If You Thought 30 Was Exciting....

So last Sunday I hit 31 years.

Can I tell you the truth?  I don't like the sound of that number.  But can I tell you what redeems that?  It's only the age of my body.  My temporary home.  My soul?  It's ageless.  And so is yours!

So whether you'd like to turn back time to 1989, or 1960, or 1940....remember this.  We're not really getting older.  We're just getting closer to immortality!  Who needs the fountain of eternal youth?  Although according to my little bro, I must have found it.  When asked how old I was on my birthday, his answer?   A hundred!

But seriously, I'm looking forward to this year.  Because 30 was pretty exciting.  And I can't wait to see what God has in store for 31!

I thought it was a good time for a little remembering.  So here are some of the memorable moments from the past year of my life.

When I was 30, I.....

Took three months of Tae Kwon Do and earned my orange belt.
Biked and rode the train on the Cuyahoga Valley National Park scenic railroad and towpath trail.
Got my first stitches.
Spent three weeks in Romania!
Tasted homemade Romanian moonshine.
Sailed on Lake Michigan at sunset.
Wiped out on a wakeboard.
Wiped out on a horse.
Saw my first movie in a theater. Yep. Really.
Experienced the hot air balloon festival in St. Louis.
Did a 21 day media fast.  Which I could stand to do again!
Watched a couple of rodeos.
Worked with a new (to me) horse and gained confidence.
Moved from one state to another and back again.
Worked on a horse ranch and at two sweet little coffee shops.
Bought a car!

These are just highlights....all in all, it's been a wonderful year.  I've grown, and I've seen how much more I have to grow.  My life has been enriched with so many friends who have taught me things about life and God and horses and relationships and myself, and encouraged and enabled me in so many ways.

And I just have a feeling that now God is saying, "So you think 30 was exciting?  You ain't seen nothin yet!"

Bring it on!

Don't Act Your Age

"Act your age, not your shoe size!"  Have you ever heard this phrase?  I was talking to a coworker the other day, and upon finding out that I am celebrating my birthday this weekend, he asked how old I'd be.  He was surprised to discover I am much older than I look!  He then proceeded to ask me to guess his age, which I actually got almost right on.  Guessing ages is a tricky thing.  Some people look their age, and some don't.  I know people who look much older than they are.  Sometimes this is due to certain lifestyle choices, such as smoking or excessive tanning.  Sometimes it is because of health issues or stress.  It can even be the way they dress and wear makeup.  I also know people, say in their 50's, who look younger but physically act their age, or older!  Old age can take it's toll much faster if we choose things like unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle, internalizing stress, or negativity.

As much as I want to be forever young, I can't stop the clock on biological aging.  But I have decided that I am NOT going to act my age....not even when I'm 50!  This is not an excuse to act childish, but rather a quest to rediscover child-likeness.  Jesus Himself said, Unless you become like a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven!

I've been listening to Chris August lately, and he wrote a song called 1989.  It talks about how life was carefree and uncomplicated when he was seven years old.  How it was to live in childlike faith.  And how he wants to go back to living that way.  I realized that I was six years old in 1989.  I'm not one of those people who can remember a lot of their childhood with clarity.  I remember bits and pieces, sometimes the most random and weird things!  I can't say I really remember what it was like being six.  But I know life sure seemed simpler.  And a lot more fun.  I still find ways to have some great fun, but we know that's not what life is all about.  But what if we could recapture the wonder of a child?

These days God is drawing me back to learn how to be a kid again.  I think He wants us to have that kind of wonder at Him and the things He has made.  If I take the time to slow down and fully experience the simple things, the little everyday gifts in life....I begin to find that wonder again.

Things like being mesmerized by snowflakes falling sparkly in the streetlight after dark.  Laughing at squirrels chasing each other up and down trees.  Dancing crazy to happy music.  Hugging a giant tree just to see how far my arms reach.  Making a snow angel on a walk through the woods.  Walking out giant hearts with my footprints in the snow in the park.  Diving onto a queen bed.  Twirling in circles at the bowling alley with my little brother.  And the other day, I discovered polymer sand....I spent an hour or more playing with it while talking with my friend....squeezing, squishing, letting it drop through my fingers....it's the coolest stuff ever!  And we laughed and had the best time entertaining ourselves with this simple plaything!

I'm learning that when I slow down and live fully in the moment....when I take time to look and count all the gifts God has poured out on the day and to give thanks....when I find delight in the simple things, even childish things....when I let myself linger and wonder at the things God created and the ways He reveals Himself all around me...it brings back an unadulterated joy and pleasure that feels a little bit like being a kid again!

I think Jesus said we must become like a child because only children have the eyes to see God.  And only children can trust without reservation.

"It is so uncomplicated with You here....you make the person that I once was reappear
I'm sorry that I made it something complicated
I am ready now, it's not too late
Everyday I'm learning it's all about returning
I'm living my life with childlike faith.....like I could
Turn back time and go to 1989
Where every day was full of chasin dreams
Yeah I may be grown up but maybe I should try
Livin like it's 1989"

From 1989 by Chris Augustt

Stop Chasing God

Today I just want to share some tender heart thoughts.  These are fresh, uncensored journalings.  The kind that are almost too private to share.  But I will because I have found a breath of freedom today.  And I want to extend it to you, whoever you are, taking the time to stop in on my musings in this moment.  I will not attempt to analyze or explain.  This is not a sermon or a well thought out message.  Just a heart-flow.  Take it for whatever it speaks to you.

I am the harlot.

You are the relentless Lover.  The reckless Lover spilling all of Himself.  The scandalous Lover who will stop at nothing to bring the harlot back to His embrace, to endless intimacy.  Taking her to a place she never dreamed existed.  To make her the Beauty she has spent her lifetime longing to be, trying to be, failing to be...yes, to make her even more than that image....to be the Beauty who ravishes You!

The utterly worthless becomes a pearl of surpassing value over which You dance and sing.  The hopelessly broken transformed into unspeakable glory.

Recreated.  Cherished.  Wanted.

Thank You.  For wanting me.  That I don't have to chase You.  That's it's not about me wanting You badly enough....because You want me with an otherworldly desire.  Enough to create me.  Enough to rescue me.  Enough to win the heart of this harlot.  Relentless Grace.

I am the harlot.  I am both the beauty and the beast.  I am Cinderella.  Rags to Happily Ever After.  I am the sought-after, fought for, hard-won heroine to Your Hero in the Greatest Romance of Time and Eternity!

Charis.  Eucharisteo.  Chara.

Grace.  Thanksgiving.  Joy.

The whisper of hope in all this pain.  The clue that all is not as it seems.  The rush of air into gasping lungs, smothered by earth's smog.  The literal breath of life.  Bread sustaining my soul.  These could turn a whole day.  A week.  A life.  They could turn a world upside down.  Or right side up.

Breathe in.  Grace.  Breathe out.  Thanksgiving.  Feel the life flood this body, rush through these veins, awaken these dry bones.  Joy.  Dance to the soundless melody.  Reach out and touch the invisible.  Gaze on the unseen reality surrounding you like an ocean.  Walk on thin air.

Faith.  SUBSTANCE of things hoped for.  PROOF of things unseen.  To know that what I do not yet hold in my hand is MINE just as surely and solidly as the ground I walk on.

God. Is. Here.

Ashes to Beauty

This month, I've been thinking a lot about the pain and mess and brokenness in our world.  I'm reading in The Greatest Gift about how God came down and gave Himself in the middle of our mess and suffering.  And I'm grappling with the impossible mystery of it all.

Sometimes it feels like I have enough just to deal with the mess inside my own soul.  And the dysfunction in my own little circle of relationships.  We all have it.  Every family, every friendship has its own form of dysfunction.  Sometimes its not even visible to people on the outside, but it's there.  Because we're not in Paradise.  We are broken and hurting people, and we hurt each other.  

But then you pile on top of personal brokenness the mess in lives of people I care about, that seems to be moving ever closer to me.  Friends getting cancer.  Friends with hearts broken, strong godly relationships threatened.  People coming into my circle who are dealing with very messy pasts, and horrible things done to them.  It's the kind of stuff that makes me want to turn and run some days.  To curl up somewhere in a safe little hole where I can just look after my own needs.  

The more you love, the more you give yourself, the more you open yourself up to pain.  The greater your risk becomes.  

No one did that more than Jesus.  

So in the midst of trying to balance the pain and the fear and the questions with the hope and joy and peace we have through Christ, I was reminded of this Scripture.  It's a prophetic passage, speaking of the coming of God's Anointed One, and what He would do.

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.  To comfort all who mourn....to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness..."  Isaiah 61:1-3

And I'm praying for God to give beauty for ashes in these lives that touch mine.

So this morning, as I was praying for a friend, God reminded me of a book that I love very much.  It's called Hinds Feet on High Places.  It's an allegory of the transformation God makes in the life of a believer.  The story follows a woman named Much Afraid, whose name embodies her character.  She decides to follow the Shepherd, who promises to take her to the High Places of the mountains, to the Kingdom of Love.  He promises to take this crippled, twisted, fearful woman and transform her into someone fit to leap and run on the mountains like the deer and enter the kingdom where no ugly or evil thing is allowed.  Along this seemingly impossible journey, Much Afraid has these points of surrender, where she lays down a part of her own will and builds an altar to offer it up to the Shepherd, who of course represents Jesus.  Each time she builds an altar, fire comes and consumes the sacrifice, and from the ashes left behind, she is urged to choose a stone and carry it with her as a reminder.  She amasses a large collection of these stones, all ordinary, rough, and ugly.  At one point on the journey, as she and her companions huddle in the shelter of a rock and wait for a storm to pass, she dumps the stones out of her bag and ponders what to do with them.  A storm rages inside of her, and as she remembers the circumstances and the offering each stone represents, and looks at them in their ugly heaviness, she wonders if it is worth going on.  If she will ever reach the end of the journey and receive what the Shepherd has promised.  She almost leaves the stones behind in frustration.  But she gathers them back into the bag and carries them onward.  

True to the Shepherd's word, after much pain and suffering and hard sacrifice, joy comes in the morning!  He brings Much Afraid to the High Places.  He heals her crippled feet and crooked mouth and gives her strength and beauty.  He gives her a new name....Grace and Glory.  She can leap and run with Him all over the mountains, and He grants her the deepest desire of her heart....that if she would allow Him to plant the seed of Love within her, she would be loved in return.  

And the stones?  The ones she carried all that long way, the reminders of everything she gave up in hopes of something better?  They were changed into beautiful, precious jewels to be set in a crown for her to wear!

Ashes to beauty.  Stones to gems.  Joy for mourning.

Our Good Shepherd wants to do that for you and me.  So don't throw out the rough, ugly, heavy stones that represent the pain and loss and hard of your life.  Don't try to run from them.  Cling to them, like He clung to the rough, splintered wood of that cross.  For love of you.  Walk through the pain with a spirit of surrender, for love of Him, knowing that He is carrying you through it.  One day the weight of our suffering is going to be eradicated by the overwhelming weight of the glory into which He will bring us!  

And your stones will become jewels.  Don't lose heart.  They are worth carrying. 

A Lyrical Sermon For Your Christmas Week

I discovered this song today while listening to Keith and Kristyn Getty's Christmas album, called Joy: An Irish Christmas.  Read these words and ponder them.....it's amazing!  This is what the world waited for, down through the dark halls of history, through the sin and the pain and the mess.  This is what we wait for in retrospect during this season of Advent, season of waiting for the coming.  This is the reason we have real hope and joy as we wait for His coming again!  This is what we celebrate at Christmas.  Immanuel.  The fullness of God WITH us, IN us!

Let's stop asking ourselves why God allows such pain in this world.  We are broken through our own doing. Some of the evil and darkness here is far beyond comprehension.  But let's look at the suffering God Himself chose to take for us.  He came in His FULLness, to bear the FULL weight of our sin and brokenness, to give us FULLNESS OF LIFE!  Forever!  This is why we can celebrate, NO MATTER WHAT comes our way.  For where God is, everything is grace.

Read.  Wonder.  Worship Him.

"And the Word became flesh, and made His dwelling among us.  We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another.  For the law was given through Moses.  Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."  John 1:14,16,17

Fullness of Grace  (Keith and Kristyn Getty)

Fullness of grace in man's human frailty
This is the wonder of Jesus
Laying aside His power and glory
Humbly He entered our world

Chose the path of meanest worth
Scandal of the virgin birth
Born in a stable, cold and rejected
Here lies the Hope of the world

Fullness of grace, the love of the Father
Shown in the face of Jesus
Stooping to bear the weight of humanity
Walking the Calvary road

Christ the Holy Innocent
Took our sin and punishment
Fullness of God, despised and rejected
Crushed for the sins of the world

Fullness of hope in Christ we had longed for
Promise of God in Jesus
Through His obedience we are forgiven
Opening the floodgates of Heaven

All our hopes and dreams we bring
Gladly as an offering
Fullness of life and joy unspeakable
God's gift in love to the world

Covenant of the Coming One

In The Greatest Gift, the devotional I am using for Advent, I read about God giving the Ten Commandments....His covenant of love.  God entreating His people to love Him and be in relationship with Him.  The reading helped me see the Commandments in a new way.  This was God giving His love, as a bride and groom covenant their love to each other.  This is God saying, "I made you for Me and I know you are only complete when you are Mine and I am yours.  This is what it would look like for us to be in a relationship of unbroken love."

Here is my paraphrase of the covenant commandments, inspired by Ann Voskamp.  Some of these are taken almost word-for-word from the book; others were imagined by me.  If you like, read Deuteronomy 5:5-22, and then see how this paraphrase fits in.  Hear God's heart.

"I rescued you from slavery.  From a debt you could not pay.  From death.  From the price of unfaithfulness.  I Am your God.  You are Mine.  My treasured possession."

"Have no other lovers that woo you, that take your attention or affection, but Me."

"I created you in My image.  I am the Image-maker.  You are the image-bearer.  Don't make an image of yourself or anything else that usurps what I have made and called good."

"I give you My name, My very name to make you Mine.  It is your new identity.  Do not use it in vain.  As mere lip service.  Do not shame My name or be ashamed of it.  My name defines you."

I long to spend time with you, holy time for you and Me....set apart space in your life, in your days, as holy time just for us."

"I love you, Bride.  Be one, as you and I are one.  Not coveting or lying or stealing or dishonoring or murdering or cheating one another, but honoring and loving and living out of our love.  Yours and Mine."

God didn't just give us the commitment of love at the top of Mount Sinai.  He staggeringly kept our commitment, the one we could never keep, at the top of Calvary.  Jesus didn't just die the death we deserved to die; He lives the love we've desired to live.

This is the hope of Advent.  He came to give us Himself, to make us know His love, and to fulfill the love to God that we have broken.

What is He whispering to us now?  "I came to make you Mine.  Am I yours?"

Falling Up

I walk an empty path through woods, crunching snow as setting sun melts golden into clouds.  

Stopping at my favorite spot….plank bridge over  tiny creek, gurgling cold in the winter silence.  I linger there, breathing in God, making space in my soul.  Trying to feel how to answer His invitation to deeper intimacy.  I tell Him I’m not sure how, but I want to come in.  I ask Him to take me in to this place where my heart can beat with His.  

As I gaze into the water, I notice something.  The stream slips along just inches above the pebbled bottom.  But the sky above is bright and partly clear, stretching over a break in the branches overhead.  If I look into the water, but not through to the bottom, I can see a clear reflection of trees and sky, stretching way down into depths that are not there.  

I have always loved that illusion.  

I stand transfixed, imagining myself falling in headfirst, but I don’t hit earth….I fall into the sky.  And I can fly.

Falling up.  

And I hear an echo of eternity from somewhere deep and ancient.  The solid earth under my feet, the trees towering overhead, the cold air….everything I can touch and feel and see….is not the final reality.  God’s kingdom is like the illusion on the water.  Except it’s real.  

Human understanding gazes blankly into eternity, seeing only the dirt, the stones, the cold hard stuff of earth.  

But faith….faith sees different.  Faith sees what appears at first to be a dim reflection, wavering in the ripples.  Then it stills, becomes more clear.  Faith chooses to see the reality that looks upside down.  Faith takes the leap headfirst into what might be rock bottom, believing that what seems to be real is only a melting mist, and what appears as an illusion is the real thing.  

To live in God’s reality, we have to fall up.  And the people with earthly minds will think we are upside down.  

But that’s okay.  

Because anyone who walks upright in God’s reality will carry His presence everywhere.  And it will draw others to the water.  It will captivate them.  And maybe they will want to fall too.  Let go of earth.  Fall into God.