If Walls Could Speak

I am at a point in my life where I must re-calibrate. 

Everything is the same, but the awareness is different.

More on that another time.

For now I am going to log all of the words from the walls of my office... right here.

Pictures too.

Change has never been easy for me, ever.

This change won't be either, but I know it must happen.

So here is what my walls have to say:

"Train for the trial you are not yet in." ~ Levi Lusko

"I don't know if you can truly ever be a servant of the Lord if you are not willing to be someone's aid." ~ Christine Caine

"It's not about who I am, but WHOSE I am." ~ Unknown

"Trusting God's plan is THE ONLY SECRET I KNOW in the gentle art of NOT FREAKING OUT." ~ Lysa Terkeurst

"There is always, always, always something to be thankful for." ~ Ann Voskamp

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" ~ The NIV Bible

"The spotlight that is on you will kill you if the light of Christ in you is not greater." ~ Christine Caine

"Only speak words that make souls stronger." ~ Unknown

"Do better now my child." ~ Ravi Zacharias expressing the heart of God for the failure laden

"Progress is progress no matter how slow." ~ Unknown

"God is working on your behalf. Heaven is holding conversations about you. Angels have been assigned. Be at peace." ~ Unknown

"On the other side of your pain is purpose." ~ Christine Caine

"The truth is so valuable that it is often surrounded by a bodyguard of lies." ~ Ravi Zacharias

"Complete Treasure" ~ our words of the year for 2016

"Manipulation is the nasty little brother of coercion." ~ Unknown

"Behold I am doing a new thing." ~ God

"And He who was seated on the throne said; 'Behold I am making all things new.' " ~ Revelation 21:5

"If we could get us to get our eyes off us and onto the greatness of God, it would CHANGE EVERYTHING." ~ Christine Caine

"I believe in the sun even when it's not shining. I believe in love even when I'm alone. I believe in God even when He is silent." ~ Unknown

"I love you to the moon and back again." On a gift poster from a dear friend.

"Hurried by worry delays the comfort of God." ~ Ann Voskamp

"I have loved you with an everlasting love." ~ God

"The only true disability in life is a BAD ATTITUDE. You get to choose." ~ Unknown

"There are four areas that you look to for absolutes: Evil, Justice, Love, and Forgiveness." ~ Ravi Zacharias

"Freedom is a blood type... Jesus' Blood!" ~ Unknown

"We fight from Victory not for victory. Jesus wins." ~ Unknown

"There comes a time when you have to make what Jesus did for you bigger than anything anyone did or said to you." ~ Christine Caine

"Worry is believing God won't get it right. Bitterness is believing God got it wrong." ~ Unknown

"A labor of love. 'We will be rewarded for good works done in obedience to God, according to His power and for His glory." ~ Charles Stanley

"Walking by Faith is just life without scheming." ~ Unknown

 "Keep moving forward... Trust, Obey, Trust, Obey...." ~ Me

"God is good, All the time." ~ Poster made by a Volunteer from Special Friends Camp

"Enjoy the little things." ~ Unknown

"Take a look at your heart. Because the day you see your heart as desperately wicked and in need of Jesus is the day you could become an answer rather than a question." ~ Ravi Zacharias

"God has already taken into account the wrong turns, the mistakes, in your life. Quit beating yourself up and accept His mercy." ~ Unknown

"Pray to God and carry on." ~ Unknown

"Lust can hardly wait to get. Love can hardly wait to give." ~ Unknown

"Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can't handle." ~ Unknown

"Death either takes you to your treasure or from it." ~ Levi Lusko

"Happiness is being married to your best friend." ~ Unknown

"To sin is to state: 'God I do not want you to be my King.' " ~ Unknown

"Whatever problem lies ahead of you doesn't compare to the power of the person behind you." ~ Ann Voskamp


Most of these quotes and sayings were written on small post-it notes that had minuscule pieces of duct tape holding them onto the wall. They are safely nestled in my lovely cherry red trash can now that they are memorialized here.

I think it's safe to say that I have surrounded myself with positive truths. Words that take my mind to places that encourage me to press on in the good and to depart from the bad. Then there is beauty....

Faces I love.

Faces I pray for.

Faces I have never met but tug on my heart each time I look at them.

Art.

Stickers.

Things that remind me of the treasure in my mine-field past.

Images that bring me hope.

Gifts from friends.

Encouragement.

IN-COURAGE-MEANT.

Meant to bring courage in.

If you stalk my Facebook wall enough you will piece together hints of my past that paint a picture.

Parts of that picture are hard to look at. 

Finger painting has always been one of my favorite ways to paint. 

I love to not just see the paint going onto the canvas, but to feel it. 

I've been that way since I was a child. 

To move it and watch it change as I go.

That little girl had no idea what was ahead.  

Or what kind of images her choices would portray. 
Much of my life was like an 18 month old with black oil paint in a wedding dress boutique. 

My ability to see the long term effects of my choices was nil.

My choices were all driven by emotions that were out of control.

If I had any compass at all, True North changed daily.

The fallout left scars. 

Not just on myself, but on those closest to me.

There are places in my heart that are cauterized by the fire of consequence.

I was a magnet for hurtful people.

Who didn't just hurt me.

When you come from darkness like that...

When the Lord rescues you and clothes you and heals you in both mind and body.

There is an enemy that doesn't want you stop staring at the carnage.

Rehashing the what-if's.

But every time I'm tempted, I hear a familiar voice say, "If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed." And, "Be Still and Know that I am God." And, "Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

If I am going to live in the Light, I have to surround myself with the Truth.

If I am going to never go back to those awful ways of thinking and living, I have to fix my eyes on what lies ahead. What has been promised to me.

To think on what is good and true and lovely and....

Jesus in His mercy has been so good to me. 

He is in control and is able to do the impossible.

His promises are true. Always.

I need to remind myself of that daily.

So I surround myself with truth, with reminders of His goodness in my life despite the mine fields.

What do you surround yourself with?









 

Prone to Worry

I am prone to worry.

There, I said it.

As someone who thinks a lot, and I mean A LOT... my mental train can jump it's tracks and be on the treacherous slope of worry in short order if I don't keep my thoughts in check.

Daily.

Sometimes minute by minute... or second by second.

There is someone in my life that I love with every drop of my blood, every beat of my heart, every cell... and that person is so broken. So wounded and struggling.

It's gut wrenching.

If I dwell on that circumstance without including the Lord in the equation I begin to sink into the quicksand of hopelessness.

I found myself sinking just recently.

My praying was more like begging:

"Lord, I'd give up this or that.... or stop this or that.... or do this or that.... if only you'd step in and do something!!"

I was literally on the verge of hysteria in the most silent way possible as we sped down the highway. Thankfully it was dark and our youngest son was asleep in the back seat.

I was biting the inside of my lip to keep from violently weeping.

The sensation was like my own flesh and blood heart being ripped ever so slowly right in two...

Then I heard His reply:

"I did do something. I did it all. I gave it all, my very life, for the one you weep over. I am doing something, right this very moment, trust me. Trust me."

 And the tears came...

I cried the tears of relief that always come when I remember Whose I am... Who is in control...

When the voice of the Lord speaks truth that clears the heavy darkness and lets the fresh air of His love in.

What a gift to me.

So I thanked Him, and prayed a prayer placing this precious one back at His feet.

I read this quote a few days later and it has been on the merry-go-round of my thoughts ever since:

Yeah.

I've been mulling that over for 2 weeks, and I'm sure I'm not done yet.

My thought life is always borne of my beliefs.

Always.

When I first read the quote I asked myself:

"Do I really believe that God won't get it right with this person?"

I didn't like my answers.

Fear is an ugly, mean, strangling task master.

I lived under it's whip for most of my life.

For the past several years I have experienced greater and greater freedom from it's grip.

It's really more like an annoying pest most days.

But when it comes to this person I can almost hear the crack of that whip again.

Do I really believe that God won't get it right with this one?

Really?

NO. I really don't believe that.

I believe that He will win.

That in the end, even if it is long and excruciating, He will be Lord of ALL.

Just as He is now.

There is no one, nothing, outside His vision.

No person beyond His grasp.

No pain greater than His comfort.

And no trespass greater than His sacrifice.

Not one.

I believe that.

All of it.

My own life is proof of it.

My prayer now goes like this:

Lord, I believe that you will get it right with this person that I love. Please help me to trust you more and to obey your promptings. Thank you that your love is greater. Amen

The quote is posted in a very visible place for me to remember what I'm reinforcing when I choose to worry.

So the next time I hear something alarming, have a bad dream, am alone in the quiet with hard memories and nagging regrets....

I will choose to believe He is who He says He is.

I will choose to believe that He will do what He says He will do.

Will you?

Internal Leprosy...

Sick as a dog...

Who came up with that term anyway?

I mean, I've seen plenty of dogs sick. And for the most part they still wag their tails and recover fairly rapidly... So long as it isn't something terminal.

Definitely sad...

But cats?

Cats on the other end are GNARLY when they're ill, at least in my experience.

Especially with respiratory stuff... The wheezing, the coughing, the runny eyes and bubbling mucous from their teensy nostrils....

Gnarly.

I'm currently sick.

Caught a bug from my sons and it's running it's course through my head and joints...

 Not necessarily gnarly, but it got me thinking...

My husband read a devotion to me a few mornings ago about Jesus and the Leper.

Leprosy is gnarly.

Gruesome.

Debilitating.

Isolating.

A person with leprosy in Biblical times was marked.

Commanded to cry out 'Unclean!' as they made their way through the streets to warn others of their approach.

Hopeless.

As a girl who scored a 12 out of 12 concerning touch as my Love Language, the thought of being ostracized and untouchable makes me shudder.

As my husband read the devotion he was noticeably moved. He could relate to the feelings expressed by the author.

The shame.

The horror.

The disconnectedness.

The ridicule.

Painful doesn't really do it justice...

Leprosy starts out painful but results in numbness.

Deadness.

Irretrievable loss.

What begins as a wound ends as a gaping vacancy.

There is an innate inability to heal.

We always pray after we do our devotions and that morning wasn't different.

As he held my hand I was grateful for his touch in a new way.

But as he prayed he said something that pierced me....

"Lord, I can't begin to comprehend what it would be like to be a leper. But I do know what it's like to feel shame. To feel marked. To feel disconnected. To struggle daily. To live with internal leprosy in desperate need of a Healer..."

Internal Leprosy...

What started out as a wound now numb and rotting,

or maybe even just gone.

Oh it rang through the halls of my heart and found so many places to land!

I too walked so many years with the internal dragging of emotional and mental limbs.

The rot of sin and it's consequences eating away at the beautiful gifts the Lord so carefully placed there.

The injury of abuse, divorce, addiction, unforgiveness, envy, selfishness...

And in my mind always the echo of  "Unclean... unclean.... unclean..."

On the outside, however, everything looked pretty great...

The to-do list was checked off.

The smile was intact.

The house was reasonably clean.

The obligatory duty to God and man was in order...

But inside?

Rotting.

My husband and I know that all too well...

The exhaustion of constantly covering up...

And finally the admittance that we desperately needed the Healer.

The Leper in Matthew 8 went in search of Jesus,

1 "When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.² A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

He approached Jesus...

in a large crowd.

Do you think that he was crying out 'Unclean!' as he moved in that crowd?

Or do you think that the had carefully bundled himself so that nothing showed, making sure not to let anyone get too close, planning each movement with meticulous care to assure he wouldn't be identified as...

Grotesque

Unacceptable

A lost cause

Beyond help?

I tend to think the latter...

It's my opinion for sure, but it fits the image that Scripture paints for me.

Jesus would have been the focus of the crowd.

The Leper knelt before Him.

I'm thinking the Leper was right in the middle of it all...

And how many of us are right in the middle of it all?

The middle of ministry

The middle of chronic illness

The middle of grief

The middle of parenting

The middle of mental illness

The middle of loss...

No one is immune.

We're all in the middle of something.

But I guess the question is: 

Are we in the middle with Jesus?

The Leper believed that the Jesus could heal him if He was willing...

And this was Jesus' response:

³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.

"I am willing."
 
 Jesus is compassionate to depths that are unfathomable to us.

He was willing and the Leper was cleansed immediately!

I understand the heaviness of trying to make sure that my internal leprosy is covered so that I'm not identified in negative ways.

I understand the numbness that results from years of rotting wounds that eat away at mental, emotional, and spiritual nerve endings.

Jesus does too.

He knew that the wounds on the heart, mind, and soul of the Leper were in even more dire need of healing than his eroding body.

And He was willing to cleanse them all.

He has done it for me...

And He has done it for my husband.

As we continue to come across areas that fester we kneel before Him and say:

  “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

And He is.

Push through the crowds in your careful wrappings if you must.

Plan your steps meticulously and keep others at a distance if that's where you're at.

But make your way to the feet of Jesus.

Come in all your wounded, rotten, numbness.

Ask Him for wholeness, for cleansing, for healing.

Jesus is still about the business of healing leprosy of all kinds.

Even yours...




 

Ever faithful.... Ever true.... Jesus in the Fire.

Communicating isn't easy at the moment...

This body fights me sometimes in ways I can't even fight back.

My perspective has changed so radically, so drastically, so completely.

I can remember thinking constantly about what other people thought of me, of my kids, my clothes, my car....

Fear had me by one hand and Pride had me by the other.

I put Jesus in a box with a glass front painted with the words, "In Case of Emergency Break Here."

He was my plan B.

I don't like seeing that in type. I don't like admitting it. But it was true.

It WAS true...

I have seen the most devastating things build the most beautiful moments in the midst of rubble as far as the eye can see... literally.

I can't pretend that Jesus isn't GOD.

That He isn't on the throne of all Heaven.

That NOTHING HAPPENING ON EARTH will make Him get up and pace that sapphire floor....

Nothing.

Not Ebola.

Not cancer.

Not financial ruin.

Not broken relationships.

Not war or famine or death.

He has seen it all.

He knows that in the end everything will be alright.

He's already there...

He is from Age to Age the same.

From before the foundations of the Earth.....

Jesus

I have been at the end of myself on a road I didn't know with my children crying out to Him with tear stained faces in between asking me if we were going to live through that World's Largest Tornado... 

...and in that moment I could say, with my heart banging like an old tractor engine, "I don't know. But if we don't we know where we will go. Jesus will never leave us. He will carry us home."

Truth.

Solid truth that you can stand on. That you can hold onto when the winds are raging, and the floods are rising, and the sky is swallowing homes and cars and people...

Stillness in the Storm, He is.

Direction in the Chaos, He is.

The Hand that reaches out, not to hold your hand, but to HOLD YOU.... He is.

There hasn't been a moment in this day that I haven't prayed for a dear family that I love that is going through a nightmare... a raging swirling nightmare of pain and suffering and love and praise and prayer and aching and hope and courage and terror..... It's their world's largest tornado.

It's a storm they can't navigate alone...

I watched as the people in the actual Tornado Alley banded together regardless of income, race, beliefs, age.... they came together because there was such great need. They sat together on half obliterated curbs and ate barbecued pork sandwiches out of foil wrappers that some college guys brought all the way from Texas.

They came together to share their strength. Their love. Their understanding. 

I drove across the U.S. those times not because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, but because I understand devastation. I understand desperate need. Pain and suffering are no stranger to me.

Pain and suffering are no stranger to Jesus.

I prayed yesterday over a task that I really wanted to do well at. I was feeling shaky at best and I said to the Lord, "I just really want to nail this Lord."

His reply was, "I already have."

And in that moment I saw his nail scarred hand and I remembered the truth that IT IS FINISHED.

He has already gone before me and prepared the way, for everything.

There is nothing I will face that He is not aware of, or makes Him shaky at best.

He is the Author and the Finisher.

In my heartache for my friends facing this terrifying inoperable brain tumor I have come to the place where I just say His name...

Jesus Jesus Jesus...

I know that He is with them because He is with me.

He says He will never leave us or forsake us.

Never.

Not in the wildest storm.

Not in the darkest night.

Not in the deepest pain of the body or soul or mind.

Never.

That scene of Daniel's friends in the fire there in the Old Testament has been in and out of my mind for weeks now off and on...

My husband and I are in our own fiery furnace... So many dear friends in fires of all sorts... and I am reminded time and again that the only things that were lost in those hottest flames were the things that bound them....

If Jesus is in the fire with me then I can count on only being more free on the other side of it.

Truth.

Unchanging Truth.

Those three men so long ago walked around in the fire with Jesus. 

WALKED AROUND IN THE FIRE.

They were bound up and thrown in that furnace, but once they were in the flames...

They were free to move. To walk. To walk with Jesus.

Even the flames obey Him. They can only do what He allows.

And Faith says that what He allows sets me free...

Oh Lord I DO believe.... I DO.

Help my unbelief...

Watching friends and family members suffer is so hard. The temptation to ask God "Why?' at every new twist and turn in the road is sometimes like the worst itch you just can't reach.

I don't think He minds the why's. He knows who I am. He knows what I'm made of and how He made me.

I remember my little children looking up at me asking why about more things than I can count...

So inquisitive. So observant. So smart.

I didn't mind their why's either. 

Oh to have faith like a child... 

Complete trust. 

Sometimes the best prayer I can offer in the fire is, "I trust you Jesus. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your faithful love. Change me Lord. Change me."

I used to want for my circumstances to change so badly. I just knew I would be happy when...

I had a better smile.

I could live in a different place.

I had more time, more money, more hair...

Oh no.

No no.

It just isn't really like that.

Ever.

You are who you are wherever you are.

Not my circumstances Lord....

"Change me Lord. Change me."

There is no glass to break in case of emergency.

No glass... just His name...

Jesus. 

He's with me in the fire.

He's with us in the fire.

Delivering from those things that bind...

Ever faithful.... Ever true....

Free to walk with Him

Jesus,

in the fire.