Five Minute Friday: Real

It's Friday again!  I,  miraculously, had five minutes today.  Five Minute Friday is the brainchild of  The Gypsy Mama.  The idea of writing straight, for five minutes, letting our minds run wild void of the worry of editing and re-writing.  It's fast, fun and oh so freeing. In her words:

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.  We write because we want to, not because we have to. We write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just write or not.

Today's word:  REAL

My daughter's birthday is tomorrow.  Today we baked a cake...created beauty and made a mess in the process.  This is real.

Real is understanding our messes are what make beauty tangible.  Real is living life beside our children and letting them see us fall...and watching as we cry out to the Lord to be lifted up again.

Real is never pretending and always embracing the messy kitchen that is life.  Real is setting aside perfection for the sake of grace, striving after our God for the sake of redemption.

Real loving...real living...real mothering means never being afraid to pull out all the dishes, spill cocoa all over the counter and eggs on the floor.  Because, at the end of it all...after the messiness dissipates, all that's left is the rising splendor, baking our mistakes and spills into miraculous beauty.

Real memories invade our souls as we make messes and grace raising up our own for His glory. Childhood is fleeting and sometimes we forget the memories and the mess will, someday, be all that is left of now.

Confession and Grace

I was talking with a friend recently about sin...about looking sin full in the face and calling it what it is.

Without this...without the confession, there can be no redemption.  There can be no grace for our transgressions unless we admit them.

It's easier to make excuses for our sin...hide behind them and claim they are not sin at all, but something else.  We call them personality flaws, the result of too little sleep, the fault of someone else.  After all, the first thing sin always does is blame someone or something else.

I am learning this...and I want this truth to infiltrate the hearts of my children.

I want to take my children to the cross...to the place they can find freedom.  If I allow them to continue to make excuses and hide behind faults...they will forever be caged within a wall of sin they cannot break down with their own strength.

Today...I was blessed to take my youngest there.

I glanced over and she had that look.  You know the one...the one that says, "I just did something and I am really hoping you didn't just see that."

I was busy this morning cleaning the kitchen after breakfast...and I could have just left it alone.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't let her hide behind her sin, lest she fail to find freedom.

"What did you do?"  I asked.

Her reply? "I'm too nervous to tell you."

Oh sweet girl.  How many times I've been too cowardice to admit my own sin...too scared to stare it down and call it what it is.

"Just tell me...you can tell me anything.  You don't need to be afraid."  

Fear not, my child, for I am with you always.

Tears.  "I just can't.  I just can't tell you."

My heart breaks as I leave her on the chair.  I finish my task of cleaning up the kitchen as I cry inwardly.  Please...please let me take you to the cross. Please let me give you grace. Please give me a chance to show you the power of a God who came down.

I come back and sit next to her...and after twenty minutes and a lot of coaxing, out it came.

"Did you eat ice?"

Eyes wide, tears brimming, she nods slowly.  I smile inwardly at a child who feels such remorse for a small transgression.  But I know the feeling...she wasn't sorry she ate the ice. She was remorseful for the disobedience.  Sin.

I look deep into her eyes and speak, "Ice can hurt our teeth...we aren't supposed to eat ice, are we?"  She shakes her head...eyes searching mine.  Then...I take her there.

"I forgive you."  

Her tearful, soulful eyes open wide and reflect relief and adoration.  She throws her arms around my neck and buries her face into me.  Eyes squeezed tight, I hold her as grace washes over both of us.

She doesn't know it. She does know the ground on which she stands right now is holy. She doesn't know that, in this moment, she is being washed in this grace only because her mother, years ago, swam in it.  And that her mother, even now, every day, drinks deep of Living Water and is washed cleaned...again.  She doesn't know that this moment foreshadows all the moments she will need redemption...that this is not the last time she will confess and be restored.  She doesn't know that this grace permeates her mother's heart and leaves her breathless.  She doesn't know the blessing of giving grace back to a daughter after it's been lavished up on her so.

All she knows is that...right now...she's forgiven.

May we all be like this little child.

I wish that, more often, I would fail to see the future transgressions and just live in one moment of grace...that this moment would be enough for now.  That I would ignore the stifling voice that beckons me to remember this isn't the first time I've messed up and it won't be the last.  

That I would breathe deep of the redemption and let it completely cleanse before moving on.

Today this is my prayer.  To receive grace fully and completely.  To acknowledge my sin so I may be redeemed and set free.  To spend my free moments at the foot of the cross and exploring the empty tomb.

And I pray these moments are given back to my children as I take them to the cross, through the empty tomb and straight to the Throne of God.

A Moment Redeemed

Tears brim as the clock ticks.  The chaos beckons and I sigh wearily.

In this moment...I'm not thankful for anything.

Truth be told, I want it all to go away. To dissipate into the air I breathe and leave nothing but peace and contentment in its place.

Unfortunately, that's not how it's designed.

I close my eyes and remember.  Remember the truth Ann discovered and shared with the world. I scratched it into my journal and breathed deep of its truth and yet I still forget.  Forget the wonder of the power of a simple word, spoken in the depths of my soul, that brings healing to all moments.



I grit my teeth.  Hard.  My insides scream and I yearn to do anything but give thanks.  My insides all twisted with the heat of frustration, I steady myself.

Then I begin.

As I walk about and put the home back in order...I start naming.  One by one the tormenters of my soul become nourishment by the method of naming. 

46.  Toys to clean up

My heart clenches tight and I almost quit.  I almost quit the thanks for the sake of total abandonment.

Grace washes over me and I begin again.

47.  Laundry to wash

48.  Persistent three-year-old

My breath starts to ease and I feel the beat of my heart slow.  Just a little.  Just enough that I hear it.  The beauty that always cleanses...that of the outside world.  I listen...and a faint smile touches my lips.  I give it a name.

49. Wind rattling the windows

I walk upstairs and am confronted with more to count.  More mess.  More frustration.  I breathe deep and begin again.

50.  Rooms littered with clothes...dolls...stuff...creative play

The floodgates open, they gush forth.  This naming...this opening of the eyes of the soul to that which the Savior puts in our path...the embracing of the ugly as beautiful...the turning of every moment into a reason for praise...it always leads us straight the cross.

51.  Opportunities to serve

52.  Hearts to teach

53.  Souls to nourish

54.  Moments of despair and frustration

55.  The cross

56.  Redemption

57.  An empty tomb

58.  Lessons on patience

I whisper thanks and drop an anchor into time and feel it all slow.  The ticking clock...the heart beating fierce...the elevating lamentation...the quickening falters and I breathe easy.  I am anchored here, to this moment...and the miracle of it all leaves me breathless.

Thanks always precedes the miracle.

I run to my journal of thanks, children and chores pulling me in every direction.



I put the pen to paper and breathe life into my thanksgiving.  Words spoken in our minds are fleeting and, no matter how profound, remain elusive.  When we take the time to etch them onto paper, they are forever etched onto our souls.



The truth is harsh, but real.  It is not difficult to give thanks for the obviously beautiful that stares us full in the face.  The leaf wafting into a ravine as I bike a trail with my family...the crunch of leaves as my children romp in the autumn wind...the tinkling laughter of a small child.

It's this.  This mess that beckons us to joylessness...the trials that either bring us to our knees or bring us to our knees.  The weariness that invades our life and begs acknowledgement.  The pain...the mess...we will take notice of its infiltration.  Will we choose lamentation and complaint...or will we embrace the mess and let it be redeemed by the power of thanks?

Counting.  Searching.  Seeing with new eyes the beauty wrapped in all packages. Right here.  In every moment...there is joy.

Will you take the Joy Dare with me this year?  Count 1000 Gifts in 2012...and watch the miracles unfold.

 

Living Water

I stare out the window before daybreak, eyes searching for the first hint of light on the horizon.  I contemplate the dream I had last night.

There was a heart…broken in half and filling up with water.  As the water filled up the crevices, it began to overflow profusely.  The water ran faster and spilled out and over the bowl-shaped, half empty heart and into…the soul.

The outpouring of water into a broken heart fills up an empty soul.

This very odd, crazy dream seemed everything but.  It seemed so very real.

As I sit and contemplate, one eye on the horizon and the other on my keyboard, it reminds of the Samaritan woman at the well.

She sits by the source of life…thirsty.  As she works, her mind must have wandered to her life circumstances.  A wandering woman, void of a home.

He comes.

He comes, a Jewish man, shows the Samaritan woman love and reveals Himself to her.

And as He speaks, the river of living water rushes forth and fills her half empty heart.  The heart that has been rotting away for years is healed by a Jewish teacher…sitter by the well…comrade of thieves…Savior of the world.  And her soul is quenched.

I sit, wait for God’s majesty to fill the sky and feel like the Samaritan woman.

My heart is half full…battered and broken as I struggle to thrive in a fallen world.  I sit by the well…thirsty.  It’s quiet and I wait for the glow to fill the sky and cleanse my heart.  Beauty…Jesus manifest.  I wait.

This is where I am made whole.

Before you can be made whole, you must be broken.

The truth pierces the quiet and I flinch.  I know its truth.

Before Jesus could climb out of an empty tomb, He had to hang on the cross.  Bruised. Beaten.  Nailed.  Bloody.  Broken.

Before my soul can become nourished with living water.  Before my heart can be made whole.  Before my I can live a grace-filled life before my children.   I must allow myself to be broken.

This means admitting I don’t have it all together.  This means allowing messes to invade my perfect plan.   It means surviving…thriving…in the chaos that is life.  And allowing my heart to be broken, battered and torn in the process.

Then…and only then…can we truly be made whole.

When we allow our hearts to be broken for the sake of servanthood…for the sake of being transformed...this is the place Jesus dwells.  Waiting to mend us.  Waiting to pour living water into our hearts and watch it spill over into our souls.  In the quiet places of our lives…the torrents of the world gushing through us…this is where we find life.

The sun rises.

A New Beginning

I don't know anyone who doesn't like new beginnings.  Things that are fresh and real. Even the most die-hard Christmas decorator loves to takes down her tree and reveal the fresh, new, uncluttered look that was commonplace just 6 weeks ago.

We love to begin afresh, embrace the new and breathe in redemption.  This is, after all, the very essence of the longing that brings us to the place of surrender.

The Lord, so gracious and revealing, has placed new beginnings in our paths as we live these broken lives.  A quiet sunrise speaks to the power of a God to make all things new. The fact that the same sun goes down every night speaks to His power to remove the struggles and sins of that day...as far as the east is from the west.  The mistakes, the pride, the outbursts, the hardships are erased as the sun rises.  If we only we will see and be cleansed.

And now...this day...another picture of a new beginning.  A brand new year.

Many people will make resolutions that will only be broken.  They will commit to try harder, wake up earlier, be more productive.  But what we all really need?  Not to make a promise we can't keep or a goal that will ultimately lead to failure.

We need the new beginning.  We need the promise that comes with January 1.  The promise that says...no matter what kind of year you've had, or what kind of day you have tomorrow, or what happens to you this week, or what in the world plagues you and keeps you up at night...the sun will rise again.  

No matter how you've been hurt, no matter how you've been failed, no matter how hard or how far you have fallen...take heart...for your redemption is nigh.

Time passes and it plagues us.  It causes us to look backwards and lament its passing.  It forces us to remember the temporal state of our world.  It begs us to walk the path of regret and remorse.  If only...

If only...

If only we will look forward instead of backwards.  If only we will receive the promises of a Loving God.  If only we will count our blessings instead of our failures.  If only we will choose...yes choose...to see the hope that looms ahead of us.

The new year begins...the old one ends...and the Lord speaks silently in this spinning orb He has created.  He speaks of brand new.

He reveals Himself through creation and every year and He begs us to see the Glory in the redemptive power of new beginnings.

If you've had a good year, a great year, or a horrid year...you get to start over.  And not just on January 1...but every day.  He makes beautiful things out of the wondrously miraculous, the nothing special and the resolutely abhorrent.

Beauty for ashes.  It's why He came. And it's why the sun rises.  Every. Single. Day.

A Gift From Our Savior

We always bake cookies this time of year.  It's crazy messy, dirty and lots of work...but the kids love it and are able to relish in the baking without a single thought to the cleanup.  So we bake and clean and eat too much sugar.

This year, we wrapped up some cookies for a few of our neighbors.  I mentioned to the girls that our next door neighbors worship a different God than we do...that it would be a good witness to give them some cookies.

My five-year-old daughter...the one who hits her sister but cries about the orphans...the one who asked that I please stop talking to her about Africa because it's too sad...the child who requested that we all fly to China to hand out Bibles.  That child.  She states the obvious.  "Then we should give them a Bible."

I cringe inward...just a little...and her sister pipes in and agrees wholeheartedly.  "Yes! What a great idea!"

I am no religion scholar.  I know a lot about what God is teaching me...but not very much about the ins and outs of the Godless religions that mislead His creation.  Will they be offended?  Maybe they'll be upset with us?  Isn't this a little pushy?  

I end up at Wal-Mart that week and decide to stroll through the books.  Maybe I should buy a book...a Bible is a little much...maybe a good Max Lucado book about the Savior. 

I become frustrated with myself and wonder why in the world I am hesitant to give someone an unsolicited Bible?  I know the transformative power of these words.  I understand the love story contained.  Why the uncertainty?

Because I know the world hates the Bible.  I know Jesus is hated because He is love.  He is hated because He is just.  He is hated because He is radical. 

The world hates Him for the same reasons I love Him.

I buy the Bible and bring it home.

The girls painstakingly wrap their gift, full of excitement and anticipation.



I get one of our Christmas cards and, at the advice of my knitting mentor...a beloved woman and lover of Christ, I write a note.



We wrap a bow around it and the cookies and leave it on their front porch.



The next day, the neighbor marches over and hands me this:



"Thank you for the cookies...but we cannot accept your Bible.  We are Hindu and cannot accept this gift."

Dumbfounded, I mumble something that might resemble an apology and close the door. The girls ask who was at the door...I (again) mumble something to the effect of, "It was the neighbor thanking us for the cookies..."

I still haven't told them.

As this plagued me, I found it was tempting to shake my head, and mutter, "What do you expect from the world?"  But I couldn't go there.  What I'm learning...through this journey called motherhood...is that the lesson I think someone else should be learning is usually mine.

Then, it happened.  The Lord...never willing to let me perish in the bowels of self-contemplation, revealed a truth and put me in my place hours later.

I was filing up a sippy cup tonight for about the...I don't know...10,000th time over the last 7 years?  And I muttered, "Lord, I'm really tired of filling up sippy cups."

And just like that, the image of the Bible amidst torn up paper flashes bright.

My complaints over the years tumble forth and the truth paralyzes me.

"I'm tired of never sleeping all night.  I'm tired of cooking meals.  I'm tired of teaching math.  I'm tired of being touched all day.  I'm tired of holding children.  I'm tired of finding shoes...zipping coats...sacrificing...self-denying...loving unconditionally...serving...fighting for my kids' hearts...

Why don't I just say what I really mean?

This gift, Lord?  The one you've given me to become more like you?  This holy life of sacrifice You've given to me to live?  I don't want it...you see, my religion is self and I cannot accept this gift of becoming more like You every day.  It's offensive to my god...she trembles beneath all of this and is waning away.  This life I live...daily sacrificing all...it's killing her.

The Lord smiles. "Exactly."

To sacrifice daily...self-deny completely...love unconditionally...hug freely...fill sippy cups endlessly...it kills self.  And isn't that our goal?

His gifts are sometimes (usually?) wrapped up differently than we might expect.  A Savior in a trough...a King at the thief's table...a Redeemer on a cross...the Murdered among the living.

This gift?  This one He's given us?  It's Life wrapped up in a whole lot of giving.  The peace for which we long...the Christ-likeness we strive so hard to achieve...it's buried deep in the trenches of self-sacrifice.  In the well of motherhood, there is Living Water.

We can refuse His gift.  We can lament, complain, dig in our heels and renounce it.  Or we can abandon our lifeless god and dive deep into the mire...into the well...wade in the trenches of self-denial and give thanks all the while.  Then...and only then...will we, mothers on a path toward holiness, be set free.

The Humble Spirit Magnifies the King

I was looking through pictures of our trip to Colorado this summer.  I adore our trips to Colorado.  I spent a month there as a new believer and nothing...NOTHING...reveals the majesty of Jesus like the mountains.  At the end of my month, my now-husband-then-boyfriend-of-3-months drove out to propose to me.  This place...the place where earth meets sky and the valleys speak wonders...it's special to me.

As I was scrolling through the pictures, I began to wonder why I am so enthralled with mountains.  What is it about the high peaks that cause my head to spin and my knee to bend?  Then it hit me...

Because they make me feel small.



The mountains put me in my place. In a flesh-ridden body that is continually self-seeking, self-fulfilling and self-worshipping, I am pushed low.

Have you ever tried to take a picture of something enormously amazing, but in your camera it continues to look insignificant?  I have countless pictures of mountains...but it isn't until you take one with a person in the shot that you see the enormity of God's creation.

Perhaps it is the same with God's redeemed and their Redeemer.

Could it be that the height of God's glory can't be known until it's revealed through the lives of tiny, insignificant us?  That perhaps the full weight of His majesty isn't clear until a picture is taken with us standing alongside?

Next to this Landscape so Wondrous, we look tiny and...dare I say it...insignificant?  Isn't that the point of a Christ-centered life?

Now, don't get me wrong.  He doesn't need us.  To be sure it is we who need Him.

It is I who need to embrace this God who was made low for my sake.  This God who created the mountains that reach toward the heavens and the valleys that cascade down deep. This God who traded His crown of Glory for one of thorns.  It is I who need the God whose tomb is empty and who has made me whole.

Could it be, however, that His glory is only truly manifest in the lowliness of His creation?

And just as I walk alongside the mountain, highlighting the glory of its heights...so, too, I walk hand in hand with a Savior...my humility magnifying this God-Man come down.

And there it is...one more reason to bow low, self-deny, and take up our cross.  To take part in the glorification of this God of creation...the God who created these peaks that caress the heavens...it's the pinnacle of all our reasons.