Little Things

Our garden is a hot mess right now.

It’s late in the growing season, and everything has gone wild.

My tomato plants have gotten so massive and heavy that they have tipped over, pulling their cages down with them. An overabundance of ripe tomatoes litters the ground, food for critters.

My brussels sprouts are as overgrown as Jack and the Beanstalk.

My squash plants are entangled in the browning corn stalks, and the melon vines are beginning to dry out, still attached to juicy, quickly ripening melons. 

The kale and broccoli are flowering, the beans are shriveling, and the carrots have all been pulled and are happily living in my refrigerator. 

Things are so wild and overgrown that it’s hard to move around freely.

On one hand, it’s sad to see the browning leaves and to know we are coming to the end of an amazing season. On the other hand, it is beautiful to see this wild mess and how it has nourished us all Summer long.

Perhaps more than anything else, it is a wonder and a mystery to see this garden come and go. What began as tiny seeds in mediocre potting soil in my basement, ended up as a wild jungle of abundance!

I like this, because Jesus says this is what the Kingdom of God is like.

“And he told them this parable: How can I describe God’s kingdom realm? Let me illustrate it with this parable. It is like the mustard seed, the tiniest of all the seeds, yet when it springs up and grows, it becomes the largest plant in the garden, with so many spreading branches, even birds can nest in its shade.” -Mark 4:30-32

Remember, big things begin as little things. Small daily acts of love and faithfulness grow in time into something much greater. Nothing is so small that God doesn’t use it for good. Your little, faithful, daily acts of love are taken by God and used to build a much bigger, beautiful picture.

Keep going.

It’s growing.

Remain in Me

 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” -John 15:91-10

Before school started, we had an official Family Meeting. We typed up an agenda and printed one for each attendee. It included topics such as being responsible, setting priorities, having a good attitude, and choices having consequences.  The boys got to add their own topics of concern and discussion as well.

Our goal was to have a set apart time to do a general life check-in as a family before the boys headed back to school. And it worked. There were tears and laughter. We talked about attitudes, friends, conflicts, worries, hopes, and more. 

Now remain in my love.

Ok, but how, Jesus? 

If I were to explain the concept of “remaining” to my children, it would pretty much be exactly what we did. Continue to come to me with all your questions. Process life with me. Let me be your safe place where you can bring your worries. Take my wisdom and live it out. And then do what I suggest is best. 

Do my children do this perfectly? Not by a long shot.

Neither do we. But we keep coming back. 

Jesus what do you think?

Jesus what are you doing here?

Jesus what am I supposed to do here? 

And in this process, He loves us with an infinite and everlasting love, one that cannot be erased by our mistakes or imperfections. A love that forgives and brings us back again. The same love the Father has for Jesus, Jesus has for us. 

I recently heard it said that we should stop calling our time with Jesus a “discipline” or “devotional time,” but instead we should call it a “lover’s ritual.” Reading, listening, and practicing the presence of God should be anything but dry disciplines. They are lover’s rituals, bringing us together in perfect harmony. 

Therefore, may Jesus be your safe place where you process life and find the next step on the path of light.

May your couches and homes be warm safe places where holy conversations can happen.

May you remain in Him, today and always. 

Suffering and Purpose

“It is in the quiet crucible of your personal,

private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born,

and God’s greatest gifts are given.” -Wintley Phipps

Thinking about these things…

Thankful that my suffering is an opportunity to be closer to Jesus. This may not seem to be the case when in the depths of suffering, walking the valley of the shadow of death. For a time, it may seem as though the lights have gone completely out. And so we cry, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 

But even there, or perhaps mostly there better than anywhere else, we find Jesus. The suffering servant, acquainted with deepest grief. Friend of all who feel forsaken by God. He is with us. It is enough.

And if we can accept it, He will turn our greatest suffering into great purpose, just as the darkness of the cross gave way to the great purpose of resurrection. But we will all, at some point, find ourselves living in those three days between blackest death and glorious resurrection. All may seem lost. In the sludge, in the fire, in the valley, we might have to die a hundred different deaths. The locusts may devour all things.

But look! Your faith is being revealed, of more value than gold! For you will find that you are not holding onto Him, but He is holding onto you, and with a grip that will not let go. Here your faith has a resting place, and somehow you can suffer while also resting in His arms. 

And so you dig in a stake and you dig it in deeply, contending to believe that all is in fact not meaningless, but filled with the purposes of God. You must fight to believe this, because the enemy swiftly comes to steal and kill and destroy all things, including your faith, if possible.

Lay your personal suffering, then, on the altar, and surrender it to the God who brings good out of what was intended for evil. Only with Him are we saved from the sweeping cascade of despair; only with Him can victory shine out of sorrow. So give it all to him and trust that all will be made well in time; if not in this life, then in the next. 

It is well with my soul!

Why I Still Go to Church

I began to be awakened by the Holy Spirit in a different way around 2016. Up to that point, I had been taught about Holy Spirit and I had certainly had encounters with Holy Spirit. Even so, God began awakening me to deeper realities and taking me down a new road.

I was awakened to New Covenant realities - Christ in me, the hope of glory! I became aware that in Christ, God has made his home in us. He doesn’t go away and come back, he simple abides inside his children.

Continuing on, I was awakened to the reality that God speaks to us. Not just that He spoke once in a book I can read, but that He is still speaking. He wants to commune with us.

The experience of these revelations also led to a mad quest of learning about the gifts of the Spirit and how they operate - a topic that had been completely left out of my religious training up to that point. 

Naturally, this all led to a new understanding of the priesthood of all believers, the hierarchy of the church, and of course, my own calling into the ministry. To be honest, I knelt before the altar on the night of my ordination with some hesitation toward the theology behind such an office. Even so I went forward, based on the calling I knew God had given me.

Book after book, mentor after mentor, experience after experience I exhaustively deconstructed church as I had always understood it. It was disorienting, but exhilarating; stressful but freeing. 

During this time I felt led to plant a church with a few good friends. We would operate in the Holy Spirit. We would help each other listen to Jesus. We would give away most of the money we brought in to those in need in our community. We would largely be free of pastor-centered ministry and church bureaucracy. We would be a source of encouragement for other churches that were hungry for a different way.

And we did!

And we were!

We set up camp in my basement and functioned as a small Holy Spirit oasis for several years. It was a joy and I would do it again!

So I’ve experienced an array of church expressions. I grew up Catholic and spent some time with the Missouri Synod Lutherans. I see the value of liturgy and ritual. Later, I would come to Jesus among my Nazarene arm-raising friends. I see the value in their emphasis on the fruit of the Spirit. Later still, I found myself at home with pentecostals and charismatics, and organic church wanderers. I see their emphasis on simplicity and Holy Spirit as a much-needed correction to the church today. 

Today, I find my home among believers of all different types. Some I only connect with on Facebook, they are organic wanderers. Some are in institutional churches, some have given up on the institution. Some are pastors, some are on the fringes. 

But all of them are attempting to follow Jesus in their own way. I guess I’ve also been awakened to the fact that in our quest to be “right” about church, we can miss the beautiful variety of Jesus-lovers available to us.

Circle back.

After years of awakening, deconstructing, reconstructing, serving on staffs, preaching, church planting, and wandering, I now find myself back at a great, big, institutional church. 

This begs the question: Why do I still go to church? If God is everywhere and no one really has it right, why do I keep participating?

Here are my best reasons.

1. I need help believing. Yes God is everywhere, and no we don’t need to sit under 25 minute talk every week in order to be saved. But friends I am simply not strong enough to keep on believing out here on my own. I NEED someone other than me to preach me the Gospel consistently. I need to hear it in word and in song, and I need to hear it in the presence of other fallen human beings who are likewise clinging to its saving truth.

2. I believe in people. Do I think the institution with its politics and hierarchy and bureaucracy has some problems? Sure do. Do I think pastor-centered ministry has its own problems too? Yes I do. But friends, can you also see all the good? So many sincere, Spirit-filled Christ followers fighting the good fight of faith! So many loving and praying and contending for one another! I want to be part of that!

3. The church needs us.  This is not meant to be an arrogant statement. The church really does need the prophets, the artists, the dancers and the wanderers, the people who ask good questions and work to shift the cultural tide. The church needs people who question how the sausage is made and who seek for deeper things. If that’s you, friend, please don’t abandon this imperfect thing we call the church.

4. Jesus loves the church. After all, it is his bride. And his bride is not made up of institutions, titles, or positions, but of people, individuals. Beautiful, struggling, faith-filled people who are following Jesus through this difficult world. Let’s not be so busy being critical of what’s wrong that we miss what Jesus has gotten incredibly right.

Receive this prayer: No matter where you have wandered and what weird places your journey has taken you, may you continue to find beauty and sustenance in the varied expressions of the gatherings of Jesus’ people.

Nerf Bullets

My yard is littered with nerf bullets that have been munched up by the lawn mower. 

There are kid fingerprints all over the window of the back door and I keep finding plastic popsicle wrappers in random places.

It’s Summer.

I’ve been thinking about Summers when I was a kid. I remember sunshine and popsicles! And dirt and having to come in when the street lights came on. I remember neighborhood kickball and hide and seek. I remember eating a good dinner and sleeping hard from all the fresh air. 

And long hours of good old-fashioned politically incorrect cartoons.

And the exquisite joy of fireflies. 

It was a simpler time perhaps, but I don’t believe in completely romanticizing it, as some are prone to do. There were, after all, real dangers and threats. There were big brothers who were true assholes and couldn’t be trusted with little girls. There were bees and snakes, cars that drove too fast, and skinned knees. There were scary dogs and questionable parents with questionable habits. Life held real dangers then, just as it does for our kids today. 

Sometimes we think the world is the craziest, scariest, most dangerous that it has ever been for this generation of kids. But I think this just perpetuates fear that isn’t helpful for them or us. To be sure, the world is a different place than it used to be. We are less connected to our communities and more bombarded than ever with bad news via technology. It's everywhere, and we all know it.

Did you know that they are reinstating mask mandates in California schools? I can only assume it’s not because masks work, but because they actually literally hate the children. Today congress codified gay marriage and our society is making it a priority to argue whether boys can have vaginas. Free speech is being censored, inflation is up, gas prices are up, grocery prices are up. Church attendance is down. Crime is up and trust in law enforcement is down. Addiction is up, obesity is up, sickness is everywhere, people are fat and sick and dying. War is ongoing. They are trying to divide us by race, class, gender, political party, and anything else they can come up with. Blah blah blah. 

There is no shortage of bad news and reasons to clutch our pearls and keep little Billy home where nothing bad can get him. Seriously though, it’s easy to want to just hunker down with some guns and rice and hope to outlive the crazy. 

But friends, have you seen how much GOOD is out there too? 

Have you been STUNNED by how glorious it can be?

When was the last time you were FLABBERGASTED by the beauty of life?

Take, for example, music. 

Or friendship.

A field of sunflowers.

Chickens pecking.

A dog wagging.

Fresh cut lawns and morning glories. Sunsets and sand on your feet. The smell of freshly washed sheets and the crunch of a fresh cucumber from the garden. 

Think of the way children look when they come parading in the house in the middle of a hot afternoon, all red-faced and hot, needing a popsicle.  Simply glorious!

There is a secret I think they don’t want us to know: life is glorious and brilliant, and there are some things they just can’t take away from us! 

Maybe the world is full of a lot of weird stuff right now, but when you come down to it, it’s also filled with a lot of people who are just trying hard to do their best. Wanting the best for their kids, their families, their friends, all while navigating an increasingly complex and tragic world. Good people. Tired people. People just like me and you.

So I’m contending for the good - and we really do have to contend for it. If we don’t fight for it, the dark side of the world will just wash over us like a tidal wave. Little acts of war keep us going, keep us from being consumed. 

So fight the fight! 

Pick the blueberries!

Watch the sunrise!

Listen to the song again!

Keep going. Contend for the good with me.

Drywall Dust

There is a thin layer of drywall dust covering everything in my house.

It covers shelves, tables, racks, electronics and the life jackets that are piled randomly under the desk in the dining room. 

There is no way around it, it’s just part of remodeling. Clean it up. Rinse. Repeat. 

We are currently updating our second bathroom and office. We have already completed our first bathroom, our exterior siding on the house and workshop, our basement hunting room, stabilized our home’s foundation and updated our chicken coop. We’ve also put in a new stove and dishwasher, and Theo laid out a massive garden this year with a timer-set irrigation system. 

The chickens are laying, the cucumbers are growing, and we are building, always building. 

Sometimes I think there is an end in sight, but really it’s just a brief pause, a reprieve until the next project begins. With the demo. And the noise. And the drywall dust.

Life is like this.

I think there is something in our nature that makes us want to always be progressing. We feel like we should always be moving forward and upward, onto bigger and better things. We learn life lessons and we feel like we’ve leveled up. There is an invisible staircase we are always trying to climb.

But God. 

He comes and tells us that even though we are done with one room, the next one still has to be completely stripped down to bare studs and remade. The electric needs rewiring and the plumbing needs adjustment. And even though we just finished that other room beautifully, there will once again be drywall dust on everything. 

And realistically, the rooms are endless. There’s no finished project on this side of heaven, just a continual preparation for the life to come. 

Fourteen years ago I stumbled into my first AA Meeting. High hopes and the idealism of being only 21 led me to think that I would always be growing into a better version of myself. Maybe I have, but what I’ve realized is that the growth is not linear. It’s not leveling up. It’s not climbing the staircase.

It’s more like wandering from inner room to inner room, all of which are perpetually under construction. Some are farther along than others. Occasionally one gets finished out with nice white trim and clean paint and a sweet bouquet of flowers sitting in a vase on the desk. But mostly it’s just under construction - all of it - all the time.  Drywall dust everywhere.

Sometimes the demo is loud and painful. Things come creaking and screaming off the walls. The tools used are mighty for destruction. The clean-up is an event. 

Other times you are deep in the finish work, with mud and trim and paint and flooring all meticulously laid out and installed. 

I’ve spent years upon years trying to “get better.” First from drug and alcohol addiction, and more recently from mental illness. I keep going back to that old urge to progress, to level up, to climb the staircase. And I’m tired.

Maybe it’s not about getting better. Maybe it’s more about wandering from room to room, checking out what the Master Carpenter is up to with his perfect plans, perfect timing, and perfect progress. After all, he promises to carry on his work in us until completion when he returns again (Philippians 1:6). 

I was reminded twice this week that I don’t hold onto Jesus, Jesus holds onto me. That’s his work. And there’s so much peace in that. 

And let’s not forget that in all the remodeling, beautiful things are born. Beautiful, orderly, clean, colorful, happy things. You just have to live in the drywall dust while you wait.

Fire Poppies

Fire poppies are fascinating. They are rare and can be found growing only after wildfires in California. Smoke triggers the germination of their seed. They are nature’s way of teaching us that beautiful things can grow even after everything has been burned to the ground. 

Beauty rises from the ashes. 

In my discipleship group this week, we reflected on how life is a cycle of death and resurrection. We would like it to be more of a steady rise to greatness, but in reality we die, and then rise, only to later find more ways we have to die, and then we rise again. 

I’m in a season of resurrection. 

It’s slow but steady. 

New friends. New callings. Garden blooming. Trees fruiting. 

There are seven chirping baby chickens in my coop - new life!- another sign from heaven of resurrection.

My bipolar ascent into mania was a lot like a wildfire that burned everything to the ground. A true ascent into madness. They say it’s like your brain is on fire, so much so that it can cause long-term brain damage. It was a wild high that preceded the worst depression I have ever had in my life, making me scarcely functional for over a year. Add to that the loss of friends, a pandemic, and a move to a new city where we knew no one - and things sure felt burned to the ground. 

But like the fire poppy, beautiful things of mine have begun to grow again on the scorched earth, and for that I am truly grateful. 

But I worry a lot.

I worry that my meds will stop working, that I’ll go up high in the sky or down low into the pit again. I worry that my cognitive abilities and short-term memory are permanently impaired. I worry that I’m just a shell of who I used to be. I worry about the fragility of everything everywhere.

Jesus was teaching about worry when he said, “So don’t worry, for your Father cares deeply about even the smallest detail of your life” (Matthew 10:30-31). 

The smallest detail. 

That means he cares about my brain cells, the hormones and things that keep me balanced. And he cares about my garden and my chickens and my boys and my food. He cares about fire poppies blooming and all the little things. 

It’s weird to me how you can’t hold onto health or happiness. When it’s here, you can’t store it up and keep it for later. You can only be grateful for it, moment by moment. You can only receive it and let it flow like a river. Any attempts to hold onto it, to claw your nails into it, just ruin it. 

Give us this day our daily bread. Enough for today, and tomorrow will worry about itself.

I am in a resurrection season. What kind of season is yours right now?

Maybe you are grieving.

Maybe you are waiting.

Maybe you are working. 

Maybe you are rejoicing.

Maybe you are rising from the ashes. 

Whatever the season, I hope you can receive the goodness of God as it flows to you. I hope you can find the fire poppies sprouting up from the burned ground. I hope you can rest in Jesus who cares deeply about the smallest details of your life.

Dying and Rising

“I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!” - Mark 9:24

I don’t know for certain many things, but I know my vision is the clearest when I look at Jesus. He keeps drawing me back to himself. When I am confused or questioning why life is the way it is (death, suffering, pandemic, mass shootings, etc.), I don’t get all the answers. Instead, I get his steady presence, bidding me to trust him above and beyond the baffling circumstances of life. This is not an easy calling, and so I cry out, with so many of the saints, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”

I let go of the lie that I should always be ascending. It is a tricky lie that says I should always be getting better, healthier, wiser. Building more and accomplishing more. Climbing the ladder, always upwards. Neverending progress.

I exchange this lie for the truth of descension. That is, he must become more, I must become less. Jesus didn’t say you had to be a grown-up to enter into the Kingdom of God, he said it’s best that we are wide-eyed, wonder-filled, dependent children. I must trust that his strength and power really do rest on my weakness. 

I exchange that lie, too, for the truth that the Christ-following life is a continual cycle of dying and rising,

dying and rising, dying and rising. Not ascending but dying, only to rise, only to find need of dying again. This is the rhythm of the Christ-shaped life. 

This rhythm takes me down the ladder, not up. Descending, always descending. Headed downward, to more dependency, more trust, more release of the control I wrongly thought I had. 

It’s not bad down here. The view can actually be breathtaking when you realize that God has plans for you that don’t involve climbing the ladder. It is a city of rest where the river of life flows slowly and resurrection power runs in your veins. It is with Mary at Jesus’ feet, while the Martha world spins without me. 

And it’s only disturbed when I think I have to try again to climb the stupid ladder. 

Then I am right back to my knees, saying, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”

Just Say No

I sit in the grass and watch the chickens peck.

My dog sits in my lap, and I wonder if there is anything in the world that smells as good as a dog’s fur in the warm sunshine. 

Kota is my shadow. He just wants to be wherever I am. He is a constant presence through every door I walk. He is my walking buddy and my napping buddy. He is my guardian, boofing at the bus everyday when it pulls up to drop off the boys. Where would I be without him? 

It has not always been this way. He was a maniac as a young dog, so much so that I ended up taking him through a serious rehabilitation program with a professional trainer. It was hard work and it wasn’t always pretty. Sometimes I didn’t know if we would ever get to the other side. But we did, and the other side is pretty cool. 

One of the things the rehabilitation process taught me is the value of saying no. If you want a well-mannered dog, you have to be able to tell him no in a way that is valuable. Your no has to have meaning and depth. It has to be significant. It has to be believable. 

No, you can’t bite. No, you can’t bark at everything. No, you can’t freak out every time a squirrel runs by. No, you can’t charge the door when people show up at my house. No, you can’t ignore what I say and do whatever you want. No actually means no. 

I think we sometimes don’t say no to our dogs because we tend to project our needy, unhealed selves onto them. We think that if we just love them enough they will somehow do the right thing. Only they won’t, and they don’t,  because they are animals, not humans. Plus, that strategy really doesn’t work on humans either. Too much affection can lead to disaster, for dogs and people alike. Who likes spoiled brats who get everything they want and appreciate nothing?!

 

Learning to deliver a meaningful no to my dog carried over into the rest of my life. In the process, I realized that there probably isn’t anything that has caused me more problems in life than my inability to say no. Call it what you want: people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, passivity. I have struggled with boundaries and therefore have tolerated a lot of nonsense in my life. 

What I have found is that my no to people needs to be equally as believable as my no to my dog. It can’t be half way, it can’t be wishy-washy. No has to be firmly no, because if it’s not, there will always be someone waiting to transgress your weak boundary and walk all over you. 

There is freedom in no. No, I can’t work tomorrow, even though you really need the help. Not my problem. No, I don’t eat sugar and can’t eat your dessert that you made. No, I won’t help you with that. No, my children don’t need that. 

No. 

Delivering a believable no frees me up to also deliver an exuberant yes when it’s time for yes. In dog training, I learned to use “yes” as a marker word which precedes a reward when the dog completes a command correctly. Yes is a celebration. Yes means success. Yes is a reward. 

Yes I’ll meet you for coffee because I really want to, not because I feel guilty. 

Yes I’ll help you with that, and not just because I feel like I should or I have to. 

Yes I’ll work tomorrow, freely and of my own accord, not dragging my feet. 

Yes.

I believe that Jesus wants us to have wisdom in our dealings in life. He said, “Simply let your yes be yes and your no be no; anything beyond this is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).  I don’t believe he wants us to be doormats without boundaries. I don’t believe he wants us to tolerate endless nonsense for the sake of being “nice.” I believe he wants us to know how to say no, and how to say yes. Anything wavering between or going beyond yes and no is murky and muddy; we should avoid that territory. 

I watch the chickens peck while my dog sits on my lap, and I’m happy to give him a yes to this moment. I bury my face in his back, convinced that nothing smells better than a dog’s fur in the warm sunshine. I consider the journey we’ve been on, full of thousands of yeses and nos. I’m grateful for the lessons and the clear communication we have now. 

This week, I hope you can celebrate the freedom of having a believable no, for your dog and for your people.

Lost

“For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

-Jesus, Luke 19:10

When I was a wee child, I had my first real experience of feeling lost. I was at a store with my mother, and I briefly became separated from her. My childlike line of vision could only see lots of adult legs walking past me. I searched frantically until finally - I spotted mom’s legs! I ran to her and wrapped myself around her legs, sitting on her feet. I slowly looked up to see her face when, to my little heart’s horror, I realized I was hugging the legs of a stranger! I was more lost than ever. 

Being lost is like that. It’s being all alone in a big scary world where people just walk past you. And then to make matters worse, it’s grabbing onto all the wrong solutions.

When I was older, I took my newlywed husband for a walk in the woods at our cabin in Northern
Michigan. I charged confidently ahead; after all, I was familiar with these woods! I had been exploring them since I was a child. We walked for some time and then we took a break, at which point I experienced something that can only be described as akin to Vertigo. Trees surrounded us on all sides and I recognized nothing. The world spun. It was dizzying, and I realized we were quite lost.

Being lost can be like that too. It’s being confident and leading the way, only to end up somewhere unplanned and unfamiliar, spinning aimlessly.

I lost my son once when he was just a toddler. It was the worst 10 minutes of my life. It was at a wedding at our church. Poof! He was gone. We had a group of people searching frantically for him, calling his name. When we were just about to call the police he emerged sheepishly from a bathroom stall. 

Being lost can be like that, too. It’s when you’re just going about your business as usual, not realizing that Someone who loves you deeply is calling out your name, trying to find you. 

I’ve been lost in dingey apartments with the curtains closed and questionable company. I’ve been lost in piles of cigarette butts, in pipes and closets filled with hidden booze bottles. I’ve been lost in different cities that I thought would solve all my problems and I’ve been lost in the recesses  of my own mind because, as my dad always warned me, no matter where you go, there you are.

I’ve been lost in bipolar manic episodes and in the deep black valley of depression that follows. I’ve been lost in the muck of faith crisis and deconstructing my beliefs. I’ve been lost as a mother, lost as a wife, lost as a child and debatably even more lost as an adult. 

But for all the lostness I have experienced, God has compensated me with all the joys of being found. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. And he compensates for the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25).

What is it, then, to be found by Jesus? 

Being found is like the sun finally rising again. It’s when the depression cloud finally moves on. It’s flowers in the Spring and the way my dog wags his tail to greet me every time I come home. 

It’s falling asleep with the same arms around me every night and waking up to the same sound of little feet every morning. 

Most importantly, being found has to do with the person named Jesus. You see it’s not about where I might be going on this journey, it’s about Who I’m following on the way. Being found is when you finally wave the white flag and surrender yourself to Him. 

It is the human experience to feel lost. Everyone, at one time or another, loses their way. Everyone makes a wrong decision that causes them to lose their footing. Some go deeper into the lost than others. Some turn around quickly; others grab a shovel and keep digging. Finances, jobs, relationships, the future, sickness, suffering - all things that can leave us feeling lost, floundering on the waves. Life can feel like a maze we will never escape.  

Where do you feel lost today?

No matter how lost you feel today, may you know there is Someone seeking you in your lostness.

No matter how much you are trudging through the thick, may you know that Jesus came to seek and save us out of the sludge. 

You aren’t found because you’ve figured out your circumstances. Your circumstances might still be garbage. You’re found because you belong to Jesus.

May you find your foundness in Him.

 

Letting the Leash Go

I took my dog to the Vet today. 

He gets to be more of a grumpy old man as he gets older. He’s a brilliant dog who is wary of strangers being in his space. I don’t really blame him, I don’t like them in my space either. Last year at his yearly check-up, he made sure to try to bite everyone who attempted to touch him, multiple times, while I watched helplessly. He is a strong, healthy German Shepherd, so it’s no joke when he’s mad. 

This year, I asked them to take him back without me to see if he might do better that way. 

As I handed the leash off to the Vet tech, I thought about how hard it is to let go. Here I was, literally handing off stressful responsibility to someone else, sitting by myself with empty hands folded and waiting to see what would happen, watching the clock tick tock back and forth. 

What a picture of life. 

There are so many things out of my control that it feels like someone is always on the verge of pulling the rug out from under my feet. I hand the leash off when my kids leave for school every day, getting on the bus and going out into an unknown world. I hand the leash off while my husband does scary stuff on construction sites that I’d rather not know about. I hand the leash off, and hand it off again, and hand if off again, hoping my family comes back to me and risks pay off and things turn out well. 

On the upside, when you have to hand the leash off, you’re left there with an awareness that all you really have is the mercy of God and the care of Jesus upon your life. All of the sudden the things that really matter bubble to the surface, all as a result of your empty-handedness. As I prayed today, “Into your hands I commend my spirit…and their spirits…and all our spirits, forever and ever amen.”

Maybe that was dramatic prayer for a Vet visit. 

But maybe not. 

I think it was just the right prayer for letting go of the leash. 

PS. My dog did just fine and didn’t try to bite anyone’s face off this year. 

It Gets Different

I was recently visiting with a young man who had children much younger than mine. His blond-haired toddling daughter was as bouncy as could be, wiggling all over him on the couch while he tried to carry on a conversation with the adults.

“It gets easier when they get older, right?” he asked me, smiling hopefully.

I paused.

And really thought about it.

“It gets…different.” I answered. 

This week, I realized Theo’s jeans are officially too manly for me to wash with the rest of his clothes. When they are little kid pants, you just throw everything in there together with some soap and give it a whirl. Now, his jeans are manly, tough, big, and need their own washing cycle.

I’ve been noticing other things too. No one asked to go to any Easter Egg hunts this year; that is little kid stuff. Both my boys are in men’s size socks now. In a quick few months, they will both be on their way to Middle School. Theo can play guitar. Remi can cook himself several meals from start to finish. There is men’s deodorant in their bathroom on the counter, and cologne.  And Remi actually smirked at me recently when I asked him about messaging with girls on messenger. 

Temperatures here in Michigan hit a whopping 80 degrees yesterday, so of course the entire state came unglued with outdoor activities. It’s a tradition, it happens every year in April before promptly falling back into the 40s, which it is forecast to do by Tuesday. Love Michigan. 

Remi’s wild child came out in full force in the sunshine. He was barefoot, muddy, soaked, and sunburnt for pretty much the entire day. He played basketball, made mud pies, played in the hose, hunted for worms, and filled a bucket full of water balloons.

“Mom, can you tie this for me?”  he asked while I sat in my chair, soaking up the sun with my dog at my feet.

 “Sure bud.” 

I tied water balloon after water balloon before asking myself the question, how much longer will he want me to tie his water balloons for him? 

When they were very little, the needs were constant. We weren’t tying water balloons, we were making sure they didn’t choke on them. Or die, or otherwise severely injure themselves in a thousand different ways. They were noisy, screechy, clingy, and stinky. They were very cute, but very demanding. I did not for one single day feel rested for the first five years of their lives, at minimum.

These days I wouldn’t say it is easier, but it is for sure different. The hard things are different. 

The hard is knowing how to counsel them on friends, politics, government, taxes, war, and all the other major issues of life. 

The hard is knowing how much space to give, and how much to reel them in. 

The hard is technology use and the role of social media and phones in their lives. 

The hard is eye-rolls and life-is-not-fair door slams. 

The hard is realizing they are growing up to be their own people, with their own choices and opinions.

So we do our best, and trust that Jesus fills in the cracks with his grace. 

Does it get easier? 

It gets…different.