/And we’re invincible ’cause our power’s not our own, We’re unstoppable, when we go before His throne, And though you find us weakened, suffering, our outcome’s not unknown, We’re not what we appear. We may fall, but He’s not overthrown./
So many people went to the throne for me last week as I went into surgery and I am still awestruck and tear-soaked at all the ways Jehovah said “yes!” to me and to you.
I’m still reeling at all the ways He showed off to the surgeon, at the surprise of just how much the Lord preserved and protected through such complex surgery. It went SO much better than expected.
On my neck and ear I now bear a scar. A small line tracing down the most vulnerable part of my body; marking the place where I went under the knife and the Lord had me.
All my days I will proudly wear this mark and it will say to me:
“This is the place where I trusted the Lord and He was merciful, strong, and faithful to me.”
This is the place where Jehovah Jireh impressed the doctors and me and every person who begged Him to help. Where He gave us all a resounding yes.
Final Biopsy results are in and we caught the tumor and got it ALL OUT before any malignant transformation. Every cell benign.
I just have rule-out scans for a few years to make sure there’s no recurrence. And I am doing a happy dance at the peace the Lord gave me to face this down and get it done even with so many unknowns. Over and over in his word, He challenged me not to be afraid. He reminded me that He would have me on the other side of this no matter what happened. And then, (Oh what grace!!!), He preserved what I was ready to lose. I can move my face. I can feel my face. I can still smile. I can talk and sing clearly. And I have no chemo or radiation to schedule. I will never get over it.
Our God is an awesome God. And His goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. (Psalm 23)
My friends. We may walk through some confusing, earth-shaking, painful, weakness-filled moments together. But we who are in Christ are being built together into the dwelling place of the Spirit whose presence once filled Solomon’s temple and was so overwhelming the priests had to cease their worship. (2 Chronicles 5). The One whose power raises the dead with a word. (Romans 8:11, John 11:43)
Not a Spirit of fear.
But of power, love, and a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
We may fall and shudder and look like we’re losing,
But we are the dwelling place of the Spirit of the Almighty God of Heaven and Earth.
And He is here to show off his strength. His overwhelming victory belongs to US.
Let’s not forget it.
Let’s stand still and look for it.
Let’s behold Him and let our hearts be
Awestruck.
Let’s take some good, long, soul-filling looks at Jesus and do a Happy Christmas dance together as our hearts thrill at the strength and the mercy of our Savior.
But thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you…”
“Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.“
And today…I am scared and confused. Cody’s headaches persist, and this week he started waking up with numbness and spasms in his arms. Why, every time we could think about moving forward and hoping again, does a new problem come up? We have answered prayers – you gave the doctor an idea of what might help! And we have new issues in the same week.
I am straining with the hope, because it is heavy to carry both possibilities. To beg you for help and to brace for the chances that on the other side of this new treatment, we’ll still be searching.
If you want us to move forward, you have to fight for us, Lord. We can’t fix this! But you can. And I believe you are ready to help. Friendly to us. Working even now for what’s best.
I’m pleading with you to heal Cody. Restore him so that he can fly again. Or give us a clear sign that you have something different for us and give us the grace and the courage to go after it.
In her book, Pilgrim, Ruth Chou Simons wrote this:
“God is going to do big things in your life,” we often hear. No doubt well meaning, but is it true? Is it big when God allows a believer to wrestle with debilitating chronic illness? Is it big when a godly servant spends his or her life serving in a small one-room church in a rural town? Is it big when a mother turns down a corner-office promotion to teach her children full time from home?…Even small acts of obedience that go unnoticed can be big displays of God’s glory. You see, God is doing big things when redeemed lives, no longer living for themselves, bring Him glory.
…It’s as we do everything with deliberate intent to honor and exalt Him that we become active participants in bringing Him glory.” (pages 239-240)
Dishes. Diapers. Breaking up fights. Disciplining kids. Teaching. Tidying. Tending to tantrums.
It all matters to Him. And not one limitation or obstacle can rob the tasks at hand from the potential to be carried out with great care and intention. From the grounding, true perspective that this IS a big thing because I am carrying it out for someone really important. Because I’m equipped for it by someone of great power. Because He is doing a big work even – and, maybe, most often – in the small, hidden places of yielded hearts that bow and worship Him in this thing, too.
So often, I am reaching for a set of circumstances – a place, a ministry, a need, a team – that represents where I believe I belong. And I’m so frustrated at a situation that is GETTING IN THE WAY.
But THIS is the situation that God entrusted to me for his glory. These things I’m facing right now are his leading, his work, his preparation, his stage, and his intention for me. I don’t have to get there. I’m already here. Right smack in the center of what He is doing in my life.
This part of it is not just something to get through. Not for me and not for you. This part matters. It matters immensely. It has been set up with great care and God intends to show Himself in it. In us, and through us, and to us. So even if it’s massively uncomfortable, I’m asking for the peace to not rush it.
This new thing we’re dealing with in Cody, it scares me to death and confuses me. But I am fighting to press in and decide that I am here for it. To keep getting before the Lord and asking Him to use even us, to use even this, to glorify Himself.
I’m asking Him to humble our hearts until we long for no glory of our own, but with every step we are chasing after His. I’m asking Him to help me set my eyes on things above, knowing that I am moving ever closer to my treasure – caught up in it and doing every small thing with intention drawn from it. (Colossians 3:1-4).
I have no idea what’s next. We’ll obey Him and trust Him when we reach it.
But I know what’s now. And now is for Him, to make much of Him. To not be dismayed, thrown or taken in by the jump scares. He’s got this. He’s got us. He is working out something so good that I couldn’t wrap my mind around it if I tried.
Me. You. Surrendered to Him and transformed by Him. That is the big plan. That is the course. And He is carrying it out. It’s not in danger of not coming to fruition. We will not miss what He is doing.
“Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is.”
For those of us who’ve trusted in Christ, the destination of knowing Him, growing in Him, and being shaped into his likeness, is a sure and certain path charted from before the foundation of the Earth. The pressure is off.
We don’t have to reach some place. This path is about where we are headed, and who we are becoming like. It may take some turns that don’t make sense if I am the reference point. Because it’s not about me and I’m not the one that brings it all together.
It’s about Him. He’s the point. He’s leading the way. And He is going to get us there.
Lately, this verse has been a solid handhold for me on this rock wall where I’m often struggling to find my grip:
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.”
Maybe it’s more difficult than you or I ever imagined, but the situation we’re in is from Him. It’s hand-crafted and put together on purpose by a mind we could not possibly fathom, a power so dominant we could never grasp it, and a heart that is entirely for us. If He’s allowed it, He’ll redeem it. When we cry, “how could this ever be okay again?,” it is not the end of the story. This, too, fits into a big plan that’s going to come together in a way that blows us away, no matter how hopeless it looks right now. (Romans 8:18)
Through Him:
You and I have been perfectly equipped to face every single step of this, through Him. So when our stamina fails, may we not lose heart, but throw ourselves onto His perfect, unfailing strength and yield to His power at work in us. Wrenching our eyes, if need be, from the discouragement and weariness we feel and sitting at the feet of the One who promises to fill us, shepherd us, strengthen us, and restore us. Being rooted and built up in Him and believing Him for all we’re worth. (Colossians 2:3-10)
To Him:
Every single bit of it, small or big, terrifying or mundane, a pain or a joy, it can be offered to Him, for his glory. You andI can walk through any hardship with the attitude of “This, too. For you, Lord.” And it transforms a humble, painful path we might frown at with disdain into sacred ground we can walk with honor. We can endure and be uncomfortable and be broken and we can offer it all up to the One who is worthy.
For you have been granted [the privilege] for Christ’s sake, not only to believe and confidently trust in Him, but also to suffer for His sake,
So I’m asking the Lord to do this work in my heart. That whether there’s some relief up ahead or another steep hill I don’t feel like I have the strength for, He’ll teach me to pause. When my legs are burning, my hands ball up in frustrated fists, and my heart wants to wail “Haven’t I been through enough??”
I’m asking Him to help me see. To help me consider Him lest I grow weary and discouraged in my soul. I’m asking for the grace to look at how He emptied himself and to humble my own heart again and again. I’m asking for the strength on this day to step forward one more time and breathe,
“If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” –Galatians 5:25
—
A few weeks ago, I was preparing to cross a busy parking lot with the boys. Benaiah was having a particularly clingy day and wanted to be carried. I was also lugging a purse and diaper bag, and trying to find a free hand to guide Abi. I told him he could either hold onto my pocket or grab a few of my free fingers as we stepped up to the curb. Abi hesitated and looked up at me:
“Mom, would it be okay if I had a new responsibility?”
I raised my eyebrows, “Depends. What do you have in mind?”
“Can I cross the street without holding your hand as long as I stay with you?”
I thought about it. “That’s a big responsibility, Abishai. I think you can handle it, but I need to see you be very focused if we’re going to cross safely.”
“I’ll focus,” he looked at me earnestly, so I continued:
“I’m tall enough for the cars to see, but they might not see you, so this is only okay with me if you make sure your feet match my feet. Walk next to me and take a step each time I do, okay?”
He gave me a determined nod and we stepped out. Abi did a great job sticking with me all the way to the truck. As I started strapping Benaiah into his seat, I turned and gave Abi a high five, “Good job! That’s exactly how you keep in step.”
My eyes widened even as the words came out of my mouth. “Keep in step.” Where have I heard that phrase before?
I am a visual person. But I hadn’t really slowed down to consider the imagery we’re given in Galatians 5:25 more closely: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
I looked up the Greek word that is translated into the phrase “keep in step” in Galatians 5:25. It’s “stoikomen,” which comes from “stoikos,” and means “rows.” Properly, it’s used to express the idea of walking in lines or rows, in strict accordance to a particular pace. To keep in step. To walk in cadence.
I used to think of “keep in step” as a general concept meaning, “follow instructions” or “take the same steps, leading to the same places.” But this concept is more than that. It does not just mean “follow behind.” It means to “line up and walk in a row with,” which requires the same timing.
And It wasn’t until I was guiding my little boy through a parking lot with no physical contact to redirect him, that I honed in on the value of “keeping in step.” Of going beyond “follow my instructions” to “focus on me, watch what I’m doing, and do it at the same time.”
I paused when my eyes landed on the word “cadence” in the definition, because Cody and I had actually just been discussing cadence the day before. Like most beginning runners, we both tend to have a lower cadence (fewer steps per minute) because we over-stride. It feels right, when you’re trying to go fast, to travel as far as you can with each step. But a proper cadence actually accomplishes a more efficient stride with more frequent, shorter steps. When you stretch to take the longest step possible, your feet work against your momentum because they produce backward force when they hit the ground out in front of you. Instead, you want your feet to land directly beneath you, using every ounce of energy to propel you forward.
Cody and I are both working on adjusting our cadence to reduce impact and injury to our feet, legs, and joints. It’s a long, gradual process to change it because correct cadence feels so weird when you’re not used to it. Those quick, short steps use a lot more cardio, but cardio improves as you condition it and increase demand on it. There is more strength to be had from that well. Your heels, feet and joints, on the other hand, will hit a hard limit if they’re taking too much impact. I learned the hard way, so here I am icing and stretching my heels with frozen limes instead of trail-running like I want to be.
Over-striding not only makes you work harder for the distance you cover, it causes wear and tear. With improper cadence, you don’t get better with more conditioning, you wear out. I think in the same way, walking with the Spirit has to do not only with doing what you know is right, but with listening in and obeying as He instructs you in real time, in the right rhythm, at the right pace. It’s cadence work.
Abi knows how to cross a street and he knew where we were headed that day in the parking lot, but I had good reasons for keeping him right next to me through the process. In the same way, I might have a good idea of what steps to take and which direction I need to go, but man, does the pacing make a difference when walking with the Lord. The more life hits me, the more I realize I don’t have a prayer of taking those steps well unless they are by His power, in His timing.
“Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.”
I can bring a lot of hustle, but if I over-stride, I will wear out. If I reach for more or push faster than the Spirit is leading and equipping me to handle, it causes wear and tear in my soul. And so, I’m aiming for solid conditioning at the right pace, and that often feels awkward.
But just like with running, even if the right cadence feels weird, there is way more strength to be had, because I am depending on the right source. He doesn’t wear out. And when I am weary, I can count on Him to march out the next move and to keep supplying the strength I need step after step after step.
Sometimes, lining up with Him means shorter steps than I expect or want. Sometimes, it means getting still and quiet when I’d prefer to be moving. And sometimes, it means going further when I feel like I have nothing left, trusting that His strength will meet me as I move to obey, rather than trusting how spent I feel. It usually involves tuning into right here, right now, and putting my whole focus on the people He’s placed right in front of me, rather than trying to anticipate the situation twenty strides from now. Can I exercise both the restraint and the endurance to go at the pace He is setting and laying out for me? Yes. With practice.
How about you? What step is right in front of you? Where do you need to press on and keep trusting Him to sustain you? Where are you straining to go further or faster than He’s asking? Do you fight it when He leads you to be still? Do you believe He will be your peace when you need to slow down and your supply when you need to keep going?
Today I am praying, for you and for me, “to be strengthened with power in our inner being through His Spirit” (Ephesians 3:16), that we would not let our hearts be “troubled or fearful” (John 14:27) because we are allowing His peace to rule in us (Colossians 3:15), that as we choose to trust our living God, we would overflow with hope (Romans 15:13), and that we would take this day ahead of us, one step at a time, humbly and vigilantly squaring up with the Spirit, even when it feels awkward and inefficient.
I’m praying that we will lay down what feels best to us and allow the Lord to condition into our lives a cadence of dependence on Him.
“Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
“Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am He, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”
“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”
Our pastor, Ethan Crowder, taught through Matthew 7 several weeks ago and it floored me. (you can listen to the sermon here.)
It wasn’t new information, but he put it in a new light. He reminded us that when Jesus mentions the “many” who choose the broad road, He wasn’t primarily referring to the many people who live horrible, sin-filled, evil lives. He was talking about the vast number of people who are working so hard to live outwardly good lives, but do not have true, inward righteousness.
Few trust in Christ. And He is the only way to be inwardly clean.
Few understand that God is not interested in all the outward effort and appearances and trying to keep up and trying to be good enough. He wants fruit that flows from the inner life, from a heart that knows only Jesus was ever good enough. He’s looking for people who walk the difficult, narrow road of placing all their trust in Him, step after step after step.
“The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
I already know that my best attempts at a good life are not enough. I know I need the cross. I grasp that without Christ, there’s a chasm between God and I that I could never reach across. What I find myself wrestling to grasp is that the cross not only bridged the chasm, it moved me to the other side of it. Out of death and striving and failure; into life, wholeness, and favor. I know it, but I forget it. And I get stressed all over again when I don’t think I’m doing a good enough job.
In his message, Ethan said, “It’s easy to look the part…but genuine righteousness is always inward before its outward. It’s always a matter of your heart before it’s a matter of your life…If we check all the boxes with how we live but fail to have a heart that’s changed by the Gospel, then we’ve missed the point…God doesn’t want you to be Jesus. He wants you to TRUST Jesus.”
This wrecked me because, for a year, I have been trying so hard to keep up with what is expected outwardly while I’m grieving, churning, wrestling, and fearful on the inside. But I could have dropped all the outward things, the pressure to be enough and to be good for other people. Jesus is enough. I don’t have to be Him. I can just be the person who’s clinging to Him. What God wanted was inward. He had to do some work on the inward. And I couldn’t speed it up.
My trust and confidence were mangled and not functioning and I wanted to think rightly about God and have all the outward flow from being in a good place inwardly but I didn’t know how to get there any sooner. I wanted so badly to do well and to make good choices even if it took a while for the emotions to catch up, but the emotions also had to be processed. I think what stood out to me in this sermon was the relief of pressure: there is no pressure for me to be good enough. I cannot be. But Christ is – and He produces good in me as I keep coming to Him.
One of the most surprising things I felt this year was the urge to avoid church and fellowship and the attention. I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to get away from the very people who care so much for me and my family, but I think I understand now that it was the pressure. I perceived expectations that I couldn’t meet. To be their missionary and their small group leader and their helpful church volunteer and their mentor and their enthusiastic Vacation Bible School teacher when I was also a traumatized post-partum mom recovering from eight months of hyperemesis gravidarum, three hospitalizations, heart complications, moving suddenly across the Atlantic with only 5 suitcases worth of belongings, and facing the scariest days of her life as she waded through a flood of scans, appointments, and treatment recommendations for her tiny baby’s swollen brain.
I tried so stinking hard to have something to offer, but I think I could have just let it all fall. I could have just been exactly where I was, processing what I was dealing with, and if it was messy, I think they would have just loved me. Just like the Lord does.
And Oh, I need that love.
While I’m still trying to be enough, I will feel strain, distance and disappointment that don’t apply to me. I am on the other side of the chasm because of the cross. I have been showered with affection, approval, warmth and welcome because of the work Jesus finished. And it is not meeting the outward checkmarks that will finally ease that heavy pressure. It is resting in this unearned love – love that has been lavished upon and given whole-heartedly to me. Only out of that can I walk forward and have something to offer others. Something that is sincere and full of life, not forced and wrung out of a tired, collapsing shell.
Oh Lord,
May I find my rest in this love. May I learn to wait on you and let you produce the fruit. Help me to clear away the outward pressure and performance and let life make its way out – however small and humble its baby shoots are. Work the fruit of patience in my life, especially as I gauge what needs you are asking me to step into and what needs I should yield to your mighty hands, which can hold them all. Teach me to wait on the careful, inward work you are doing to produce true righteousness in my heart, especially when I’m tempted to rush it because I don’t see satisfying results yet.
Curb my perfectionism by killing my pride. Help me to drop those high, high expectations of myself and instead set all my expectation on you. Show me how to be at ease with learning, with interruption, with unfinished, with messy, with life as an imperfect disciple and a growing parent.
Remind my heart that it doesn’t please you to buckle down and strive with all my might outwardly while my heart is despairing. You are near the broken-hearted and you bind up their wounds (Psalm 34:18, 147:3). You lead gently those that have young (Isaiah 40:11). Good Shepherd, perhaps part of the difficult, narrow road is the difficult work of trusting you when I need to rest and recover, because I believe you when you say you are gentle.
“Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him...”
“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”
“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on…”
I have always loved sleep. My husband’s relationship with sleep is difficult. He is a light sleeper and often struggles to fall asleep at night. But not me. Sleep and I have a good relationship. I sleep deeply – often within a minute or two of my head hitting the pillow. Sleep is my superpower…unless I have a new baby.
I have found very few things as stressful as the sleep deprival I went through after the birth of both our boys. There are few things I have begged for with more passion than that the Lord would help my baby to sleep. I have been super invested in sleep training, in sleep diapers, in rice cereal, in nap schedules. And when I have done everything in my power and the baby wakes up anyway because he has an ear infection or he’s teething or he has some other mystery reason I’ll never get to the bottom of, it. is. maddening.
This month, I felt the Lord gently prodding me to dig into why I was SO determined to get the good night’s sleep that seemed ever out of reach. Beneath the determination, there was fear. And so the real question surfaced: Why does being really tired scare me so badly?
Well…it’s because I hate failure. I am wired to plan, to prepare, and to arrange my life with intention. It soothes me to have anticipated a need and adjusted for it ahead of time; to have a contingency plan mapped out and everybody on the same page for what’s next. Good sleep, I realized, is one of the ways I set myself up to avoid failure. When I’m rested, I can take a lot in stride. When I’m exhausted, my anger is so much harder to control. I get irritable, forgetful, and emotional. My threshold for overwhelm drops significantly, and I tend to react, especially in my closest relationships. Poor sleep is a great humbler; it exposes my need for mercy.
So good sleep had become, to me, the holy grail that would make it possible to get through my day without damaging my relationships, without failure, without regret. For as hard as I tried, as much as I begged the Lord to help me walk with the Spirit, I had not found a way to just nail it after a night of poor sleep. A screw-up was inevitable. And so I grew more desperate. If only the baby would sleep!
But any time I hear myself say the words “If only…,” I know discontentment is at work in my heart. And whatever I’m wishing I had isn’t actually the solution.
“…be satisfied with what you have. For God has said,
“I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”
So we can say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?”
Be satisfied with what I have. Right now. Even with the amount of sleep I’ve been given. Even when it doesn’t feel like enough. So instead of trying SO hard to get sleep so that I won’t fail and lose my temper when I’m tired and irritable, I started praying that I would grow in how I recover from failure.
My main goal cannot be to perfectly set myself up so that I never make a mistake. That is just not real life. But maturity gets good at moving forward from mistakes; that is a good goal. As I prayed for this growth with one of my friends, she prayed for me, and she thanked God for his mercy when we fail.
It occurred to me that we recover well by shifting our focus from our failure to His great mercy. From our badness to His goodness. From our disappointment to excitement about the total covering we’ve been given in His perfect forgiveness. The blood of Christ is a completed shelter, and it has no leaks.
“…But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
…For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
…Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
We can confess our sin and at the same time lead our kids and our own hearts to delight in Him because He has made us free. And this, more than a mom who never shows frustration, may be just what their little hearts need, because I’m not the only one who needs to learn how to recover after losing my temper.
Lord,
I am so thankful that you forgive me each and every time that I fail. Thank you for setting your love on me and for giving your life to pay completely for my sin. Teach me the art of acknowledging my disobedience while I rejoice in your perfect obedience. Let the weight of my focus not be these brief and passing faceplants on my part, but your goodness, your mercy for me, your unfailing love and preference for me, the perfection of your plan that anchors me securely to the end of the race, to your lasting victory, to your once-for-all sacrifice, to the day when I have overcome it all and I am completely like you.
May my sin ever point me to my Savior so that I do not wither in discouragement, but I overflow with
“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Jesus!
You did what I could not. You died in my place. You’ve anchored me to your new life. You’ve already forgiven me completely. Beautiful, understanding Savior. Thank you for looking on me with love and giving me your strength and your mercy to walk forward.”
“But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst of sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in Him and receive eternal life.”
After months of praying and holding our breath, another brain MRI is in the books for Benaiah, and it looks like slowly, very slowly, his ventricles are shrinking. No surgery at this point. It is so, so rare that a case like his can be managed with medication alone. We begged the Lord to intervene and He heard our prayers. I should be dancing for joy. I’m relieved. But it feels like the kind of relief at the end of long, tense movie where the suspense would not let up for a second and you’re exhausted from the adrenaline when it’s over. I feel absolutely drained.
He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. I’m so glad he’s going to be okay. I wonder if I will be.
We talked through some of the challenges we’ve walked through and are currently facing with our mission’s member care team and they pointed out that I use the word “should” a lot. They explained that “should” tends to describe our expectations and that constantly comparing reality to our expectations sets us up to feel guilt, anxiety, and discouragement over things we cannot and do not control. “Yes, that’s about the sum up of it,” I responded. We laughed. I cried.
Man, I am hunting for some new “should’s.”
Dancing for joy? Not so much these days. Begging for joy while I drag myself out of bed after a night of getting up with the baby to make breakfast for a high-strung toddler that will demand to have his eggs cut just a certain way? That’s happening a lot more often. Groping for joy when I feel spent after working like crazy to get ourselves set up to serve overseas only to watch all we’ve worked for get pushed further and further back on the timeline? You bet.
Is it enough, when you don’t feel joy, to bring your request before the source of joy?
Is it enough to ask for new mercies this morning when my heart is tired and teary instead of thankful?
My heart often tells me, “You should be handling this better.” But I think it would be more helpful to tell myself, “You should take this to the Lord.”
“Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust Him, and He will help you.”
I do not have the promise that I will be strong enough. I have the promise that He will help me when my strength fails. When my joy fails. When my endurance fails. When my love fails. When my heart feels drained and I fall short of all the “should’s.” He remains unfailing.
“…For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness!”
One step at a time, one morning at a time, we are going to get through this. And when we look back, we will not be impressed with how I did what I should have. We will be blown away by how God was faithful and merciful to me when my “should’s” gave out. How He crafted a story full of things I did not expect, and worked through every detail of my disappointments.
I’m still processing through having to step away from ministry in Papua New Guinea for a season, facing one health crisis after another, a car accident, the loss of our trailer, moving from house to house, feeling at a loss with my toddler, and finding myself on my knees for my baby. I want to be over it. With the good news about Benaiah, I want to dust myself off and move on full speed. But there is some brokenness that’s taking time to smooth out.
Here’s what I’m working to remember. People are not necessarily drawn to the Lord because I serve Him so flawlessly and my life is so exemplary and I move through difficulty so gracefully. My faithfulness to Him is not the point or the power of this story. It’s His faithful love to me.
Oh Lord,
Thank you for having mercy on me. May others see in me the evidence of your great kindness and patience, and so be drawn to trust in you. Remind my heart that I am not the hero of my story, you are. When I am disappointed and aching over how I fall short; over my weakness, my issues, my wrestling to believe you, my self-centeredness, pride, impatience, and anxiety – May I remember that you are patient with me.
You are steadily working transformation in my life – the things that are pleasing to you. However it looks right now, as I gaze on you, you will keep changing me. I can have hope. Not because I am performing well, but because I am your work.
“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For WE ARE God’s masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
It’s been weeks of processing, crying, need-meeting, trying to adjust my expectations, feeling how up-in-the-air our lives are, and wondering when we will ever feel settled again. I feel absolutely spent. I have been thrust into a plot line I would never, ever choose.
Our church had a parent commissioning for families with new babies a few weeks ago, and I sat in a room full of beaming couples with their healthy, beautiful babies – safe and sound and whole…and my broken one. My precious, tiny son with his brain cysts and spina bifida and swollen ventricles and cerebellum gaps and a shaky future full of scary possibilities. I was heartbroken for him.
For weeks, I have been crying out to the Lord for joy that overflows and peace that passes understanding and strength that overcomes this awful situation. I’ve been searching his word for guidance for how to walk through this. I’ve been reaching for a hope that touches my grief. I know there’s nowhere else to turn. I know that the Bible is precious and life-giving. But this is painful at a level that its promises don’t seem to touch. I look at them and I repeat them and I remember that God is working things for good and that, in eternity, everything will be healed and whole, but my baby hadn’t even made it 20 days from his first breath and he was back in the hospital. We’d had just 5 weeks of newborn snuggles when we started discussions on which brain surgery would be best for him. We had held on with all our might through this pregnancy. Little did we know how we would struggle on the other side of it.
I climb into bed each night so relieved that I’ll be unconscious soon and I lay in bed each morning, trying to rally for another day in a story I don’t want to be living. I have no control here. Not over this. This is not something I can study for or work hard enough to fix. In a moment, it didn’t matter what I had wanted my life to look like. It rearranged itself around a new priority, and I watched, helpless as the pieces fell into place for a role where my training didn’t apply and my desires didn’t matter.
This is do-what-needs-to-be-done territory. This is a hold-our-whole-lives-before-the-Lord season, because we are helpless here, and all we can do is look to Him. We are discouraged, and fighting to cling to our hope. We are weary, and we are learning what hard work it is to do the good God has set before us and not lose heart – to be content with the good He has set before us in place of the good we had in mind. To trust in our disappointment that He is our helper and that He has not abandoned us. We are fighting a battle with our own hearts to entrust our baby and our story to Him.
Here is what I’m working to remember:
I have no control, but the One who has all the control is very good, and He loves Benaiah very much. He is for us. He has planned good things for us since long ago. Our lives are his masterpiece, not the jumbled, broken wreck it feels like at the moment. We are confused, but He is faithfully ordering our steps. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Benaiah has some things that didn’t form well, but who he is was formed with great care. God not only created the temporary body, He crafted the precious, eternal soul living in it. Benaiah is more than just his body and his brokenness. With all that needs treatment, yet he is wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14)
Peace that guards my heart and mind comes in proportion to my choice to fix my thoughts on the Lord, cast my cares on Him, and refuse to worry. His peace doesn’t fall short, but I do fall short of stepping into it. I am begging Him to help me here. To help me to fight the temptation to back away from Him in my disappointment, confusion, frustration and fear. He is ready to hold me, guard me, comfort me, and walk me through this if I will throw myself and my troubles onto Him, whole-heartedly trusting his faithfulness and his care for me. (Isaiah 26:3-4)
Oh Lord,
We are looking at this unexpected season before us and asking you for help. We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.
I believe this next year can be full of your grace. Your grace for all the appointments. Your grace in the surgeons and doctors you provide to care for Benaiah. Your grace over his surgery and procedures. Your grace for parenting and marriage, even out of our brokenness. Your grace in orchestrating a way for us to serve that is a good fit, here and now. Your grace at work in our hearts to teach us to trust you, to endure, and to be satisfied in you through the waiting. Your grace to keep hoping you will make a way for Cody to fly again. Your grace in our relationships. Your grace for all we’ve lost and left behind.
Your grace will be sufficient for us. And this year, I believe we’ll see it again and again and again. Lord, give us the eyes to recognize your grace in the hardship. Help our hearts to find your peace as we gaze at who you are. Teach us to trust you when we feel perplexed, that our hearts may face each next moment with courage. When we cling to you, we will not be driven to despair. You’re worthy of our trust. Lord, help our unbelief.
“It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground. But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned.”
Even if the way is clear and the waters have parted before you, it takes faith to walk it.
The Egyptians following right behind drowned. As awestruck as the Israelites must have been, gazing at the newly dry ground and the towering walls of water before them, my guess is that at least some of them felt conflicted:
Yes, there’s a way forward here, but what if God stops holding back the water? That is not a path I can walk without an enormous amount of help! What if the help runs out before I’m through it? I’m committing to a bottleneck here.
I have shared some of these frightened thoughts, halfway through my own water canyon. I’m now in week 23 out of 40 in this journey through another hyperemesis gravidarum pregnancy. We’ve now been through over 40 rounds of IV fluids, a trip across the Atlantic, a hospital admission, cardiac arrhythmias…and I’m becoming acutely aware of how just easy it would be for me to drown here. I have a heavy sense of how slowly I’m moving forward and how much further I have to go until there’s open air around me instead of the threat of going under.
Just keep walking. Just keep walking.
But with each step, I must remember that there are two ways to walk through this: in torment or by faith. The very One who faithfully held back the water until every woman, child, elderly straggler and wayward sheep made it to safety, marked their faith for taking the steps. He is the ever faithful One, and yet He cherishes my every moment and every move that banks on his trustworthiness.
Oh Lord-
Help me not to question whether you will keep giving me the help I need. Teach me not to ponder, in the depths, the frightening thought of whether I could ever be worthy of that help. Your grace, support, and rescue are given to me freely because of who You are; because of whose blood has purchased me; and I can walk forward confidently, counting on the grace I so desperately need to carry me to the finish.
—
“…better things are waiting for you that will last forever. So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all He has promised.”
“For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest…let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin.“
Oh Lord, help me today to do my best to enter your rest. Help my heart to trust that your work at the cross is complete, just as your work of creation was complete, and so you have invited me to rest with a clear conscience.
It occurred to me this morning that Jesus faced the test of starvation. My High Priest can have informed understanding and compassion on hyperemesis moms. He gives mercy in our weaknesses. He can guide us to success and victory and hope. I beg for that.
We’re still working on getting the Zofran pump dose dialed inso that I’m notlosing my meals. I’m having irritation all over. At every site that the needles have transferred medication, I have red, raised, painful welts. I don’t have that much of a baby bump at only 17 weeks, but I’m already finding creative ways to avoid bending because of these angry, swollen spots all over my abdomen.
It’s challenging to hold my wiggly son close. I’m so thankful for the pump…and I’m having a hard time adjusting to it. Tears of relief and overwhelm threaten at the same time.
Oh Lord, be bigger in my heart this morning than the 23 weeks I have left.
Thank you for the gentle language of “do my best” in the sentence that calls me to enter your rest. Thank you that I can humbly confess I do not excel at this. Thank you that you are merciful and gracious in my need, in my struggle, in my suffering, in my testing, when my best isn’t enough.
You lift my shaky feet to steady ground and lead me to your rest.
“You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake…We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”
We’re in the second stage of language learning here in Papua New Guinea. Instead of going to either the classroom or a teaching session out in the village, we’ve been cut loose to learn as much as we can by being with people in their daily lives. Sometimes this means helping in their gardens, washing clothes in the river with them, visiting their homes, or going on a walk and talking with whoever we meet on the way.
One difficulty I ran into last week was this: men and women usually spend their days apart.
Where Cody can pretty freely come and go, it takes a little more legwork and planning to set up a safe way for me get those same experiences. I was brainstorming and doing my very best to meet all the expectations I felt, but one day, my plan fell through and my heart sunk with it.
Cody had a long hike with the men planned that day and with my Plan A out of commission, several people would have had to change their whole day in order for me to get the language time I’d been hoping for. I got disillusioned with how unfair and complicated this process felt. I cried, hard. I miss the structure. I miss our teacher laying out our lessons and making sure everyone was right where they should be. I miss the freedom to just hop in my car and go where I need to go. I miss my mom!
The next morning, one of the sweet ladies here offered to watch Abi for a few hours, and I took the opportunity to reset. I could accomplish all kinds of language study, but if I’m driven by a fearful, panicky, proud heart…what would it be worth?
I asked the Lord to help me accept that part of learning this culture is taking it in stride when a plan doesn’t work out. Part of learning to be faithful is looking for how I can be faithful with what I can do, rather than stressing over what I can’t.
I’m adjusting to a lot of new limitations. And I realize that leaving campus for these language-learning experiences has become, to my heart, a need. An idol, that when threatened, pushes me to distress. I saw that there were pressures I was allowing to influence my choices and forfeit my peace.
I was fearful of falling behind in language. I hate how it feels when I struggle to understand. We do have a really important message and I want to communicate it clearly. But deep down, I think it’s more about my fear than my good intentions. It’s important to me to feel at home, and I’m just plain afraid that I’ll struggle to settle in and I’ll burn out if I don’t get this language down. So there I was, grasping for control and fighting like crazy to set us up here, when the Lord pointed out to me one startling fact:
I had placed my hope for successful ministry and life here on adequate language learning instead of throwing myself upon His grace and strength. Somewhere along the line I decided again that this is up to me. And so, I was blowing a fuse instead of begging for help.
In that moment, I saw all over again that I am a fragile clay jar. And this is by design. It helps to make it crystal clear that any power, gifting, or ability that shows up in my life comes from Christ alone. I am not the savior or the solution to anyone’s need; I am just the stained and battered envelope bearing a message of inexpressible joy:
Help is on the way. You’re going to be okay. Not because I’m here, but because HE is. And look at what He was able to do in me, in spite of all the places I split under the pressure.
Oh Lord,
Please help me to shift my hope to you and you alone. Help my stressed-out heart yield to the rule of your peace. Teach me to surrender the things I am so desperate to control. You have not just set me aside to make sure Cody learns all that he needs. You have different things to teach us, and I am positioned perfectly to learn what you have decided is most important. Make me a humble learner who is willing to learn what you are teaching, rather than rejecting it because I had something different in mind.
As I was looking over our instructions for independent language study, I noticed this breakdown for how to spend our time:
5% – Plan
50% – Participate
20% – Process
25% – Practice
Man, if only 5% of learning depends on planning, I can still learn a ton when the plan goes out the window. Maybe more than if the plan had worked. And I think great learning versus great stress depends on whether I trust the teacher.
You’re changing me. You’re teaching me that YOU are the point, not me. You are freely giving your light and your strength – sending them into my desperate need. I am frayed, but you are unphased, intact, perfect as ever, able to withstand every pressure.
You are the only source of a steady heart. The only thing on earth that can hold us secure through shifting, through trouble, and through our own inadequacy. Lord, I praise your name for who you are and for what you are doing here and now in my life. Lead me as I form my plans for this day, and lead me still when I must take brave steps into unplanned territory.
—
This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
dig deep | draw close 