Nipping at my heels

This morning I had a date at Starbucks with two of my favorite friends: Venti-black-tea-unsweetened-with-extra-ice, and my laptop, which is orange. (Thank you, Dell, for knowing I need a cute color or I won’t care about that boring machine which is a nondescript shade of grey.) There are never any tables free at this time of day, at this Starbucks, but today there was one. A nice and spacious one. Then I discovered they could toast the bagel. And then I found a $15 Starbucks gift card in my purse. So many good things.

I also brought Keep a Quiet Heart, by Elizabeth Elliot, who is refreshingly no-nonsense about her faith in God. I had to share this excerpt with you, which she references in a chapter called “God’s Sheep Dogs.” Apparently she too was moved by this passage, originally written by George MacDonald. Don’t read it casually. It is not casual. It is speaking of the deepest desire of God for us, the very marrow of love. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that God does not desire to control us or restrict us. He desires to dwell with us. And teaching us to do so often requires that our loving Shepherd use a strong hand.

“Man has a claim on God, a divine claim for any pain, want, disappointment, or misery that will help to make him what he ought to be. He has a claim to be punished, and to be spared not one pang that may urge him toward repentance; yea, he has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side, to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep-dogs of the Great Shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he comes to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him; that nothing is good but the will of God; nothing noble enough for the desire of the heart of man but oneness with the eternal. For this God must make him yield his very being that He himself may enter in and dwell with him.”

Sometimes we feel the nipping at our heels. Sometimes the teeth are sharp, and it hurts. The five words, "...God must make him yield...," is the most dramatic part of the passage, to me. Sheep are kind of rebellious, always wanting to go their own way, or just plain wandering off.

My feelings after reading this passage are these: there is no room for my complaining about my discomfort. I will wait. I will trust. I will not just believe in God. I will believe God. More of You, Lord. Less of me. Send the dogs. Hem us in. Lead us to You.

Takes my breath…and my words…away.

A bad day, A good day.

Yesterday was a good day. A lot of little things gave me joy. I needed a good day because the previous one was bad. Very bad. Not just circumstances bad, but like trying to get your emotional footing in a major inner earthquake kind of bad.

But yesterday held a few surprises. One was the find of very great, very cheap new canisters for all my dry goods so as to thwart the persistence of little winged beings who keep turning up in my pantry. So super gross and I hate them. So I bought 11 new canisters. Here are some of them in all their glory.

Help yourself to a pest-free pretzel, loved ones.

And then I got a little crazy, in a good way. I had also purchased 6 new paste food colorings so that I can make this delightful dessert masterpiece for my daughter's eighth birthday coming up. Upon putting them away, I decided to clean out my food colorings and tube frostings (I have a lot). I threw a lot away, wiped them all down, got a new gallon ziploc. But how could I put that neat parcel away in the messy Baking Drawer, I wondered. So I then cleaned out and re-org'd the Baking Drawer. (I have a lot of baking tools and supplies since it's the only kind of cooking I really enjoy. Too bad mommying time has mostly replaced baking time, at least at this stage of life.) But look!




But then I got really crazy. Because all the disorganized drawers were suddenly looking hellish to me. (Does that ever happen to you? You've looked at the same chaos for months and then one day it makes your skin crawl? Must have something to do with the flying things.) I decided to tackle the worst offender of them all. Feverishly. And its name is The Junk Drawer. I wish I had taken a "before." But here's the "after". Look at all the pretty colors.




Yes, I like to organize with shoe boxes (see Baking Drawer) and shoe box lids. Especially ones which previously contained kids' shoes because they're small.

By the way, there were six tape measures in there. And FIFTEEN of those plastic things you attach to chop sticks to make them kid-friendly (see them to the left of the scissors, mixed with the alligator clips?). Mind you, we only have two children. Not fifteen. But my husband likes to pick some up every time we're at Pick Up Stix. Just in case. Kind of fascinating. If you want a couple, let me know.

Speaking of my cute husband, he thinks I say quirky and confusing things sometimes. (Well, I'm not arguing that one.) Like when he asked me if I could label the canisters, since almost all of them contain a white powdery material. I replied that it was easy to tell the difference: "The flour is the biggest, the powdered sugar is super white, the granulated sugar...just IS (I meant "is granulated" - it's even kinda sparkly), and so you know by process of elimination which one the pancake mix is, if you don't happen to notice that it's kind of lumpy." He laughed at my answer and repeated back what he heard: "It's big, its white, it just IS. You say funny things." He was kind of shaking his head because I was a piece of work. I am a piece of work. And, okay, I'm extra familiar with all the white baking products and he's not.

I'm rambling towards a point. Husbands and wives are different. I try to stay on the side of fascination, rather than the side of annoyance with that difference. I think we are a divine mixture. I think our mixture is beautiful, dynamic, revealing, and convicting...on most days. And on the days that the annoyance takes over....well, maybe I'll just get out my label maker.

Beauty among thorns

This is speaking to me tonight...

Read this short and sweet post on John Eldredge's blog about cactus flowers. I looked up photos to go with it, based on his description, and I found these.

I find myself asking how. How can anything beautiful and delicate grow among those thorns, among such intense opposition?

Tonight, I do have the answer - God's answer to my deepest questions:

"With man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible."

- Jesus, Matthew 19:26

Don't fill your time capsule with crazy

I'm a recovering pack rat. I'm way sentimental and used to save everything. Emphasis on the "used to." Now, I have too little time, space, and energy for that level of detail. However, back in the day it was another story.

I've had six big, cardboard boxes in my garage that I've been ignoring. I've been turning a blind eye to their existence, simply because they were handed off to me by my dad (another sentimental pack rat) and are filled with my childhood. You think you can't box up a childhood? Well, if you try hard enough you can. It's not that I didn't want to take that black hole of a tour down memory lane, I just knew it would be a massive undertaking. And tonight I had to face the music. My husband has been looking at the boxes for six months and started "consolidating," which means I quickly got roped into the project.

These boxes were full of things I chose to save from late elementary school through high school. I saved some normal things people save, like yearbooks, awards, and my high school letterman's jacket. But that was a small fraction of the stuff. A sampling of the items won't even do justice to the craziness I encountered, but I'm gonna give you one just to entertain you. Here are a few things that, turns out, I didn't need to save after all:

1. Concert Program from Amy Grant's "Lead Me On" tour
2. Keno game sheets from my first family trip to Vegas
3. First parking ticket, neatly stapled to a piece of paper next to the receipt I received after paying it.
4. Old scantrons. Yes, you heard me. A stack of them.
5. Every single card, postcard, or folded up note ANYONE ever sent me or passed me in class. Ever.
6. A Cotillion dance card, filled out with the names of 10 boys I was friends with and was planning to dance with. (Perhaps even stranger than saving this is that I was in Cotillion, and that they made us fill out dance cards, like in the days of Pride and Prejudice.)
7. Every single paper I ever got a grade on, and every notebook for every class. (Do you understand how much paper that is?)
8. About 30 cassette tapes, and one CD - George Michael's "Praying for Time" (Why haven't I been listening to this!!??)
9. A torn-off portion of a poster I helped paint to advertise a dance in Jr. High, dated (I dated everything), and complete with comment that a boy I knew died that same night. Always documenting the facts.
10. This item below. This was the clear winner.

Let me just say first that upon seeing the front of this folded piece of paper, I thought, "OH, good! Finally this might be something actually worth saving..."

BUT, this is what was inside.



Can you read that? It says, "wrapper from Christmas box of Sees Candy I won at Cottillion 4 the swing." Wait, WHAT? It's a wrapper from a candy that I ate 22 years ago. I saved that. I pasted it to a piece of paper. I gave the wrapper a caption. I dated it. I folded the paper over and then wrote "DON'T THROW AWAY!" on it. And I'm just glancing over the fact that I used the number 4 for the word "for." Apparently, I wanted to forever remember how awesome I was at the swing.

Another thing I found was my first "big girl" Bible, and a Bible study notebook that I used for years, jammed with notes, outlines and pieces of paper. I was given this Bible on Christmas Eve when I was 10 (which I know because I had dated it). I began attending my first small group sort of Bible study in 7th grade. And what astounded me, even more than the loads of crazy I found in those boxes, was how much of the word of God has saturated my years. It seems like always. Verses, bookmarks, of course all the encouraging notes I ever got from my leaders were spilling out of this pile of childhood.

And yet, here I am decades later, finding it so hard on some days to remember truth, and hold onto God's promises. I found one page of notes on verses that apply to relationships between men and women. It is baffling to me that I learned those things while I was not yet a woman; I was a child. And yet, I still need to learn them today. I'm still learning how to follow God, and truth never expires. But honestly, I feel uncomfortable about still needing to learn the same truths that I learned 20 years ago. Isn't God thinking, "You should know better by now..."?

I wonder why it is so hard. And tonight, I don't have a good answer. I only have the reality that life is a series of challenges, and you can face them with God or alone. I'm so thankful that for most of mine, in childhood and now, we've faced them together. And even though life is terribly hard at times, facing it alongside our good and gracious and faithful God is enough.

I flipped through the Bible I found, and discovered some writing in it. Some verses were circled with hot pink marker. Some Psalms were boxed with the word "Song" next to them, indicating one made into a worship song I sang in youth group. A bookmark said "JOY: Delight and peace not affected by circumstance." And on a blank page in the back, I wrote the reference Isaiah 41:10, which reads,

Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.

I'm so thankful some things never change.

Befriending Slow

So many of the lessons I need to learn revolve around knowing my limits. Paring down. Taking a step, and not a leap. I'm a big thinker. I was raised that way. If you're going to produce something, don't think about making 10 of them. Why not make 10,000? If you're going to take a trip, why not Europe? Figure it out. Nothing's impossible. If you have a problem, talk to the manager. Write to the CEO. Nothing is out of range. In elementary school, my little brother left his new tennis shoes within the territory of our new puppy, who joyfully shredded them. My brother's "consequence" was having to hand write a letter to the president of the shoe company and explain his dilemma. He was sent a new pair. And he still has the letter.

OK. Thinking big is great for a lot of reasons. And I teach my kids along similar lines when appropriate. God is big too, and He loves big. Big surprises, miracles, rescues. And I love that about Him. I need that about Him.

However, some of the most important things in life require very, very small steps and careful attention to detail. Caring for a baby. Improving a relationship. Learning a skill, or breaking a habit. Yes, sometimes, these things enjoy sudden leaps forward. But generally, growth moves at an almost imperceptible pace. This is my challenge most days.


And this is a photo of two of my people on skis for the first time, last month. See the sign? SLOW. I kind of hate slow (and I just added the "kind of" because it sounds less horrible). But if I were 4 years old, wearing slippery boards on my feet, and on snow, I would love slow. I'd be content moving inches at a time, and I'd feel the greatest success simply from not falling. These little guys are not at all concerned with speed, only making it from point A to point B.

I really want that perspective right now. It's so easy to feel discontent with the slowness of my life. All the things I haven't tackled and all the places I'm NOT yet are truly relentless in their assault against me. Nearly all of the time, it doesn't appear that I'm doing anything "big". Tonight I'm choosing to be content with the small successes of the day. For my own edification, here are some of them:

I purchased, prepared and fed my people good food.
I did two loads of laundry.
I made my bed and did a decent job of tidying everywhere else.
I gave two apologies, and received two also.
I kissed and hugged my people a lot.
I stood outside with my kids just to smell the rain, and got a little wet.
I allowed for toy chaos to happen.
I came up with a plan for preparing my daughter for an upcoming test.
I edited some new photos.
I listened to my son read me a book...very, very slowly.
I listened to my husband's frustrations.
I listened to the rain.
I listened to my heart, wrote this post, and befriended "slow."

If you take time to think through the little and the slow and the teeny bits of your days, you see how big it all really is. List them today. You'll see. There is nothing insignificant about the amazing life God has given me, and the person He enables me to be. He is present, He is working, and He loves writing my story, one teeny bit at a time.

Holding hands

My heart stopped the other day. I went internally awash with the "fight or flight" hormones because I met the reality of my child getting hit by a car. I want to say every parent probably experiences this at some point, but that makes it no less jarring.

Let me set the stage. I have just pulled up to my parents' house, which is on an uphill slope. And as in all neighborhoods, everyone knows that cars drive way too fast down their street. Add this to the thing I love and hate - they live directly across the street from the neighborhood park. As expected, my son gets out on the sidewalk side of the car and runs into the house while I finish a conversation with my husband on my phone. I am still sitting in the car. About one minute later, I watch through my windshield a silent version of this scene that seems to go in slow motion: my full-of-energy little guy runs full throttle out of the house, down the short driveway and right into the street blazing a path to the park, giving zero heed to the fact that he is even entering a street. As fast as I can, I am scrambling to open my car door and stop him, narrating frantic bits to my husband, but it is way too late. Had there been a car coming, I couldn't have reacted in time to protect him. But there wasn't. No car anywhere in sight. Oh God. Thank you.

My son knows better than this. He knows the "stop at the curb and look both ways" routine. We've done it literally hundreds of times. Part of my slow-motion paralysis was out of shock that he was actually running into a street in the first place. I always expect running and craziness from him, but I didn't see the street part coming. He got way ahead of himself, letting his desire to go to the park override all his knowledge. Most importantly, he forgot the rule to always always always hold hands.

Tonight I was thinking about how hard it is for me to walk with God - I mean, right with Him - not getting ahead of myself, or not lingering back. It is so hard. One of my biggest challenges right now. And I was reminded of this incident with my son this past week. I want so badly to get to certain places in my future. I imagine them, feel them, fixate on them. And they are great places, such as a more secure financial spot and a closer, richer marriage. I can see these places are often just across the street, a very short distance away. So I run ahead, giving no heed to God's cadence. Sometimes it's just my thoughts that get carried away, and sometimes I actually start trying to take "progress" into my own hands. I can so easily let go of God's hand and enter into dangerous territory.

The opposite also happens. Have you ever had a bad day that just empties you for several more? Painful days follow us for a lot longer. When one of these days hits me, I tend to linger back, confused and injured. It's not that God wants to rush me out of a hard time, but I know He does want to heal me and help me walk forward with Him. He offers a hand to hold, and to hold me up, when I can't walk on my own.

My prayer tonight was for God to give me the discipline and courage to walk with Him at His pace. I know what it's like to hold His hand, and it is a wonder why I don't every single day. Holding onto God leaves no room for anxiety. None. Fear cannot accompany you. Peace, joy, love, security...all the things I need and want are there for me, filling me up. And yet like a child, I often let go and run ahead. (Wait, I've had that kid, and that kid is exhausting! Sorry, Lord.) Some days I even get hit. Self-doubt, fear, insecurity and vulnerability run me down without stopping. In those times, my Father runs to me in the street, picks me up, holds my face in His hands and says with love, "Precious daughter, hold my hand."

My favorite verse in the Bible is Micah 6:8 because it boils down what God requires of me. When I need simplification and the bottom line of my "job" as a Christ-follower, this is where I turn:

O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God.

It's good to memorize this verse, having it ready to tell to yourself when you start to walk (or run) at your own pace. It's the "stop and look both ways" rule you only learn by practice. When I get ahead of myself, the Holy Spirit reminds me to stop, be humble, and walk with Him. Not running ahead, not trailing behind. And always always always holding hands.

"We're all theologians."

I saw this video today. It's a lot of great things - clever, pithy, short. It makes you think. I love when someone makes me think, especially in a fresh and creative way, and I thought you might too. It moves quickly; I watched it twice to appreciate it more fully. From one theologian to another, let's keep studying together.

*disclaimer: I am not familiar with this church; I just liked the video and thought it had a message and a beauty worth sharing.