Chocolate Milk Epiphany

It would seem that God can speak at any time and in any way.

Baalam's donkey.

Angelic wrestling match.

Burning bush.

Sound of silence.

Chocolate milk.

Yep. Even chocolate milk.

Love it.

I love how He can speak through anything, at anytime, to anyone who is listening.

---

It was snack time in our household. I was getting the Trio's snacks ready in the kitchen,and I was wrestling (yet again) with the fact that God's timing and ways were not lining up with my timing and my ways.

Accidentally, I had filled El's glass a bit too full of milk -- well, a bit too full if I was to fit in the chocolate syrup for his chocolate milk. But, fearlessly, I pressed on and squeezed as much chocolate into the glass as it would hold. Now I had a problem. How was I to stir the chocolate into the milk without spilling it all over the counter?

Ugh.

I pulled out a long-handled tea spoon and carefully began to flick the chocolate around in the bottom of the glass. The surface of the milk was not even moving (which was good, otherwise I would have had a milk-tastrophe to clean up.)

"This is gonna take a while," I thought.

"But is it mixing?" I heard the Lord ask me.

"Yes," I answered. I knew it was because I could feel the syrup stuck to the spoon. I knew it was mixing, even though I couldn't see through the opaque glass, even though the surface of the milk was not moving, even though I knew this would take a while.

"But you can't see it. You can't see anything happening," He pointed out.

"Uh-huuuuuuuuh . . ." I knew He was going somewhere with this one.

"Sweetheart, sometimes My work is so deep that the surface of life is not disturbed by it. Sometimes you cannot see that I am working at all. But I am. The work I am doing is deep. But it is true. It is lasting. And it can't be rushed."

---

I looked down at the glass that I was carefully stirring, and I began to see the faintest streaks of light-brown swirling to the surface of the glass.

Ah.

"Babe, I AM working. I have heard your prayer, and I am working. You are praying. I am working -- whether you can see it or not. Trust me, sweetheart, I am working. And it is going to be awesome."

---

So, when I am praying, and I cannot see Him moving in anyway in the situation, I sit back. I remember the overly-full glass of chocolate milk. And I smile.

It's deep work.

It's lasting work.

And HE is doing it.

I can just patiently wait.

Chocolate milk, baby!

It speaks to me on so many levels . . .

His Other Hand

The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.


This phrase has been swirling around in my mind and heart since I posted yesterday.
It hasn't set well with my spirit.


The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.


I've been asking the Lord why this phrase doesn't feel right.
It was definitely how I perceived His activity during that season of my life.
Why isn't this phrase resting peacefully as such?


---


The truth is, I know better now.


Last night, as I was sitting with Him and that phrase, I had a picture pop into my mind. It was a picture of what I call His "hold right there" hand. (Very similar to the hand I put up when my kids see that I am on the phone and begin to clamor for sharpened pencils, a new toy, and the definition of the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" -- only His eyes weren't bugged out and His face was not flexed in perturbation.)




I could see His hold-right-there hand gently tarrying in front of my anxious and desperate heart. I was crying out to Him, but I heard no answer. I saw no movement of the hand. And that was all I could see. The hand. Not moving.


But in the picture that popped into my head, I saw His other hand, too. THIS hand was a blur of movement. It was working so quickly that I could not follow it with my eyes.


I looked back to the other hand. The stationary hand. The hand of waiting.


Ugh. Waiting.


That was the only hand I could see in my pain and disappointment and frustration.


I could only see the hand that was NOT moving. I was fixated on that hand. The one that wasn't doing things my way. The one that wasn't moving fast enough. The one that wasn't answering the prayers I wanted to have answered.


But what I didn't see through the haze of my disillusionment was the hand that was moving. There was His other hand -- opposite the hold-right-there hand -- that was working swiftly to bring beauty from ashes, to bring healing from pain, to bring life from death. That hand was moving.


I just couldn't see it.


I couldn't see because I couldn't get past the fact that He was allowing such a great amount of pain.


---


Lord, give me eyes to see both of your hands.
Give me a heart that can trust that while one hand is still, the other is working in ways I cannot see.
Remind me You are good, despite how I feel.

His Hand

When in the darkness of life,
I cry out to Him.

I beg for wisdom,
for guidance,
for discernment.
I moan for relief,
for light,
for freedom.
I search for hope,
for purpose,
for meaning.



As we were in Corban's pediatrician's office for the ump-teenth time the summer of 2012, and Corban was wasting away and in terrible pain, I prayed for supernatural knowledge for the doctor so that we could help Corban. It didn't happen. God did not tell the doctor what was going on.

The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.


As I was holding Corban as he threw up blood, I pleaded with the Lord to heal him, to allow me to have Corban's pain. But no healing came. Corban was still in pain.

The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.

As they were trying for the second, excruciating time to get Corban's IV inserted, I prayed that it would be a quick success. I asked the Lord why He could possibly need to allow more pain for Corban. The IV didn't work.

The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.


After Corban got his NG tube and they were doing an x-ray of his belly to make sure it was placed correctly, I prayed that it would be in the right place so that they would not need to mess with it anymore and cause even more pain and trauma. It was not. They had to move it.

The Lord's hand did not move to answer my cry.


With David in the Psalms, I cried out, "How long, O Lord, how long?"

I did not receive an answer.

---

Obviously, God's ways are beyond me.

In those moments of disappointment I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned. I felt like He was being cruel.
I felt lost. I felt like I had no idea who my God was.

And that was the crux of it.
I did not know the God I was interacting with, and I did not understand His ways.

---

But over these last months and years, I have learned something.

I have learned that while He does not always remove or prevent pain, He does use the pain and guide us on the paths of His incredible best for us.

And those paths often include pain.

In the middle of excruciating pain of spirit or body or mind, it is difficult to reconcile that this is being allowed by Him and that somehow He is working it for our best.

But He is.

And every so often He gives me a glimpse of "the best" that He is working.
And that gives me just enough hope to weather the next painful season.

My God is not capricious. My God is not cruel. My God does not rejoice in evil. My God is not a god of darkness. My God is not far-off. My God is not frivolous. My God does not tease.

He is kind.
He is loving.
He is good.
He is light.
He is here.
He is involved.
He is in control.
He is sincere.
He is restoring.
He is redeeming.

This is my God.

When He does not move the way I had hoped, I lift my eyes. I ask for the eyes to see the beauty and redemption of the plan He is unfolding. And I ask for the grace and strength to embrace His ways over my own.



I ask for the grace and strength to embrace His ways over my own.



And I ask again and again until I can walk with a submissive spirit the path He has laid out.

The Beauty of the Darkness of Grief

These days I'm finding that I can't breathe.
I feel like there is a giant pressure on my chest making each inhale painful and incomplete.
I feel heavy.
I feel slow and confused.
Everything seems to take too much effort.
I feel anxious, fidgety, nervous, racing internally.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. . . And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. ”  - C.S.Lewis, A Grief Observed

It took me by surprise, this grief. But I guess grief is like that. It can surprise you. Sometimes it shoots out of me in hot, ugly sobs. But most of the time it is just a suffocating blanket wrapped about me.

It feels dark.

But in this season of Advent, I find peace in the fact that darkness and light are the same to Him. The night is as bright as day (Psalm 139:12). He sees just as clearly in the dark as He does in the light.

It is never pleasant to be in the place of grief, to be buried under the weight of loss.

But somehow, to sit in that place with Him, the darkness loses its coldness. It becomes warm and alive, though no less painful.



In the end, it is not about escaping this place. It is about inviting Him into it.

Nothing buried, skirted, or circumvented can heal.

Grief is a cup that must be drunk to the dregs.

So, I drink. Fully. The sweetness and the bitterness. I drink with gratitude for what I had, for the light that will come.



But, for now, it is dark.



"For the darkness of waiting
of not knowing what is to come
of staying ready and quite and attentive,
we praise you, O God:
For the darkness and the light
are both alike to you." -- Ruth Haley Barton

Amen.



I wait for you, here, Lord.



"The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them."
Isaiah 9:2

The Softness of Jesus Body

Last night was darker than I could have imagined.

Twice, I had to hold my son while he screamed and shook in terror and pain at the procedures being done to him.

After the first one, he was angry with me and would not receive my comfort, feeling betrayed by the one who was to protect him.

I curled up next to him in his bed and sobbed with him. Somehow, my tears for him soothed him to sleep.

But when dawn came, there was no dawn in my heart.

My heart cried out for the Lord to relent, to come and save now, to rescue, to restore.

---

I heard a knock at the door of the room. Fearing who I would see and what they might say, I looked up through the haze of my heart's pain.

But the face I saw was one filled with love, wreathed in compassion, and anchored by eyes of concern.

It was Jesus.
He was wearing a middle-aged woman's body, but it was Jesus.
He sported a red t-shirt and shorts and sandy-blond hair.
And His arms, His chest, His hands encompassed me as I sobbed in the hallway of the hospital. His t-shirt caught my tears. His lips kissed my cheeks. His voiced prayed for me.

He came.

But it took me a while to recognize Him.

---

I have long believed that God gives each of us the specific body that He needs for us to have in order to receive His love into our inner selves and in order to give that love to the people that He brings across our paths.

He gave me eyes that delight in beauty -- and then He spoke to me through color and pattern and texture.
He gave me a body that feels Him in creation -- and then He spoke to me in the wind.
He gave me a soft tummy -- and then He gave me kids to rest on it.
He gave me a loud laugh -- and then He sent people that needed to hear joy from afar.

And today He gave Jesus a body that is not what Hollywood would call glamorous or ready for the Red Carpet. But it was beautiful. It was soft and warm and comforting. The bearer of this body offered it up to Him, and He used it powerfully in the midst of the darkest moments of this journey thus far.

Oh, how society has confused what is important in the body.

But today is was brought into sharp focus:
what is important about our bodies is that they are His to use.

Their shape, their size, their weight, their height, their color, their smell, their attractiveness, their mobility, their muscularity -- none of this matters. Our bodies' sole purpose is His love - to give and receive it. On the altar of His love, each body fulfills its purpose, each body becomes what it was intended to be.


That's it.


Today, I got to meet Jesus. And she was beautiful.

Flexible Faith

During this dark night, I have found that my greatest fear is not the loss of my son's life.

My greatest fear is that this dark night will cause someone's faith to fail -- that somehow, watching this from the inside or the outside, someone will find God too inscrutable, too unknowable and walk away.

"Someone" -- including myself.

---

The other day, I was reading the portrait of Jesus preparing His disciples for the coming darkness that His death will bring upon them. (Luke 22)

Sweet Peter is all bravado and bluster making statements he knows nothing about, making promises he can never keep, being "strong" as best he can in the face of some very confusing things that Jesus is saying. And Jesus turns and speaks to Peter:

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat;  but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”


These words have stuck like a pin in my heart . . . "I have prayed that your faith may not fail." Jesus, Himself, prayed this for Peter. Jesus knew what was coming for Peter, and HE was praying for him, for his faith, for life beyond the darkness.

At a time like this, I want Jesus praying for me, for my husband, for all three of my children. Yes, I would love healing and answers, but what I want more than anything for all five of us -- and for all those watching this from the outside -- is a faith that will not fail. A faith that grows under this intense pressure.

I need you to pray this for us, Jesus.

I know that Hebrews 7:25 (therefore He is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through Him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf) is referring to the perpetual intercession You make on our behalf for salvation, and I need you to intercede on our behalf.

Pray, Jesus, that our faith does not fail.
Refine it.
Make it flexible and not rigid so that it may bear this strain without breaking.

Pray for us, Jesus.

A Voice in the Breeze

Six years ago, I was in the middle of a very dark season of life.

One sweltering, summer day I  was at Costco filling my car's tank with gas. My kids were in the car, and I was standing there praying for God to reveal Himself to me, praying for a sign of His Presence.

Out of nowhere, a strong, cool breeze washed over my body, cooling my spirit and soothing my heart.

---

Many times, as I've filled my car's tank at Costco, I've remember how He met me that day, and how on that day He began to speak to my heart through the wind.

Today, I remembered again.

---

Today, I find myself amidst the darkest season I've yet to walk in this life -- watching my oldest son waste away in agonizing pain as the doctors scratch their heads in confusion.

I stood beside my van, the gas guzzling into the tank, and I remembered. I remembered how You met me here so long ago.

My heart wanted to ask if You were there . . . but the air was hot and was not moving.
This was not an easy question to allow my heart to breathe. It was certainly not a "gimme."
I was scared.
I was scared You would not show Yourself, that I would be more alone, somehow, after my heart released this query to You.

But I couldn't suppress the question,
though I was terrified of the answer,
afraid that the air would not move,
that the warm blanket of still air would remain around me, move in on me and suffocate me.

But I asked.



"Are You there?"

I waited in silence, aching.
Holding my breath.
Feeling the heat move in on me.
Scared that my God is not Who I thought He was.

But the faintest tickle of air brushed against my arms -- as if a guy smoking a cigar has released a puff of a smoke ring from his mouth onto my forearm. It was so faint that I stood there for a second wondering if I'd imagined it.

I looked down.

I felt it again. A tickle of air on my forearms.

The little feather sweeps of air kept coming, not strong, but Present.

"Okay. You're here."
My heart sighed a bit of relief but then choked out,

"But I need You stronger. I want You stronger."
"Here" doesn't seem to be cutting it right now. "Here" still means that my son is wasting away and in great pain, and You're not doing anything to make it stop. "Here" doesn't change the fact that my second son is carrying the weight of the possible death of his brother with him. "Here" doesn't cut the darkness with blinding light. "Here" doesn't take away the nauseating ache from my heart.

And then the tickle of air turned into a flutter of air.
And then a brush of air.
And then a gentle breeze came and caressed my whole body, and as it did, I very clearly heard, "I am coming."

The breeze kept cooling me, sweeping some of the heat from my spirit and body. "I am coming," You kept whispering.

"I am coming."

"I am coming."

---

To be honest, I don't know what His coming will look like.
I just don't know.
But I will know when He comes.

And right now, I just need to know that He's coming.

The Beauty of Swim Lessons

Armed with goggles, beach towels, and some tummy butterflies, Corban, Elliott, Anna and I opened the doors to the pool area of the rec center near our house. The moist, overpowering smell of chlorine greeted us and told us that it was again the time of year that brings us to swim lessons.



Corban and Elliott were up first. Like old pros at this game of swim lessons, they strapped on their goggles, kicked off their shoes and went to work. I held Anna on my lap, and we cheered on the boys as they were schooled in the art of swimming.

When their half-hour lesson was over, it was Anna's turn. This was the first swimming lesson she had ever had. With a bit of apprehension, she made her way over to the steps, and with great bravery, she did what her teacher asked and required -- until it came time to put her face into the water.



The cries emanating from her four-year-old lungs echoed off the walls of the pool area.

I went over, knelt beside her and emncouragingly told her that she could do this. Her teacher (a veteran at teaching swim lessons to young children, with the bite marks on his arm to prove it) gently but firmly encouraged her. He would not allow her to give up.

After much coaxing, her face went in as she bent to the wishes of her mom and teacher.

But the crying did not stop.

From a few feet away, I kept encouraging her.

But the crying grew louder.

She was now standing outside the pool.

"MOMMYYYYYYYYY! MOOOOOOOMYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

I walked over to her and guided her back to the pool. I asked her teacher what would be best for me to do -- stay and encourage or walk out of line of sight. He suggested I leave line of sight.

So, I did.

Corban and Elliott were greatly distressed.

"Mommy, Anna's crying," voiced a concerned Corban.
"I know, sweetheart, but she needs to learn this. Come over here where she can't see you."

Like three traumatized little birds, Corban, Elliott and I huddled just out of Anna's line of sight. For a half an hour we listened to her cry for her mommy. The only time she took a break from her crying was when she would shakily comply with her teacher's request to float with his hand beneath her back or to hold onto the wall and kick her feet or to dip her ear into the water.

And then the crying would begin again.

My heart felt like a writhing snake trapped inside my rib cage.

----

As soon as the lesson was over,  the three of us rushed over to her. I wrapped her up in  a towel and held her.

"You DID it, sweetheart! You DID it! You were so scared, but you DID it! I am so very proud of you! You were so brave!"

Elliott bee-lined for her teacher and told him that tomorrow he needed to start with the easier things and work up to the harder ones. (Yep. My six-year-old was instructing a 30-year-old on how to give swim lessons.)

Corban knelt down in front of Anna and took her face into his hands. Gently, he turned her face toward his and said, "Nan, you are okay. You're okay, Nan. You're safe. You are okay."

Elliott came back over and told Anna that he had fixed the problem and told her teacher how to teach class tomorrow.

----


As I was loading a calm but heart-raw Anna into her car seat, I asked, "Nan, what was the scariest part of all that?"

With a shaky voice, she said, "Putting my face into the water."

"Yes, that is scary, isn't it?"

"But also," she quivered, "it was scary that I was calling for you and calling for you and that you did not come."

A bomb of mom-grief went off in my chest. *groan* What could I say? How could I explain?

Then, in a torrent, pouring from my mouth came, "Oh, sweetheart! I heard you. I heard every time that you called my name. Mommy was there the whole time. I never left for even a moment. Every time you cried, every time you called for me, I heard. But I could not come to get you. This lesson was one that you had to learn. It broke my heart to hear you crying, to see you so scared, but I knew that this was important, so I had to let you learn it, even though it was making my heart hurt to see you so scared and so sad."

----

I pray that I don't forget this moment when the Lord spoke to both Anna's heart and my own.

Those times when I cry out for release, when I pray fervently for a change of path, when I seek light desperately and only see darkness, when I feel alone and can't see His face. During those times, I will pray for a heart that can remember this moment, for a heart that can hold onto the truth that He is working for my best no matter how scared I am, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how little sense it all makes.

----

Today, Lord, touch my heart. I am standing in Anna's place of panic and doubt. Touch my core and remind me that I'm not alone, that You're working. Remind me that even when I can't see Your face, that you are closer than my breath.

And when the time is right, please come and wrap me up in a great big towel and hold me close and whisper truth to my heart.

Moonless Trust

Moonless Trust
by Elisabeth Elliot


Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is no one to whom you can speak of your need.

Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty-six, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for fifty-three years.) I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo.

"All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey.... On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender (a small boat) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long-loved lines--'And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas.' I couldn't feel frightened then. Praise Him for the moonless seas--all the better the opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the El Shaddai, 'the God who is Enough.'"

Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough.

He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency.

It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.

-----


Amen. Let it be so.

The Beauty of the Wind

True Confession: I love the wind.

I love walking in the wind. I love feeling it mess up my hair. I love to lean into it and feel it tickle my skin as it passes through my clothes. From the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I am wrapped in an invisible presence. And this presence is undeniable. I can hear the trees moaning. I can see the leaves wildly waving. I can feel my hair blowing around in a brown cloud about my head. My clothes are plastered to my body. My skin tingles and stings. My eyes water. I breathe deeply of the sharp air, and the wind takes my breath away from my lungs

To me, the wind has come to represent God.

It is a constant reminder of His presence. The wind is something that I can't see but that I can feel very strongly. My eyes can perceive the effect of the wind, though I can't capture evidence of it with sight.

Wind is a signal of change. It is a sign of changing seasons, of changing weather, of changing landscape.



Right now, my life is very windy.



I went for a walk this morning in the wind. It bit into my ears and my hands with its icy nature, but somehow I found myself invigorated, as if the pain of the wind was reminding me that I'm alive. Without pain, I wonder if we ever really live.


And at this time, my life is filled with pain. The winds of change are blowing with great might, and I know that anything not securely fastened is going to be gone in the morning. Hebrews 12:27-28 talks about a removal of all those things which "can be shaken" so that what remains is only those things which "cannot be shaken."

Much is being shaken in my life.

After this wind dies down, many things will no longer remain, but what what does remain in the morning will be the immovable pieces of my life.


As I was leaning into the wind on my walk this morning, I had a picture in my mind of myself on a beach.

At sunset, I stood on the beach and drank in the beauty of the shore, the shadows, the light. I watched the dimming light play with the grasses and the ripples in the sand.
But as I drank in the beauty, I felt the winds beginning to pick up. I watched as the water was being stirred into a frothy mess. I observed the sea gulls taking off in flight, pushing the wind with their wings.
I left the beach, my clothes flapping agains my legs and arms, knowing that the beauty I had seen that evening would not be there in the morning.

At sunrise, I went to the beach again. The landscape of the beach was completely changed. The sand was still there, the water still there, but nothing else seemed the same. The shoreline, the flotsam, the debris, the tidal pools, the sandbars all made it feel like a completely different place.

But it was still breathtaking in its beauty. The sun glinting on the water and fracturing into diamonds, the waves making music, the shadows, the light . . . they reminded me of what I had once known.

No, it didn't look like what I had seen the night before, but this new landscape wakened my hear to sing in a new way, in a way the scene the previous evening had not done.


But change is hard, and it is important to mourn what was.

And so I mourn.

I mourn the beauty of what has been. I ache with what I leave behind. I choke out sobs, and I wrestle with the many "why?"s that are surfacing in my heart.

And then I walk into the wind -- I lean into it.

I can do this because the wind is my God. The wind is the Lover of my heart.

Yes, right now walking is much harder than it was when the wind was not present and the air was still. But when I lean into it -- when I lean into Him -- I find the bracing reality of His presence.

It is going to be a hard walk. It is going to be painful. And when the wind ceases, the landscape of my life will look very different, but it will still be beautiful.

So right now, all there is for me to do is to mourn what was, to trust the One who promises good for those who love Him, and to lean into the wind . . .

The Beauty of Being

Whenever I go to the mountains, I feel as if  I need to have some sort of "experience" with the beauty of creation. Everyone always talks about these "experiences" they have with the smells, sights, and sounds of God's creation. Inevitably, upon returning from the mountains, people ask, "Wasn't it just so refreshing? Didn't just just see God everywhere?"

Well, yes, but . .  huh? Did I miss something? Was I supposed to feel more?

So, every time I go, I feel this compulsion to "drink in" (as people always do) this beauty -- to force some sort of spiritual experience.

But I've at last grown weary of the compulsion, and during my most recent foray into the mountains, I just didn't want to play that game anymore. I wanted to allow Him to float by me -- to surprise me -- if He so desired. And if not, then I would  thank Him for the beauty, allow the sound of rushing water to sooth my dry spirit, smell the pine, and go home.

And so it happened, as I was tripping along my non-compulsive way on this last trek to the mountains, that I stepped outside of our cabin and was greeted by a host of wildflowers.

Now, as my husband will attest to, bringing the beauty of fresh-cut flowers indoors gives my heart great joy. (This is much to his chagrin, however, for he's spotted BUGS on these flowers more than once. I don't mind these friendly critters that stay put on their beautiful homes, but this poses a serious challenge to his comfort.) Nonetheless, I began gathering a number of bouquets. Some contained just white flowers, some were multi-colored, some were varying shades of purple, but all were delicately and wildly beautiful.

My favorite flower in these gathering sessions (for there were many throughout our stay) was the Mountain Bluebell Bell flower. It has such a delicate head whose feather-weight pulls its fragile stem into a gentle arch. Clothed in a vibrant but almost translucent purple, its beauty and vulnerability captured my heart. In a field of flowers, this one made me stop.





Because it was alone.
Because it was fragile.
Because it just was.






I'm not sure why this flower -- of all the beautiful ones -- impressed me so.  Whether there was one flower per stalk, or two or three, there was a terrible fragility to this flower as it stood alone, so susceptible to being trampled by a thoughtless tread or beat down by a hard rain.

I didn't want to pick these flowers.

Somehow, I felt that picking them was depriving them of their God-given purpose of bringing glory to Him in a field of grass. Not many people saw these precious flowers -- just Him and me and possibly a handful of others. These flowers were not on the Times Square JumboTron. They were not famous or sought after for their beauty. They just existed in a field and brought pleasure to Him.

What a high calling. What a glorious purpose -- just to bring His heart delight as He gazed upon it.

And I found my heart identifying with this tiny flower, for this is what I want.

This flower is somehow me. I want to just be. I want to give His heart delight by just existing as I was created to.

But it is so hard.

No other life on the planet struggles to just be like we do, as humans. This is irony, of course, because how can one struggle to be. The act of being is the state of ceasing to struggle, to simply exist. What a mess has been made of what was once simply beautiful humanity.

In his book The Gift of Being Yourself, David Benner gave vent to the struggle of my heart with these words --

"In all of creation, identity is a challenge only for humans. A tulip knows exactly what it is. It is never tempted by false ways of being. Nor does it face complicated decisions in the process of becoming. So it is with dogs, rocks, trees, stars, amoebas, electrons, and all other things. All give glory to God by being exactly what they are. For in being what God means them to be, they are obeying Him. Humans, however, face a more challenged existence. We think. We consider options. We decide. We act. We doubt. Simple being is tremendously difficult to achieve and fully authentic being is extremely rare."

And yet this is what I want. I want to reach the place of rest --

the place of being
the place where striving ceases
the place where I am ever aware of Whose I am
the place where I find my true self, hidden in Him
the place where I know, as I am known
the place that is home

What this simple flower so easily does, I am in the process of finding my way back to -- being.

Lord, take me there.

The Stick of Self-Loathing

Similar to a jockey riding a race horse in the Kentucky Derby, whipping the horse's rump to make it perform better, I have found that self-loathing is the stick I use to beat myself when I fail. This is the stick I use to spur myself on to a better course of action, to a better performance.






"What a failure you are!"                                        "You are disgusting."

                          "You are so fat."                                                   "You are a hopeless disappointment."

"Geeze. Gross."                           "You're pathetic."


Words that I would never speak to a living soul, I breathe into my own heart.

And I didn't even realize that I was doing it.

Until now.


The truth is, self-loathing does motivate, but it does not do so for long. It can only motivate while I am beating myself with it mercilessly. Once the beating stops, so does the motivation. This sort of thought process slaps the face of my Creator, for it speaks lies and curses to the very core of who I am -- words that He would never speak to me or over me, words that He does not agree with. This is definitely not the life that He's told me is mine -- a life of freedom, beauty, light, health and love. The life of self-loathing is one of darkness, shame, guilt, and hatred -- and this is not what He chose for me. This is not why He suffered the cross. This is not His best for me.

I have just come to hear these words (that I have been speaking to myself my entire life) over the past few weeks. Like molten lava below the crust of my life, this destructive force begins to pour from below the surface whenever a failure of mine cracks the surface of my I've-got-it-together crust. And with it, this lava brings destruction and death.

A few recent incidents began to crack the hardened crust of my life, allowing this fiery hatred to pour forth into my consciousness.


I got my first speeding ticket EVER. (I'm thirty-five.)

I popped a tire on my van when I hit a curb from taking the corner too fast.

I gained a clothes-are-getting-too-tight amount of weight.



I began see words like "failure" and "disgusting" and "gross" and "horrendous" and "shameful" erupt into my mind. These words -- while so familiar -- were now discordant with the truth He has been revealing to my heart over the past months and years. "Where did these come from?" I wondered. Ah, sweetheart, He said, they have been there all along. But they have played well with the melody of your previous life -- that you were not loved, not good enough, not delighted in. Now that you know that this old melody is not your true heart's song, these curses you have spoken over yourself for years in order to perform better -- these don't sound right with the new melody I've given you, do they?

In His grace, the Lord has chosen now as the time for me to begin to face some of my self-loathing. He has chosen now as the time to begin the process of healing and freedom. He has chosen now to begin to re-train my thinking and to breathe His truth into my thinking about myself.

And He used my recent failings so that He could bring this to my attention.

You see, as long as I am "succeeding" at controlling myself and my environment -- as long as there are no "cracks" in the crust of my life -- the self-loathing just simmers deeply below the surface. There is no need to pull out my "beating stick" because I'm doing all right. But when I fail . . . well, watch out. Here comes the lava which I will quickly fashion into a stick. And here we go again with the beating.

But I'm at a loss. If beating myself into the right course of action is not how I'm supposed to respond to failure in order to bring about change, then what in the world is this process supposed to look? God doesn't want me to over-eat, to get speeding tickets, to continue to replace tires. Does He?

I know that success cannot be a "willful success" -- one that I achieve by myself, by my extremely heroic efforts, by my sheer will-power. I've seen all to clearly that such "success" does not last. It is the self-help epidemic with a nice cloak of prayer-y Christianity, but it is still all flesh. It is still a program doomed for failure, as all self-help programs are. Truly, if I believe that my flesh has been crucified with Christ, then any sort of self-improvement project is nothing more than dressing up a corpse, putting on some makeup and perfume and fancy clothes -- but perfume can't cover up that stench for long, and  soon my failure resurfaces. And so does my self-loathing, bubbling up from below. And out come the stick. And here we go again.

My true success is not "success" at all -- a better word for it is freedom. And freedom doesn't come through control. It only comes when I release control, when I agree that my best efforts are are not going to cut it and that they are, in fact, sin -- that they are willful attempts to fix what I cannot fix, to control what I cannot control, to heal what I cannot heal. These efforts are once again trusting in me -- a fallen and impotent god.



I'd never seen this before. I guess I thought that I was helping Him by handling what I deemed "the small stuff" -- like my eating and driving habits.

But I can't even control those.


Sheesh.


As the Lord has been revealing the fierce and scalding lava of self-loathing in me, my response has been two-fold. Ironically, my first response was . . . that's right -- self-loathing. I really wanted to pull out my stick and beat myself for failing again. But He gently removed that stick from my hand and did not allow me to use it on myself. And so I was just left with sorrow -- a deep-seated grief that I have been hating so fiercely a girl that He loves and delights in so desperately. How it must stab His heart each time I curse myself and speak lies to motivate myself.

And yet up until this point in time, I knew no other way. I had no other options. As a scared little girl who greatly feared disapproval, I did the best I could to avoid it. Sweet little Courtney knew "performing better" as the only way to escape the painful  disapproval that came with failure.

But little Courtney does not deserve to be hated, too. She needs to be embraced as much as grown-up Courtney needs to be embraced.

And so, together, we walk toward Him -- the One who loves us deeply, with all our wounds and fears and pain. We see Him with His arms open, a smile on His face and love in His eyes. As we reach Him, He embraces us fully, speaking words of grace and healing. I am able to thank sweet, little Courtney for doing the best she could with what she had. I embrace her. And in that embrace, a new freedom is born -- one that is born of love, not fear. Behind us, He drives a cross into the ground, and then He takes our hands and walks us away from this point. No more.

I no longer need the stick of self-loathing to motivate better performance. The curses I have spoken in the past are no longer needed. The cross dealt with the sin. From here forward, I am free. Will the lies, curses, and self-loathing still surface? Sure. Right now, they are still habit. But you can bet He's going to be pretty quick to point them out. And then I can ask that He replace them with His words of truth.

My freedom comes when I admit the truth that I am out of control, that I'm scared and fearful, that I don't know how to change without self-loathing. My freedom comes when I confess that I have tried to fix myself and that I have failed miserably.

My freedom comes when I invite Him into my mess, when I ask for His light to shine in the darkness of this area of self-loathing that has been bubbling viciously below the surface of my life.  My freedom comes in dragging this from the darkness and into the light.


My freedom comes in that I will be walking this area, too, with Him.

True freedom. It's not the absence of failure. True freedom is walking each moment, my hand in His, believing the truth He speaks about me and about Himself. This is true freedom.



And this is why He came.



Oh, my Love, walk me toward freedom and emotional health in this area, too. Thank you for loving me fully, for delighting in me completely amidst my mess. Thank you for getting me to this place of seeing my sin. Let's walk forward from here.

Royal Wedding through the Heart

"Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is."
- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

 I have been unable to get this quote out of my mind for the last few days as I have been drinking in -- okay, maybe guzzling -- all forms of media coverage of the Royal Wedding of William and Kate.

Did anyone else notice that Prince William wore exactly what the Handsome Prince is wearing at his wedding in Cinderella? The fairy tale has truly come to life right before my eyes.

And my heart rejoices.


As I sat on my couch with a huge, goofy grin on my face, I realized that this wedding was doing something internally that no other wedding I have watched has ever done. Something inside of my chest was being released, was being reborn. Every so often, something, some event, awakens this in me. I needed to press in, to find what this was.

As the excitement settled to the bottom of the glass of my mind, I could see my thoughts and feelings a bit more clearly. What was remaining in this glass was the deep-seated knowledge that I was created for something more, something not "common" by any definition. My heart had found a bit of home, a bit of comfort, a bit of affirmation in watching the Royal Wedding.

For a few minutes of the hours of spectacle, my husband watched with me. (He actually did not change the channel during one of the wedding replay specials.) I was more than a little intrigued . . . my sports-loving, explosion-addicted, shoot-up-the-bad-guys husband was actually watching the Royal Wedding willingly.

So, I had to ask him. What does watching this stir in you? What is going on internally as you watch this? His answer resonated with my own, but from the male perspective. What gripped him was the pomp, the tradition, the regalia, the formality, the honor of the soldiers, the history apparent, the duty that was called forth on an occasion such as this.

Both he and I found the innate knowledge of "something more" called forth in us as we watched.

But of course this would rise up in me, and indeed should rise up in me. It is truly woven into the very fabric of who I am, woven there by the One who made me, placed there so that I would thirst for Him. He actually tells us that He has "placed eternity in [our] hearts. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) In the truest sense, this -- this wedding of a commoner to a prince, this rise from nobody to somebody, this calling forth of beauty, this honor, this regalia -- this is what I was made for.

When He speaks of me in His Word, He says things like,

My darling, you are lovely in every way . . . You are a royal crown of beauty in My hand . . . I delight in you . . . I rejoice over you . . .I celebrate and sing because of you . . . You shine like the sun . . . I, the King, desire your beauty . . . you are all glorious within . . . I have sought you out . . . You are clothed in the finest fabric, bright and clean . . . wrapped in it . . .Nothing can separate you from my love . . . I have fought for you and won . . . You are mine and no one can take you from me.*

But I have several friends who have really struggled with this event. They have spat out words like "dumb" and "stupid" and "waste of money."

It makes my heart sad to hear them say things like this, not so much because it dampens my joy but because such a strong negative reaction tells me that there are wounds somewhere in each of these women and men that have never been healed -- a lie spoken to them that has killed this part of their heart. They have been told somewhere along the line (either by a person they respect or by their own disappointed heart) that there is nothing "more," that fairy tales do not come true, and that it is silly to believe that sort of thing. But I can tell by the energy of their reactions that these false beliefs create a dissonance in their souls. And well they should.

There is a reason that every culture around the globe has royalty (and when their is void -- as in America -- the culture creates their own version of royalty, i.e. our Hollywood A-listers). There is a reason that we, as humans, feel the need to look up to someone, to admire beauty, to long for the happy ending, to thrill at the sense of the heroic, of doing one's duty.

These things were written into our very beings. They call us to Him.

Will I receive a royal crown on earth? No. Did  I marry into a royal family? No. But I have already begun to taste a bit of what I will receive when I finally meet my Love face-to-face, and it is far better than anything this earth can possibly come up with. Oh, to see the love in His eyes! I just can't wait for that moment.

But for now, I can rejoice fully in the "tastes" of heaven that I get here on earth. I can delight in the beauty, in the fairy tale, in the honor and call to something more. I can let my heart swell with the joy of the event. I can allow it to create a desire, a yearning, a thirst. And then I can turn to Him and tell Him how excited I am for our day to come . . .

And what a comfort that is to remember here in my common world.



* Song of Solomon 4:7, Isaiah 62:3-5, Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 34:5, Psalm 45:11 , 13, Isaiah 62:12,  Revelation 19:8, Isaiah61:10, Romans 8:39, John 19:30, John 10:28-29

Royal Wedding through the Eyes

My heart has been brimming with delight the last few days because of this event. I truly haven't been able to sort out all of my thoughts, but they are settling into two distinct camps -- what delighted my eyes and what delighted my heart. More on the latter is to come. For now I will pour out what delighted my eyes . . .and what just plain made me laugh . . . or cringe.

There were so many things right about this event by way of beauty and adornment, that I experienced a bit of sensory overload. Usually (as with the Oscars) there are plenty of "misses" and only a handful of "hits." With the Royal Wedding, I found it to be reversed. But the misses were there, and they made me smile.

Top of my Missed the Mark list are the Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice. Sigh.

Holy Tornado, Batman.

Let me just say that I love hats. I wear them. I delight in them. I think that fascinators (small, usually clip-on hat/hairpieces) are beautiful and can be worn with great style (see Princess Kate, left), but bless these girls hearts, they just took a giant misstep into the land of the ugly stepsisters. Seriously, a canoe hat and a funnel cake hat? For the Royal Wedding? Yikes. And don't get me started on Princess Eugenie's dress. I'll just point out that this is the wrong silhouette for her frame. 'nuff said.

Another one to make my Missed the Mark list is Princess Anne. Possibly she was aiming for "light spring bouquet," but I think that she came off looking like a crazy mix of the Mad Hatter and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Truth be told, I love the colors, I love the coat, I love the hat, I love the shoes, but these things just didn't play well together, and with her up-do, they started an all-out war.

It is a sad Miss because it was within inches of being a Hit.

Next up is Tara Palmer-Tomkinson wearing an electric blue costume by Debra Miller. The dress is a beautiful design with the high collar, sweeping sleeves and form-fitting silhouette. The heels are gorgeous with their sling-backs and peep-toes. The hat is definitely a statement, but her figure is long and lean enough to carry it off.

The Miss came in with the color. I know that British fashion is different from American fashion -- a bit more zany and extravagant over the ocean, they are. But regardless of that, I really struggle with any woman who comes decked out to a wedding in such at way that it competes with the bride in an obvious way.

Ms. Palmer-Tomkinson did just that. Electric blue does not rejoice, "I celebrate with you!" It screams, "Has anyone noticed that I look like a Smurf from head to toe?!?!"

And last on my Missed the Mark list is the Prime Minister's wife -- Samantha Cameron, wearing a Burberry London dress. The dress is "Meh." It just doesn't do anything for her, and it looks more like a dress to be worn to the office and less like a dress for the Royal Wedding.

The real reason she so clearly misses the mark is that she is missing a very important piece of her ensemble. Who attends a wedding in London -- or anywhere in England, for that matter -- without a hat? And this was not just any wedding, but the Royal Wedding.

I'm fairly ignorant of British politics, but I sincerely hope that this was not a planned snub of the monarchy. There is a time for politics and for making statements, but weddings are not those times. The entire statement of the outfit is, "Oh, a wedding? We're going to a wedding? Eh, well, I guess this will do."

I will assume the best of her. This was not a snub of the monarchy. This was just a complete lack of fashion sense and decorum. Well, at least her shoes look good.




Enough of the Missed the Mark List. On to my favorites --

The woman whose hat captivated me is Sophie Winkleman. And it wasn't just her hat, but her entire ensemble (Giorgio Armani). Her hat (designed by the hat designer of Britain, Philip Treacy) is a perfectly balanced blend of decor and function. It breeds the ole' straw sun hat with art. By sliding the hat off-center and balancing it with a modern twist on a flower, Treacy makes a gorgeous statement.

Wisely, Ms. Winlkeman wore her hair up and allowed her beautiful pearl earrings to stand out against her dark coif and navy hat and dress. Nude-coral lipstick accents her full lips without making them compete with her hat for attention. I offer a hearty well-done for this look!

As to the royal family, I applaud the Queen for her daring foray into the land of yellow (not a traditional color for the Queen to wear). Her suit (designed by Angela Kelly) is sweetly modern for  her with its tucks around the neck, and her diamond brooch -- Queen Mary's True Lovers Knot -- is an endearing nod on her part to the young couple. I would have loved a bit more curve and sweep for her hat (it comes off looking a bit starched next to her modern-ish suit), but I think that overall it works well for her position and age. She's just so cute! Not sure I can say that about the Queen of England . . .





And then there is Princess Kate . . .

Much has been said about Princess Kate's dress. As soon as I saw it, my mind starting searching its archives for where I had seen its inspiration. While I don't know exactly where Alexander McQueen's designer Sarah Burton found her inspiration, I would like to think it was Princess Grace's dress. I've long loved Princess Grace, and now Princess Kate has worked her way into my heart with her choice of this dress. (Well, okay, she's also dear to my heart because of her endearing smile and general fashion savvy -- oh, and she's a brunette princess!)

While I love the high neck that Princess Grace wore, I like the v-neck that Princess Kate chose. The V of her dress elongates her neck and creates a very regal look for her. And I do love Princess Kate's dark hair being worn down -- a beautiful contrast to her veil and the white lace on her shoulders.

Confession:
I'm a bit ashamed to say that Pippa Middleton's gown kept distracting me from Princess Kate's. I love the wedding dress, but Pippa's gown was magnificent and she wore it elegantly. Her lithe frame is the perfect form upon which to drape this Alexander McQueen creation. From the loose, capped sleeves to the draped cowl, from the row of buttons down the back to the slight train, I am in love with the dress. Wow. And being white, I love it even more. Instead of being some sort of gaudy addendum to the brides' train, she was a soft completion of it as she carried and straightened it.

And my surprise-to-me favorite look from the Royal Wedding comes from a very unlikely source -- Princess Ameerah of Saudi wearing a custom-made Zuhair Murad. From the hat to the shoes, I love this look on her. The nude color is absolutely stunning against her dark skin and jet-black hair -- and she picked the right nude for her skin-tone with just a blush of pink to it. I love that she swept her hair over her shoulder like a luxurious mink stole. Her diamond earrings stand out against the palate of nudes with just the right sparkle. The fitted bodice of the dress flairs into a soft ruffle of lace a the bottom . . . gorgeous.

And can I just say that it's classic that her husband has a cell phone stuck to his ear at the Royal Wedding. Apparently men the world over are in love with their phones.

Side Note: Is the Princess of Saudi allowed to go into public "uncovered" like this?

There were a few more Misses (Posh Spice with stripper shoes) and Hits (Letizia, Princess of Asturias, in her simple and delicate blush-colored dress by Felipe Varela), but these were my very favorites. Sigh. Such a delight to my eyes! More to come on what delighted my heart . .

Not Good Enough

Keep your eyes on the Lord!

You will shine like the sun and never blush with shame.

Psalm 34:5

This verse has always gripped me, as I have always felt insufficient, like a failure in some area,  not good enough, not pretty enough, not competent enough, and on and on and on.

Because my constant companion has been these feelings of "not enough," shame has always been my constant companion, as well. I have needed to hide my insufficiencies so that no one would see them and shame me because of them.  

Blech.


This has led to some serious, constant, exhausting running-dancing-tapping-jumping to keep everyone from seeing all that is true about me -- that I actually am not "good enough" or "smart enough" or "pretty enough" to win the race of life. I am a failure in so very many ways. And what a relief it is to admit!

This last week, I read Isaiah 50:6-7. Again, I was gripped in a similar way as I have been gripped by Psalm 34:5. This passage, also, speaks of not being ashamed. It is a prophetic passage in which Isaiah is speaking for Jesus, and Jesus says this:

"I gave my back to those who strike Me,
And my cheeks to those who pluck out the beard:
I did not cover My face from humiliation and spitting.
For the Lord helps Me,
Therefore, I am not disgraced:
Therefore, I have set My face like flint,
And I know that I will not be ashamed."

Now, if anyone experienced true shaming, it was Christ. He was beaten, called a blasphemer, spat upon, His clothing stripped from Him, His beard (a symbol of manhood) ripped out . . . and yet He was not ashamed, not disgraced.

I have been thinking on this, asking the Lord for how this could be true. Not disgraced? Of course He was! Not ashamed? He well should have been. But these verses say that He was neither.

The reason He was not:

He knew who He was,
               Whose He was, and
                          what He was here to do.

(I use past tense, though He lives, as reference to His time here on earth.)

So, is the answer that easy for me? To know who I am, Whose I am, and what I'm here to do? If I know these things, will the shame, the guilt, the "you're not good enough" that others paint me with (and I paint myself with) -- with these seriously not stick to me?!?!

The short answer is "yes," but Psalm 34 gave a pretty clear and all-consuming prerequisite for this to sink into my heart from my head.

My eyes have to be on Him.

I can't just know in my head that "Jesus loves me" and that I'm His daughter and that I'm here to love Him and others more and more fully. THAT won't cut it. Head knowledge is usesless in matters of the heart, and my heart won't believe what it hasn't experienced. I have to experience this love He has for me. I have to taste His delight. Have to sense His pride that I'm His daughter.

I have to keep my eyes constantly on Him so that all that I'm hearing is His voice and not the voice of self-condemnation and the voices of the condemnation of others.

When Isaiah (and Luke in Luke 9:51) spoke of Jesus having His face set "like flint" -- this was a one-focus, nothing-interfering heartbeat and mindset.

In order to not let the "not good enough"s of the world stick to me, I have to only be hearing one voice -- His. The rest will not phase me as I listen only to Him.

Easy? No.
Worth crying out to Him for? Absolutely.

So, I pray. I cry out for Him to enable me to hear only His voice. It is certainly a life-long process, and some days are better than others. But He is answering. As I soak in Him, His presence, His truth, He is answering my heart's cry.


~~~~~~~~~


These are some of the truths I love to soak in:

My darling, you are lovely in every way.
Song of Solomon 4:7

You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. It will no longer be said of you, "Forsaken" . . . But you will be called, "My delight is in her" . . . For the Lord delights in you . . . For as a young man marries a virgin . . .and as the bridegoom rejoices over the bride, So your God will rejoice over you.
Isaiah 62:3-5

The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love, Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 31:3

The Lord your God wins victory after victory and is always with you. He celebrates and sings because of you, and he will refresh your life with his love."
Zephaniah 3:17

I, the Lord, will build a fence of thorns to block her path.
She will run after her lovers, but not catch them: she will search but not find them. Then she will say, "I'll return to my first husband. Life was better then."
I, the Lord, will lure you into the desert and speak gently to you.
Hosea 2:6-7,14

I am sure that nothing can separate us from God's love -- not life or death, not angels or spirits, not the present or the future, and not powers above or powers below. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love for us in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Romans 8:38-39

May your heart come awake to the One voice that speaks gently and lovingly all the time.

Feeling Abandoned

But I said, "The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me."
Isaiah 49:14

These words were first spoken by Isaiah for the people of Israel who were feeling completely forsaken by the Lord during their exile in Babylon. They had been conquered and carried away and were feeling like the Lord had completely forgotten that they were His people, that He had promised to protect and guide them and be with them. Valid thoughts by Israel.

And they are my thoughts, too.



I began to ponder when, exactly, it is that I feel most forsaken, most forgotten, most abandoned by God.

Similarly to Israel, my greatest moments of despair are when I have prayed and prayed for something (usually release from some source of pain) and He has not answered my prayer. OR when I have prayed and prayed for something to become a reality, and He has not answered that prayer. In short, I feel abandoned most when He doesn't do things my way and in my time.

Huh.

Looks like Israel and I have much in common. Just as they did not understand that their time of captivity in Babylon was, indeed, for their good, for their health, and for them to have an expanded and corrected view of God, so I do not understand the same things.

When pain comes into my life, I immediately cry foul. Pain cannot coexist with love in my paradigm.

But He is changing that.

I am coming to see that pain not only can exist with love, it must exist with love. Without pain comes no change, no growth, no expanded and corrected view of Him. He is intimate with me in my pain. It is precisely there that He exists.

Far from abandoning me to my pain, He is tenderly present there.

Isaiah 49 goes on to say in the next verses
"Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on  the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.
Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

How intimate is the presence of a nursing mother to her baby? The sweet baby is actually drawing life from his mommy at her breast. How could she possibly forget that child? (And anyone who has ever nursed a baby knows that within a few hours, your chest becomes extremely hard and painful if the child does not nurse -- it is physically impossible to forget the child you are nursing!)

But God says, even if that were to be able to happen, even so, I will never forget you. I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands -- and this is no tattoo on His palm (tattoos don't stay on the palm because of the high cellular turnover). This is a literal carving of my name into His palm -- a deep cutting, with blood, to get my name permanently there. He's invested in this journey with me, in this relationship with me. And He's not just in it for today or to get me through my current crisis. He is in this for the long haul -- to my death and then beyond my death into all eternity. His view of our relationship is much greater than mine often is. And each moment holds another revelation of His true Self to me, if I'm willing.

So, when I feel forsaken, abandoned, forgotten, has He forgotten me? No. It is impossible. What has abandoned me is my small view of Him. He has blown apart yet another of my "little gods" that I had inadvertently created. These little gods are ideas about Him (that are not true) that I worship instead of Him, that I hold onto instead of Him, that I use as ammunition against Him in my angry tirades at Him. But they only serve to block me from Him. Therein lies my feeling of abandonment. I have a shield against Him of my own creation. And I feel alone.

When I'm feeling alone, without His presence, what do I do? I pray. I ask Him to reveal the lie that I have believed about Him.
                   If God is truly good, truly loving, will He allow deep pain to touch my life? Yes.
                   If He cares about me, will He refuse to give me some things that I desperately desire? Yes.       
                   If He is present in my life, will He allow things to fall apart? Yes.

Sigh. I don't understand.

So, I ask Him for an expanded and corrected view of Him. I ask Him to show me how He is present to me, to re-frame my current circumstance and pain so that I may see Him accurately. Because He is there. He is as close as my next breath. He cannot forget me or be far off.

But my little gods easily can get blown apart in the face of His true self, His true working, His loving plan that I don't understand. And that is what He's all about -- destroying things which stand between His heart and mine beating as one.

Lord, give me the heart to see you more clearly and to see your true Self amidst my pain. I want to know You, not some smaller, controllable version of you that I have created.

Pain or not, I'm in this for the long haul.

For all eternity.

I'm in.