

Besides my at home pj time, I missed blogging. My brain misses it. And I miss the lazy mornings of not having to be up and going so early. So we're sitting out the next soccer session. Not just so I can sit in my pj's on Saturday mornings, but maybe that's like 40% of the reason. That probably makes me a bad mom, but I'm totally okay with that.

And with that, I'm looking forward to my date with my blog. In the morning. Pj's on, coffee in hand. 

I can't wait.

Terribly girlie post

You Must Go Here First!

(click the link)

A friend of mine suggested this cleansing method a while ago. I was too busy to worry with it, but after hearing several of my friend's rave reviews, I decided to try it. I was a little worried about trying anything with castor oil, since usually when castor oil is involved, a baby falls out. Since that's not in my plan at the moment, I was a little skeptical. They convinced me to give it a try and my sweet friend even gave me some of her castor oil. And she promised a baby wouldn't fall out.

So I tried this, and I'm here to talk YOU into trying it. Oh my.

First of all, it works. I typically have the skin of a 13 year old boy, and it's been a while since my skin was this clear. The article explains why it works, but I'm just here to tell you, oh boy, it does.

Secondly, it won't kill you. I'll spare you my "we're killing ourselves with all these chemicals we use in our homes and put on and in our bodies" speech and just tell you that common sense tells you that olive oil and castor oil are not going to harm you in any way. Perfectly safe. No harmful ingredients. No chemicals. Good for you.

Thirdly, it's cheap. I cook with olive oil all the time, and the castor oil can be bought locally or ordered more cheaply at Amazon.com. No money on cosmetics with all of the harmful ingredients.

Fourth. It works. It's amazing. Since I have that teenage boy skin, I use the higher dose of castor oil, but you may be better with the lesser amount. Play with it and see what works for you.

My precious daughter came downstairs with a small bump on her nose the other morning. (She's now at the age where this stuff embarrasses her, so don't mention that you read this here!) I have started this treatment on her, and I hope this may spare her some of the embarrassment of living with bad skin through the teenage years. I'd love to help her avoid some of that horror...

So just try this. I'm pretty positive that you're going to be impressed. And I'll even order the castor oil for you!

Fall

As the leaves drop from the trees and the Holidays approach, I get a little melancholy. I get lost in the beauty of Fall. I adore the beautiful splay of brilliant colors that paint the canvas of my everyday activities. I love the reluctant cool air that finally soothes after a seemingly eternal summer. I love the feel of a sweater on my arms and the comfort of heavy blankets on a warm bed. Almost as soon as Fall arrives, I begin to mourn its passing. I always have. At first thought, Christmas seems overwhelming and looming with lists and business I'd rather avoid. I prefer the long walks accompanied by the sounds of crisp leaves scurrying across the pavement. I love the brilliant sunsets of this time of year. I'd like to stay here for awhile longer.

I came across this poem by Ruth Bell Graham, and it made my heart happy to see that perhaps another person shared my love of this season:

They come and go so quickly
Spring and Fall...
as if they had not really come at all.
Perhaps 
we could not take
too much of beauty,
breath-catching glory,
ecstasy without relief;
and so...
God made them
brief. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Birthday, Laney (Revisited)

Today is my girl's birthday. I have a nine year old. Amazing. 

I wrote the following post in 2007. I cringe a tad as I read it now, and realize that I need to put into practice my "Blue Jazz" way at looking back on my life. It is what it is. This post is still true even if I wish to re-type it and do it differently. But, this is still good, and I wanted to be reminded of it today. (But really? Pink type? Why?)

Happy Birthday, Laney

I'll have pictures later, but I didn't want her birthday to get away without me posting some thoughts. My friends have posted such eloquent tributes to their children on their birthdays, and I wanted to do the same for Laney. Honestly, I can't put into words how I feel about her. Does that make me a bad Mommy? Or a bad Blogger?? Oh well.

6 years ago, at 5:37 p.m. Laney came into the world. Today is her "real" birthday, since she was born on Thanksgiving. I love that she was born that day, because Thanksgiving has always been one my favorite holidays. It was amazing. She wasn't due for 5 more days, and Allen and I had plans, of course. We messed up everyones' Thanksgiving!! 12 people waited for her to be born for 7 hours all smushed into one tiny waiting room. It was crazy.

Allen and I had watched "Legally Blonde" and ate Papa John's the night before she was born. My last night of nothing-to-do-ness. So last night, we ordered Papa John's and were going to watch Legally Blonde, but got busy and didn't. We wanted to recreate that night before she was born. Such sweet memories.

You know, Laney saved my life. I was in a period of pretty heavy self destruction when I got pregnant with her. We weren't ready to have kids. We lived in a 700 square foot rented house in Homewood. I worked between 40 and 80 hours at my job. Allen played in a band all over the Southeast. I wasn't sure if I even wanted kids. I was 28, and really had no plans to start a family.

And there was that test. "Positive." Wow. I'll never forget that feeling. "Things are never going to be the same." And they weren't. {And then intense nausea. (!) }

I honestly don't know how many ways God had tried to get my attention before I got pregnant. Probably a lot. I'm not sure how long He was going to let me go on, being so far from Him. I'm so incredibly thankful that He allowed me to get pregnant, instead of the thousands of other ways I can think of that I would personally bring a disobedient child home. Beating me to a pulp sounds much like what I deserved.

And they way He worked out my job. I was able to ask for, and receive, a demotion (!) to reduce my responsibilities and my hours, but keep my pay. I was able to quit work at 28 weeks, and get full disability. I even got full pay 6 weeks after she was born, even though it was clear that I wasn't coming back. He provided us with a huge- to us back then- house. Everything we needed was provided with ease. Man.

That is God. No time in my life, have I ever felt His provision, His love and His grace more during those 9 months. I was so NOT deserving of any of that. I had spent 8 years, completely oblivious to God, spinning and twirling through my own narcissistic little life.

So when I look at Laney, I don't just see her. I mean, she *is* amazing. I can say that. I'm her mother. She's happy, sweet, smart, devoted, caring, loving, nurturing, determined, thorough, perceptive, gracious, polite, talented, sparkly and just anointed. But when I look at her, I am reminded that she is a gift, and God used her in a way that I can't even describe. I'm sure He would have brought me around one way or another, but He chose her. That never, ever ceases to astound me.

And I don't think she'll ever understand what she did for me. By just being born. I gotta say it again. Man. That is just the coolest thing ever. 
November 22, 2007

This just makes me happy...

Proof that you can kinda dance and scratch your ear all at the same time! 

This is how God works here...

God has been pouring over me phrase lately: "Christ, be the Center..." 

Since you may be singing it already, I'll help you out:

But He has. Demanding that I make Him the center of everything. And I mean, that's a good thing. I'm not complaining. I definitely see this is as a way to live, continually and forever. 

I won't go off on that tangent now. 

I was watching a movie on Ruth Bell Graham, and she mentioned this as a focal point of her marriage. Christ as the center, like the center of an old wagon wheel. All the spokes point to Him, and in a marriage as you get closer to Him, the Center, you get closer to each other.

Yep, I can see that. 

And when He's the center, everything in your life radiates outward from Him too. It goes both ways. You live in the overflow of that Center. See?

So I begin to think in the way of an old wagon wheel a lot.

So here are the spokes of late:

1. We're studying American History, which I may or may not have gushed about here. I love it and studying history with the freshly minted Redemptive History on my mind has been challenging and extremely thought provoking too. (I have another post brewing about this also.) We've focused on the Puritans the last couple of weeks, and one of Laney's assignments has been to research the Great Awakening and write a mini-report on it. (Can I gush about how much I love Sonlight  right now? I mean, I love it.) We checked out books on Edwards and Whitefield, and only those two as not to overwhelm her too much, and I'm in absolute heaven reading and discussing all of this with my daughter.

2. Our Bible study group is doing a study on prayer. I don't like the study, and find myself researching and searching for information and resources on prayer. It's been challenging and hard, but I'm thankful for what God is teaching me, even through a study we don't like or agree with.

I can't stop thinking about this

"I recently had dinner in Seoul, South Korea, with an amazing man. He was one of the twenty-three missionaries who were held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan in July 2007. For those who don't recall the story, the Taliban executed two of the missionaries before a deal was reached with the government of South Korea and the missionaries were released. 

This man told me about the horrors of being locked up in a cell, knowing that martyrdom was a strong possibility. He also shared about the amazing time they had on the last day they were all imprisoned together (their captors later divided them into groups of three than took them to remote areas).  Each of the twenty-three missionaries surrendered their lives to God that night and told Him they were willing to die for His glory. There was even an argument over who would get to die first.  One of them had a small Bible that the Missionaries secretly ripped into twenty-three pieces so each could glance at Scripture when no one was watching. The Word of God and the Spirit of God got them through the forty days of imprisonment. 

One of the most fascinating things this man told me was about what has happened since. Now that they have been back in Seoul for a while, several team members have asked him, 'Don't you wish we were still there?' He tells me that several of them experienced a deep kind of intimacy with God in the prison cell that they haven't been able to recapture in their comfort."

I first heard Francis Chan tell this story in a sermon he was preaching and was so glad to find it written in his Forgotten God book about the Holy Spirit.

I can't stop thinking about this.

It's been in my head and my heart for a while now. I didn't really know what to do with it.

Then Secret Church came.

I'm not even going there right now, but what constantly rang through my head during the 6 (almost 7) hours of teaching was this:

I know nothing of suffering. 

I don't. I worship freely in a free country where no one really cares if you are a Christ follower or not. 

I couldn't get around, past, through or away from that.

So me, being me, thought this: Maybe I want to suffer for Christ just so I don't have to feel guilty about not suffering for Christ. 

That's messed up.

But yes, that's what I thought.

I said it. Ugh.

Or maybe I'm just jealous for that kind of intimacy with Christ.  

As I pondered all this with my precious, patient friend, her point was this: "It's the curse of the American church, this comfort we have."

That set me back a bit. It's almost our cross to carry.  Not only "to whom much is given, much is required" (Luke 12:48) it goes beyond this. It's a huge burden to bear. It hinders us and binds us to this world and it's huge and dangerous and it terrifies me. I mean really. I have thought about this a lot, in an almost "wringing my hands" sort of way.

I have a choice here. I can wander off and delve through everything I think regarding the American church and how we treat God, Jesus and the Spirit and the Word and the church and believers and missions and the poor and orphans and children and youth and women and money and church buildings and stuff and you know what? I just can't. Not today. 

The short point is this: Is what I read in the Word real enough to me to die for? Or to suffer for?

That's it for today. 

Blue like what?

The dork in me wanted to type this post in blue, but I'd like to let you know I resisted.

My foray back into the church is already partially documented, somewhere on this blog. It was fairly uneventful, marked mainly by my own insecurities based on where I had spent the previous decade. Things were different in the church when I returned though, for sure. A thing called "contemporary" had invaded churches. People wore jeans-weird. They drank coffee in church-weird. The hymnals were gone-weird. Even more weird to me were the ministers of music-no longer were they decked out in suits and conducting with imaginary wands hymns that included all but the 3rd stanza. What had replaced them were (sometimes) hairy guys wearing "stylish" jeans and playing guitars. I sort of missed the well educated (most of the time) music ministers, and wondered when being able to sort of play the guitar qualified you to be a minister of music. But then I decided that maybe that didn't matter. Maybe. In the end, I was good with most of this, because maybe none of that stuff mattered in the first place. Perhaps?

The first Christian "best seller" I picked up after this re-entry into the Christian atmosphere was a book about a painting and a guy named Elvis. I honestly don't remember much about the book, but I do remember the guy that wrote the book being pretty sure that the church was getting it all wrong. Or that the way we did church was wrong. Or the reasons we did church were wrong. Or maybe it was the fact that we "did" church in the first place that made things wrong.

I don't remember exactly, because I gave the book away. See, it raised a huge stink with some people I knew. I'm sure I totally had something to do with that. I hope to my dear Lord above that I've matured and grown in the past 5ish years. I don't actually remember a whole lot of how or what went down - just that a lot of people didn't like the book and things got a little personal and weird about the book. And me. Because I sort of agreed with the author. About church. Or something.

And I do recall rather vocal Christians making fun of the author. I mean like really rude stuff about his appearance and related stuff. That made me sick. Literally. I'm struggling to think of an instance where it's ever okay to attack someone over... anything, although I'm sure I can think of ten times I've done that, and probably recently.

Anyway. 

Right after this whole instance, another book was floating around that everyone called a "must read." I politely refused to read it. I had been down that road before, and I decided to forgo any other dalliances with Christan... literature. I decided to stick with Beth Moore for awhile. I was pretty sure Beth Moore was okay, although she does get in trouble too for not really preaching the Word and/or teaching to men.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe once you write a book, people decide that this gives them a free pass to criticize the book, you, your way of life, what kind of spectacles you wear, your faith, and a few other things thrown in for good measure. 

I'm pretty sure that's not what this is about, but it still bugs me. A lot. 

Anyway. (again)

 

What I did take away from that Elvis book was that it was okay to acknowledge that you weren't comfortable with the church. I was already feeling that way, but didn't really know what to do about it. It was just nice to see that someone else thought that same thing. It drove me to a study of Acts, and the more I read that, the more I realized that things were, um, not good.  


That's the short version of that. 

So, I didn't read this other book, which was titled something about blue being like jazz, because I was like, "Um, no thanks."

I didn't think much more about it. 

So fast forward 5ish years, to recently, and my friend writes a blog post about this Blue and Jazz book. Basically what my friend said was that years ago he read this Blue book and then wrote a pretty harsh critique about it. Over the years, he felt badly about that critique, so he wrote a retraction. He put it on Twitter, and then the Jazz author read the blog post, and wrote my friend back, saying that it was really kind of my friend to do that.

It was pretty neat to watch. I was impressed by my friend's ability to publicly admit he was wrong, impressed by the graciousness of the author,  and then promptly forgot about it.

A couple of days later, I was at my favorite place on earth. Well, sort of. The thrift store. There I found a copy of this Blue book for $1.38. My curiosity was piqued, since I had seen all of this play out just a couple of days before, so I bought it, figuring that if it was a bad book, I could just re-donate it.

And can I say that although I haven't ever written a book (and I'm biting my lip in order to not say "yet" because that seems a little ridiculous) if I did write a book, and it ended up in a thrift store, I would be sad. That's really dumb too, because unless it's like your favorite book ever, who holds on to books for a really long time? Okay fine, I would, but my small, cheap book shelf won't hold too many books, so I'm forced to donate them on a regular basis. 

(While I  admit that my dream house is a mud hut in Sudan, would it be wrong to wish it had this? Of course, if it did, I'd need a nanny to take care of all my kids so I could just read all the time. And  housekeeper so I wouldn't have to clean. And a cook, so I wouldn't have to, you know, cook. I could just read all the time, right there in that chair. This isn't exactly what this post was supposed to be about, now that I think about it...)




But still, my having my feeling hurt by this would be silly. Who cares if your book ends up at the thrift store? 


My brain is hard to handle today.

 Back to the point. I read the Blue book and it really did make me think. A lot. I liked reading the way he writes, if that makes sense. I appreciated the honesty of how he wrote too. Then the book became sort of an inspiration for me, not for what he said, but how he said it. He was so unapologetic. I apologize too much. (or not enough, depending on the situation) But usually I apologize too much. I'm sure there is some deep seeded, really bad reason I do that. I'm not in the mood to drum up those reasons, but I do realize that it's annoying. Maybe that's why I loved his honesty of writing about his journey. He didn't bathe the story in all these regrets of doubting and testing and trying and searching. He just lays it all out and lets the story do what it's going to do or not going to do to the reader.


That was refreshing. 


For me, the apologizer. 


I tend to do this especially in my own spiritual journey. I've spent almost as much time getting over the decade of debauchery as I did IN the decade. And there were stages. First the guilt. Then the guilt mixed with apologies. Then the sweeping it under the rug stage. Then back to guilt.

So I like the way this guy just lays it out there. And I think I kept waiting for him to apologize. You know, tell us all he was so sorry for searching and wandering so long. I was wanting him to long for all the days and years he wasted while he was searching. 


And he doesn't.


Huh.


It's almost like he told God he was sorry, maybe, and then just accepted the forgiveness and.... moved on?


What a novel concept. 


And maybe he didn't, but that's what I pondered. 


And it kinda changed the way I thought about my own journey. "Well, that's how I got here and so now I'm here."


The end.


And honestly I thought this guy was like 60. I have no idea why. I knew nothing about him. I thought he was writing all this from some wise place he arrived-maybe like a huge mountain where he looked down and saw the path that took him to God. Maybe that's why he was so okay with it all.


Nope. We're the same age, I recently learned.


That was almost as amazing to me as this guy's story was. Just so simple and clean.


I have no idea if he is sorry about it all. I don't know if he feels badly about anything he did.  But that's not the point really. He just kinda continued to encourage me to share me and my store unashamedly. Because maybe when you show guilt about something even thought you don't feel the guilt anymore, it casts a shadow on what you share. I mean, I do feel badly that I grieved my Savior for so long, but we're over that now. And this guy just showed me that the way you approach your story might make a huge difference too. Not proud of what you did, but also feeling the beauty and grace that washed that story from your eternal record.


And I'm not endorsing this book, before anyone gets their Holy underpants in a wad.  I'm not going down that road again. A lot of people don't like this book, and seem to need to tell others they didn't like it. Fine. If sharing your unsolicited opinion makes you feel better, have at it. I'm a little tired of hearing about what people don't like or don't agree with, but that's just me. Read the Word and agree with that and be done with it. 


This guy also raised money to make his book into a movie. I don't know how I feel about that, since people are dying of hunger and thirst and lack of medical care. But maybe if this movie saves one person, it would be worth it? I don't know. That's not the point either. 


I hope I remember what the point was.

Song for the Day

Take me and invade me
Make me someone new
Wake me from the dead
And break me with the truth

Move me and disturb me
Interrupt my peace
Tear open my heart
And pull me to my knees

There's a world outside
That is burning
While I'm turning blinded eyes
While I stand by

I won't survive
To live this ordinary life
I'm not alive
To live this ordinary life

And I will try
To see this world I live in
With Your eyes
To love this world You've given
With my life
To see this world I live in
With Your eyes
To love this world You've given
With my life

"guarding sabbath for our children"

guarding sabbath for our children

(click the link)

I needed to anchor this for future reference. :)

Laney's Song

This is a little long (2:41 I think) but it's a pretty good representation of our school day. Once again, Zane is the star. (At one point he's yelling that he needs to go to the "bathroom." He does this to alert me to the fact that I need to check on him frequently :) )

Just funny

These are funny, just for us and to document things for later. (Definitely not to brag or make much of us. God is so good. :) ) And if you watch them, you'll get a good idea of what our life is like. :)

The one where I came to the end of myself

On September 29th I started this post. It's October 15th, and I still don't want to finish it. Of course I'm ready to get done with it so that I can stop thinking about it. Or maybe that's why I don't want to finish it-I don't want to stop thinking about it. I don't want to go back to who I was. And I don't want to stay here. I want God to so supernaturally change me to look so much like His Son that people know it was divine intervention because I look so little that the Amy that I am, and the one that I used to be. So I'm going to finish this post out of obedience and pray that I don't stop living what I learned. 


"When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?"

Karl Barth

My life hasn't always been easy. My mom had me when she was 16. Dad left us when she was 19. That's how things started. I'm not here to complain about it all, though. Much the opposite, really. I'm thankful for it all now. I'm thankful for every single hard thing that's even been in my life. Sometimes when I'm feeling sorry for myself or worn down, I'll lay all the unfair instances of my life end to end to see how far they'll stretch, and then I'll congratulate myself for beating the odds and not becoming one of the statistics. (But I could have and should have been an statistic.) Isn't that great?

Regardless of all of that, or actually because of all that, I got strong pretty quickly. In fact I got too strong. I got stubborn, defensive, rebellious and proud. I guess I had to, for a lot of reasons, but my strength came from myself and not from where it should have come. I didn't care, though, because I could take care of myself, and that worked just fine, thank you very much. I even celebrated it. I had framed on my wall for many years an original sketch by an artist that said, "When tears of rain fall, I take comfort in knowing that it's enough to be taken care of by myself." 

How a child of God can get that far away from Him is another post. I won't go there now. 

The fact is that I went along, being strong. That strength served its purpose well.  I got through college with almost no help, got jobs where I was always in charge (huge surprise, huh?) and survived in a marriage where the spouse worked a lot. How could the strength that made all these things possible be a bad thing? It couldn't. Not at all. Right?

 I can look back and see God start to bring down those proud walls years ago. Gently at first, with conviction and with soft things like safe women's Bible studies.

I didn't realize how far God would go to cripple me then, and I'm really glad I didn't. I think I would have scurried back to my safe world of narcissism and hedonism. You don't have to change much there, and you certainly don't have to venture outside of yourself.

It started with my miscarriage, I guess. So much of God's working in my life started with that morning when I realized I wasn't going to get to hold that baby. Not a monumental event to a lot of people on the outside looking in. I mean, people have miscarriages all the time. But for me, it was a lot. (Not to say it's not a lot for everyone. I know the pain is real for so many.)

I still miss that baby. Sometimes I still get the courage to tell God that I wanted that baby. I still mourn it, in so many ways. I still miss that sweet child. I can't bear to think that perhaps it was the baby girl that I longed for with all my heart.

I do know that whether He allowed my miscarriage to happen to set into motion the events that would wreck me, or whether it just happened because of sin and death and then He used it, I'm thankful. I'll never forget the moment that I stood before Him, sobbing, and He said, "We aren't moving from this spot until you tell me that you're thankful for this event."

You know. My miscarriage. 

That was hard. 

Then. He wasn't done.

Then He asked me to thank Him for every hard thing that's ever happened. I'm not going to whine here, but I've been through some crap in my life. Hard, unfair crap. I had gotten to a point where I wasn't mad at Him for all that anymore. But He wanted me to thank Him for it all?

Every destructive annihilation that ever came my way, He wanted thanks for.

I've been sitting here for ten minutes and I can't type anything else. That was probably one of the hardest things I've even done with God. As He brought them to mind, I thanked Him for each of them, and asked Him to flip it into something that He could use to glorify Himself and make me more like Jesus. 

Okay. Glad that part is over. 

God got down to business then - sometimes at breakneck speed, sometimes at a snail's pace, but He started breaking me and rebuilding me. I was okay with this some days, angry others, but hungry for more of Him and desperate to be conformed to the image of His Son. No matter what. 

You can be assured that if you ever seriously ask Him to break you, He will. By whatever means necessary. 

So I bounced along, growing, stretching, being broken, slaughtered, dismembered, all the while trusting and trying to trust that God knew what He was doing.

And again this strength served me well. It would ring in my ears, "She's the strongest person I know..." Surely that strength was one of the traits that God treasured in me the most. Isn't that why He choose me for this insane process of refinement? Because I could withstand the flame?

I thought it was. I could see down the road of my life and see how the strength to leap tall towers and bend metal would benefit me greatly. 

And then a day came where I just broke. It was weird. Suddenly nothing in me worked any more. No amount of boot strap pulling, no amount of sucking it up buttercup, no hanging in there, no gut checks, no amount of anything I have ever used before worked. I'll never forget it. 

I was standing at the stove, cooking. I just had the thought, "This is where I end."

It was weird. I really meant it. It wasn't like a, "I just need to rest in Christ..." sort of moment. I've blogged about those before. This was a real, honest to goodness, "I'm done."

I wasn't scared. I felt oddly light. The only way I can describe it is to liken it to a super intense physical workout. The kind where you work harder then your body really knows how to. When it's over, your muscles feel light, almost unaffected by gravity-floaty, trembly and warm.

That's how my whole body, spirit and mind felt. Light and floaty. To say it was weird would be a tremendous understatement.

I had no choice but to float in God's grace. But it wasn't a good float. I kept thinking of my son, when I was trying to teach him to float on his back in the pool. He wanted so much to trust me, to release and let me support him while he relaxed all his limbs, but he couldn't. He would try and then he would sit up, almost drowning himself and me too. No amount of my convincing him would force him to relax into me. He just couldn't do it. I'd never dropped him in the pool before. I didn't deserve not to be trusted. It was something in him that wouldn't let me hold him completely.

Ah, see me in all of that? God was totally deserving of my trust. But I couldn't totally let go, even when I wanted to. Even when I said I had. And don't we all do that? Say we trust Him, but hold back a little sweet reserve for our self to give us some power still? Hanging on so that we still have something to cling to?

But, in me,  He flipped off every temporal human strength like a light switch in one fell swoop. And I felt it, that moment, standing at the stove stirring something in a pot. Bam. It was all gone.

And I still haven't felt the same.

My friend, K, said it best. She said, "My skin even feels different."

Yep.

And here's the part of all of this where I say that once I was cut off from myself, God was able to go the next step with me.

And you say, "Duh. Of course..."

But here's the thing. I didn't know how to let go anymore. I had let go of so much. I knew there was more to do, but I couldn't do it. I didn't know how. It wasn't for lack of want. It was for lack of know how.

And that's when God stepped in and pulled the plug. Not when I asked Him to. Not when I wanted Him to. Now when I expected Him to. Not when I thought He should.

That afternoon, when I was stirring something on the stove. That's when He did it. In that seemingly jejune moment. That's the  moment He chose.

So what's happened since then?

I've seen God's grace and goodness in ways that I've never seen them before in my life. I've seen things that defy explanation. I've felt and heard things that really aren't possible. I know things that shouldn't be known. And you know what? I think had He not pulled the plug on me,  I wouldn't have felt or heard or seen or known.

I pondered, of stinking course, why I couldn't finish this post for so long. Usually I pound them out, misspellings and grammatical errors aplenty, and get them done. But this post wasn't complete. I didn't know on 9/29/10 what it all meant. And today I know 1/1,387,201th of what it all means. But isn't that they way God works?

So how does all this break down?

 God broke me so He would refine me some more.

Nothing is the same. The world looks different. It feels different. I feel different. I feel like I got to take another step on this journey, but instead of being afraid and taking His hand, now I feel like I'm pulling Him down the path, begging Him to let us run ahead.

And

Isn't He good?