thank you jesus

Most of you know that I read the LivingProof Ministries blog. Well Beth asked a very interesting question over there and I realized I needed to post my answer here as well.

She asked-

What are you grateful for that you NEVER thought you would

be grateful for?

Well. That one got me thinking. The usual stuff is easy - health, home, family, Jesus. All the pat answers. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with being grateful for those things. But what in my life that could be viewed as a negative could I turn on it's head and view as something to be grateful for?

In years past? it would be my infertility that led us to Ginny. Never in a thousand lifetimes would I trade. Ginny has been a hugs blessing. I can never thank God enough.

But what has happened this year? 2009....Alright. The thing I never thought I'd be thankful for in 2009 is that my husband lost his job in August. August 4th as a matter of fact. On my mother's birthday.

I was so sour about it at first. He was my Bible study partner on the way to and from work for 5 years. We loved our commute together. So I was seriously bummed when that ended. I said all the right things. "God will take care of us." "It will be okay" and I meant them. But deep inside, even while I knew God would take care of us, I was resentful. And to be honest, I kinda of imagined that God taking care of us would mean us scraping by on ramen noodles andfinding ways to cut corners on everything.

I envisioned a life of constant restriction. Nothing extra to enable us to help others. No joy. Just getting by.

Apparently that is not what God had in mind.

This has been a blessed 4 months. First, to hear my man say that he wanted to continue his tithe through the end of this 2009 AS IF HE STILL HAD HIS JOB. Wow. I don't know how to be grateful enough to God for sending me Martin. When I think of the background we both come from. The sin, the darkness of our past........and now to see Martin , how much he really does love God, and know that he is the real spiritual head of my house. That in itself is a blessing.

We have also grown in our relationship. Our relationship had gotten lazy. We depended on that commute to keep us connected. We had to learn all over again to find (or MAKE) time for each other.

Martin has gotten to spend lots of time with our baby girl, so that has been good. Ginny is so precious and I'm glad that at least one of us is getting to spend extended amounts of time with her.

Also Martin and other members of my family have been sick and needed lots of time and care this fall. If he had still had a job they likely would have had to let him go because of all the family emergencies we went through. We never had to face that though.

God sent a job opportunity to Martin that he never would have been able to take on if he had been bogged down with his old job.

So spiritual growth, learning, new patterns, time with family......But then there is the financial stuff.

Finances. The big bug-bear. The nightmare of all who are "downsized" in this economy. God has sent us a clear message that we are not to worry. There have been two (not one, but TWO) out of the blue, un-asked for, financial gifts to our family that will, are you ready for this? enable us to continue our tithe all the way to the end of 2010 as if Martin still had his old job. And it wasn't even a question of "if" when the checks came. It was the first thing on Martin's heart and mind. The tithe.

Wow. After all I have been through in my life and put others through, to finally be married to a real Christian MAN OF GOD is just blessing me right down to the tips of my boots.

so there you go. I'm thankful that my husband lost his job.

surrender

Recently my pastor, Dr. Richard Hunter, posted a piece on feeling inadequate.

I wanted to add something to this. Richard, if we were adequate, we would have no need of God.

Lord, I need thee EVERY HOUR. Not just when I acknowledge my overwhelmed-ness, but every hour. Not just when I feel like I can't do this on my own, but every single moment. There is a blessed security in completely surrendering to the fact that God is in charge. Much like when my beautiful baby girl relaxes into my arms.

Ginny can’t spend all her time in my arms. She has to learn to do things on her own. She will eventually grow into a competent adult. But even a competent adult is not enough to stand up against the horrors of this world. Somehow, I need to teach her (and myself) to continually surrender to God. Let Him be in charge. Let Him lift us over the things we know we can’t get over AND over the rough places that we think we could handle on our own.

There is a sweetness in surrender, a peace, an uplifting joy that comes from really knowing that God is in charge. Not in a dictatorial sense, but in a protective, sheltering, loving sense. I don’t see His arms around me as shackles that are keeping me from running free. Instead I see those loving arms like the strong arms of a mommy (or daddy) holding me close because He loves me and enjoys my very presence.

The same way that I can’t get enough of hugging Ginny….God feels even more about me….and you. Don’t believe me? Think I’m off my rocker? Okay. He SAYS so. God’s own words:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name: you are Mine.
Isaiah 43:1b

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1a

the LORD delights in those who fear* him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
Psalm 147:11
(*to me this use of the word “fear” translates as respect)

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
I John 3: 16

How much would I do for someone who loves me this much? Anything LORD. Anything. No more holding back. I surrender. All.

turn the light on!

Are you walking into a dark room?

Turn the light on!

And if you don’t turn it on, don’t ask for sympathy when you stub a toe on the chair leg.

Are you at a dark campsite?

Turn the flashlight on!

And if you don’t turn it on, don’t cry for sympathy after you fall in a hole.

Do you have any sympathy for the person who fails to turn on a light when they had every opportunity to just flip the switch? Or aim the flashlight and hit the ON button?

I don’t. The light is there, just waiting to be used.

I wish so much that that applied to my daily life. Why do I blunder into situations where my mouth gets me in trouble? Or my temper goes off and leaves me needing to beg forgiveness. Or I do something silly or stupid in a moment of thoughtlessness….

Why doesn’t God stop me from doing those things? Why can’t He show me how to not do them? Couldn’t he intervene? Shouldn’t He make my throat close up, or something so that I don’t say those silly, hurtful things?

No. That would be to take away my free will.

But, I’m ASKING you to do this to me God. Please stop me from blundering around and stupidly hurting people. Why can’t you make it so I can see the problems before they leap up and ambush me? I feel like I’m blundering through life in the dark!

Then, I looked again at my verse for today

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path”
Psalm 119:105

Oh.

Right. The light IS there. It is right there in God’s word. But I have to take the time and effectively hit the ON switch. I need to study His words continually so that His words light my way. Even if I don’t know the exact verse that God might choose to guide me at any particular moment, that is what the Holy Spirit is for – to guide us out of those dark moments.

Am I thinking that Satan is attacking me every moment? No. I don’t need to be paranoid. I have enough personal darkness to more than do the job of swamping my heart and soul on a daily basis. I am filled with things I know God wants me to weed out – jealousy, pride, insecurity. Weeds I would be far better off without. It’s a process. *sigh*

So maybe next time I find myself fuming over something and composing a scathing email or with a callous word on the tip of my tongue, I need to recognize that as a moment of personal darkness and turn on the light. Even if I do nothing more than sincerely ask God for His help in that moment, at least I will have given Him a moment to change my heart….and maybe keep me out of a hole.

sunday roast is in the oven

Acts 16: 22 – 26

²²The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. ²³After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. ²⁴Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

²⁵About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose.

When this passage is talked about or preached about people tend to concentrate on the moment that the chains fell off. I want to point out something different.

Paul and Silas had been attacked. I am certain that right before and during the attack they prayed to God for deliverance. And in that moment, it looked to them like God didn’t answer.

Paul and Silas were stripped of their clothes. I am sure they asked God to spare them. Being without clothes in front of a jeering crowd is a horrific thought. But in that moment, God let it happen.

Paul and Silas were beaten. I am positive that they begged God to still the hands of the person holding the whip. To change the heart of the magistrate who had ordered this. But in that moment, from their perspective, God did not answer. He allowed the beating to happen.

Paul and Silas were thrown into prison. I need no one to tell me that they were pleading with God in their hearts, and perhaps out loud to deliver them. What possible ministry could they hope to have in a prison? But in that moment, God was still silent.

Paul and Silas lay on the probably filthy floor of that prison. Their skin flayed open, dirt, grit, sweat, blood, and tears all mingling. They were hurting. And the hurt had been going on for hours. At some point they have to have beseeched God “please Lord, if you must leave us in jail, heal our wounds! Then our jailors will see your glory when they come down here and see that you are our Protector!”

Everyone focuses on the deliverance from prison and I too tend to forget that they went through a long process of hate, attack, fear, beatings, and pain. I cannot for one minute believe that the songs that night around midnight were the first time God had heard from Paul and Silas that day. The Sunday school image of a cheerful Paul and Silas with their limbs semi comfortably arranged in chains is just so wrong. They were praying and singing hymns to God the bible says. Do you imagine that they were singing “clap your hands all ye people”? Or something more akin to “the Battle Hymn of the Republic” ???

It would have been so easy for them to cry out to God “You let us down! You let Your enemies attack us, beat us and now you have left us here to rot!” How many times do we go through trials (infertility, joblessness, hate and harassment, ridicule) and when God doesn’t answer the way we were expecting we assume that means that He has abandoned us or that we did something wrong. “Lord, I’ve prayed and prayed and you haven’t delivered me yet!” But what if the reason was so that you could cross paths with someone further down the path? Someone that needs to see you trusting in God.

On the other hand there is only so much we can learn from seeing others trusting God while they suffer. I really think the reason God needs us to stew in a particular problem for a while is that WE OURSELVES need time to learn. Time for the lesson of God’s sovereign care for us and over our lives to sink in. Time for us to, in effect get spiritually tenderized. No roast ever got tender by watching another roast cook. eh?

So it’s time for me to apply this lesson to myself.

No matter how much I learn from reading or hearing about other people’s lives and trials and tribulations, there will be things I can only learn from going through it myself.

I hold up pretty well in emergencies. Quick disasters. High heat, short cook time. Those are no problem for me. It is the long drawn out situations - like infertility, and learning to hold my tongue at work – those are my bugbears. The ones that completely trip me up. The slow cooker situations are the ones that get me in trouble. I’ve always just accepted that I’m not good at them.

Recently I’ve been coming to the conclusion that I don’t have to be good at them. I just have to remember that God IS Good at these long slow drawn out situations and learn to trust Him.

Also it finally hit me that the best way to tenderize my soul is to put it through a long, slow, low heat scenario. The end result is a tender, gorgeous, tantalizing meal. Much better than charred steak.

The scent wafts through the house on a Sunday afternoon…you know what I’m talking about. A portion of beef, potatoes, onions, celery, and carrots. Seasoned just right. The beef was seared this morning, then put in a large pan and seasoned. Vegetables were cut up and tossed in. The whole thing is covered. They have been cooking slowly in your mother’s oven or crock pot the whole time the family was at church. And now the gorgeous aroma fills the house.

I want the aroma of my soul to fill God’s nostrils with that type of scent. Warm, promising, delectable and oh so tender. Just like Paul and Silas.

Simulcast 2009

What a weekend.
Friday night and Saturday morning I had a Beth Moore event to attend. What a blessing. She always rocks my world and gives me loads to think about. But this time felt different. Not sure how yet. Maybe had something to do with how she had us worship with ALL our longings (not just the ones you can tell out loud) out at the feet of Jesus. That part came near to breaking me wide open.
Maybe it was when she looked right at me. I know, it's a simulcast, she couldn't see me really, but God could and he had Beth's eyeballs pointed right at me when she asked if we needed to know that God really did love us personally. I stopped taking notes right there. I'm still near to crying just typing it out. I need to spend more time on that one. anybody got any good verses or insights on how to personally feel and know the love of God is really for you as an individual?

Saturday morning we had more Beth and Travis (thanks for the shout out to Snellville Travis. We screamed really loud when you did that. Could you hear us?)
Oh and we had a lovely breakfast....including a Beth Moore favorite: Moon Pies. Yes, moon pies for breakfast. See? I have photos to prove it:

After being blessed with teaching for a few more hours, I then went home and had a glorious birthday party for my beautiful adopted baby girl who turned one on August 29th.
I'll be posting photos of that event on my other blog soon.

• Missy has asked for people to help her know what to say to an infertile couple.
  This is hard. I was one. I was once one of those walking bundles of pain and anguish who wants to hold a child so badly that it colors everything.
  I have freinds who say that "the infertile woman inside your head never goes away, even once you have children" ... I disagree. I am deleriously happy with my one little girl. She came to us through adoption and I simply don't know if I could love any child more than I love her. We have a wonderful relationship with her birth parents and our whole extended family embraced adoption as a perfectly understandable way of having a child join our home.
  We are lucky. Very lucky. God Healed a lot of things. Not the least of which was my heart.
  But back when I was going through the whole IVF process, after the second try failed, a dear freind pointed me to a post by this woman named Missy. It was a Christmas post about how Mary hadn't expected to give birth in a stable. It was powerful.
  I liked her writting style. So I read more. Then I took a deep breath and contacted her. Even though you would think that someone with four kids under four wouldn't really appeal to a woman who was aching to have a child. But we connected. What did she say that made me feel better? that made her my freind and not the enemy?
  She didn't act like there was anything wrong with me as a person.
  She reminded me CONSTANTLY that God loved me and He had a plan and that it was Good.
  She listened EVERY time I needed to whine or cry.
  She CRIED WITH ME
  she didn't claim to have answers to the physical struggles, but she applied the balm of scripture to my heart. Reminding me that God ALONE was my rock.
  And if we had lived in the same state she would have let me hold her kids. This one is big. Women who are infertile sometimes have a HUGE sense of restraint when it comes to holding children. I can't speak for everyone, but for me I was terrified of holding my arms out to a child. What if they laughed and ran away? I KNOW that toddlers do this all the time. But for a woman who already is feeling like maybe God is saying "you are unfit to be a mother" having a child run away from you can very nearly feel like a physical blow. So mostly I didn'thave the courage to hold my arms out. I would wait for someone to place their child in my arms. It was much safer. Much less chance to rejection.
  So moms of many kids - show confidence in your infertile friends as people. Love them for who they are apart from the issue of childbearing.
  Directors of worship - find ways to celebrate mothers day without making it about biological motherhood. Try celebrating the act of mothering, rather than the miracle of conception.
  oh, and whatever you do, don't earnestly assure them that if they just relax it will happen. Look. That has nothing to do with it. Conception and birth is a miracle that ONLY God controls.
  And do yourself a huge favor. Read this blog post from a friend of mine. It address some theological and cultural hurdles that infertile women face in the church. It may help you see some of the hurt in a different light.
  Thanks Missy for doing this post.
  oh and there is nothing wrong with encouraging folks to consider adoption. We did. And I would not have missed out on my Ginny for all the "biologcally mine" children in the universe.
  

Jesus saves. over and over again

I can't really tell you the scripture this comes from, but I am convinced that Jesus doesn't just save sinners.

He saves me, every day, every moment. Each time I turn to Him when I feel small, or petty, or discouraged, or angry. He saves me from that and sends me in another direction.

Right now I'm in one of those places in my life where I can fall into sin a lot.

the sin of pride - stiff necked and too prideful to accept help. I keep telling everyone we are fine.

the sin of greed - I know we can't afford things right now. but I still want stuff. Mostly plane tickets. And the occasional meal out. But there is plenty in the pantry. I just have to learn to be more creative.

The sin of unbelief - as I try to take over planning how to get Martin a new job and how to make our finances stretch and how to cope....There is nothing wrong with putting in effort, but the fact is that I'm not doing anything to help the situation...I'm just worrying at it inside my brain all day. and worry is a sin. It indicates that I think I can somehow fix something better than God can. Hello? God or Deirdre, who do you think is the better, more experienced problem solver? Which one of us has the greater set of resources to draw from? Which one of us knows the whole plan and what will be for the greater good?

um...that would be NOT me, but God.

There's a great little mini sermon found on Travis Cottrell's most recent CD. The Live album that was recorded in Woodstock, GA back in January. Beth Moore talks about Praising God in difficult times.

I listen to that piece every time I get in the car nowadays. Just to jerk my brain back into the proper track.

God. Is. In. Charge.

God. Is. Good.

and I WILL praise His name. Whether I feel it right this instant or not.

Oh, incidentally, I'm not being morbid here, but when I die, please make note, I want everything from tracks 10 through 14 of that CD played at my funeral. The sermon by Beth, and then the songs that follow it. Go ahead and have the eulogies first and let Phillip Shoultz sing my favorite hymn "And Can it Be" but then, after that, just put in the CD and let it run. My funeral may start off as being about me, but it will end being all about GOD. There will (hopefully) be people at my service who may never have darkened a church door before, and I want them to walk away knowing beyond any doubt that my hope is in Christ Alone.

Anyway.

um....back to my regularly scheduled blog....

actually, you know what? I think that was a good place to stop.

In Christ Alone, my hope is found.

'nuff said.