twust in da ward.

parker - july 2009 - age 3

*sigh* my parker. i know i have said this before - and i also know i will say this again - i never desired to have boys. i grew up dreaming of ribbons and bows and a baby girl with big brown eyes, exactly like the one in which God so graciously gifted me with. and then came my parker. the instant i held him in my arms, every fear or apprehension about having a boy mysteriously evaporated and the cliche i had always heard became a reality there in that hospital room: there is something special about baby boys and their mamas. my parker epitomizes the phrase "all boy". he is rough and loud and has a natural affinity for all things related to super heroes, bugs and dinosaurs. he is the roughest rough and yet, the sweetest sweet. my pregnancy with parker came as a surprise and he is - undoubtedly - the best surprise any mother could ever ask for.

i love the way the Lord uses our children to reveal Himself to us. if we allow the eyes of our hearts to be opened, the landscape of this place called mommyhood changes dramatically. the mundane becomes profound. and the ordinary, extraordinary.

when we surrender our lives, open our hearts and allow Lord to permeate every facet of our lives, something truly amazing happens: He uses all of it - to teach us, to change us, to transform our hearts.

last week, we were all in the car and i was having a disheartening moment in thought. i thought to myself, possibly out loud, "Lord, what am I going to do?". without missing a beat, almost as if it were in direct response to me, parker says "twust in da' ward wid all of your heart". i turned to look back at him, "what did you say?". he repeated "twust in da ward...". tears filled up in my eyes. it was the very first time he had ever recited a bible verse out loud. what sweet music to my ears.

"I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you."- Psalm 119:11

of course, i'm not sure parker understands the whole concept of trust at the age of three. he came home from a friend's birthday party on saturday with a large splinter in his right foot and he certainly wasn't "twusting" mommy or daddy remove it. when i was a kid, my mom always removed my splinters while i slept. i was naive to think it would be so easy with this child of mine. he woke up immediately every single time - kicking, screaming and throwing punches. hard ones. our attempts were futile, even when chris and i tried together to hold him still. tiny tweezers and a tiny thrashing foot were no match for us.

ironically - or rather, not - i had been asking/praying/pondering over my life, my heart, the narrow - and not so narrow paths - i'd chosen. why i'd chosen them. why, despite knowing God and having accepted Christ as my savior as a teenager had i still continued to run away from Him, reject His love, and disobey His word. frankly, i wanted to know what in the heck had been "wrong with me" all of those years. do you love how i say that as if it were all so far in the past and not, like, this year? i have played the role of the prodigal son and 'the little boy who cried wolf' more times than i can count. needless to say, i've had some trust issues myself... um, with myself. if there is one thing i know about myself - and let's face it, there really IS probably only one thing i know about myself - it's that i am absolutely certain that nothing good dwells in me, apart from Christ. just as paul wrote: "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out." Romans 7:18 (ESV)

me too, paul. oh, me too. i love the Message version of the bible, which translates paul as saying something very similar to what i've said myself in verse 24: "I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my [rapidly fraying] rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?" of course, paul doesn't leave us hanging. he gives us the answer in v. 25: "The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different."

i've known this verse for years and yet, still made countless, empty promises to God of how I would do better, try harder... you know, be perfect and all. because i could totally do that if i just tried hard enough, right? ...um, wrong. paul knew the right answer. my three year old knows the right answer, "twust in da ward". what had been in the way of my knowing? or rather, my believing?

all of these things were still in the back of my mind - and my heart - as i drifted off to sleep on sunday night. and there, in the stillness and the darkness and the quietness of my room, a piercing light - not completely unlike a light bulb in my head - it came as a flash. in a momentary thought:

"my child is going to sleep, perfectly content with this giant, painful splinter rather than experience the pain that comes before healing."

i sat straight up in my bed. instinctively, i threw my hand over my heart.

we spent monday morning at the pediatrician's office having the now infamous, ginormous splinter removed from parker's foot. when it comes to parenting, i am the weakest link. and there should be some sort of rules for that. you know, the weak link shouldn't be the one that holds the newborn baby for shots... or holds the three year old down for splinter removal. in the waiting room, he looked at me, very seriously, "are dey gonna take it out?". "yes", i said. "I don't want dem take it out!". he stood up, pranced around in his little brown crocs and looked at me with such hopeful optimism, "but mommy... wook! i can still walk on it". [enter flash of light again]. had i said that before?

i was blinking hard - either from that now familiar, piercing light or the tears in my eyes - i'm not sure which. and in that moment, i couldn't tell if what i was explaining to Parker in three year old terms was meant for him or for myself: "you can't walk around forever with a splinter in your foot. it could become infected and the infection could spread... eventually, you wouldn't be able to walk on it at all. and yes, it is going to hurt... but it has to hurt before it can heal... and even though you can walk on it right now, you are going to be able to run again soon and it is going to feel sooo much better."

one band-aid and one spider-man sticker later, parker was running to the car. "see, parker, didn't mommy tell you? that's what trust is."

"Trust God from the bottom of your heart;

don't try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;

He's the one who will keep you on track."

- Proverbs 3:5-6 (The Message)

rainbows, butterflies and resting.

in the movie 'horton hears a who' there is a cute, fuzzy - albeit slightly off - creature named katie. all of horton's pupils have created imaginary worlds on their own clovers and katie famously describes hers by saying, “In my world, everyone’s a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies."

katie's imaginary world sounds oddly familiar.

perhaps its because i spent years creating a similarly subjective reality in my own life, desperately constructing a happy, fluffy facade. not only in order to hide who i really was but frankly, because i had no idea who i really was.

growing up in the bible belt, for years, i mentally equated "becoming a christian" with walking an aisle, praying the prayer, going to church. you do those things and you're in the gate. you know, for good. there was little talk of what happened after that. rarely a mention of a path, much less one that is paved with tribulation...

granted, words like tribulation and suffering are not prone to reeling people in. in fact, i'd have probably questioned myself as i bolted down the aisle the night i accepted Christ as my Savior, had i not heard him call my name.

in the years that followed, when life - real life and all its messiness began to unfold - those things, it seemed, were somewhat taboo to speak of. and when my life began to fall apart, i turned and ran from the ones - and most importantly, the One - that i should have been running to.

admittedly, i struggled with my identity for years. and the world was quick to supply a realm of faux wisdom regarding self-development: "be who you are"; "follow your heart"; "be true to yourself". such sweet lies. candy-coated half-truths.

it would be a very long time before i realized i had been asking the wrong question. the question was not "who am i?" - but "to whom do i belong?".

for years, i felt as though i was two different people. because i was. i would waste a lot of time trying to decide which one was "real", not realizing the truth is that the both were: i was one person when left to my own accord and an entirely different person during the seasons of my life when i was surrendered and seeking God. it seemed i was either running away from God or running to God and whoever i was in any given moment was solely determined by the direction i was traveling. what i didn't know - was that i was never going to be able to truly run away from the One who had called me His own. i believed, i really believed that if i ran fast enough, hard enough, far enough... eventually, He'd throw His hands up and come to the same conclusion that i had already, which is that i wasn't worth such an effort. we can't run away from God. we can only run to the end of ourselves.

in the naivete of my youth, i would've declared something along the lines of "yay, me! finally choosing the right path, finally doing the right thing...". but i see now - more clearly than ever - that it was His choosing and His doing all along.

"for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine." Isaiah 43:2

to whom i really belonged was decided before i was born and written across my heart that night in the spring of 1992. in the years that followed - even in the midst of my faithlessness, He remained faithful. and in those times when i was on the run from Him, refusing to utter His name, He was still calling mine...

Can you hear Him calling yours?

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (MT 11:28)

for the first time in my life, i am not running. i am resting.

a father's love...

my daughter: in her daddy's arms

february, 2004

my daughter is a daddy's girl and she isn't shy about saying so. "it's okay, mommy", she consoles, "because parker is a mama's boy". "it's more than just okay," i tell her. so much more...

i grew up visiting my father once a year. my mom married my step-father when i was seven and although i would grow to love him dearly in adulthood, we didn't have a relationship - or a real conversation for that matter - until after i had graduated from high school.

as a child, i cannot remember longing for a father. i do remember the longing for a sense of normalcy. and later on, for a sense of belonging. i carried them both into adulthood, silently and desperately trying to fill the hidden voids in my heart. striving to create a life that looked idyllic, filling my need for normalcy. and striving to attach to people, places and things in order to feel as though i belonged. waiting for wholeness. and falling deeper into despair when the emptiness remained.

the two most important relationships, my two covenant relationships - with God and with my spouse - struggled constantly. i both longed for and rejected their unconditional love, placing the three of us in a proverbial cycle of ebb and flow. in our humanness, we grew weary. but in His divinity, He remained relentless.

until at last, i laid down at His feet. and i emptied myself: my pursuit of the idyllic facade, my hope for belonging, my futile attempts of using everyone and everything as a filler for the holes in me and there, buried in the depths of me, my longing for the love of a father flowed out at last.

"I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor 6:18)

the eyes of my heart were opened and in it, i could see where i had written all over it, "unworthy". time and time again. like a wall covered in graffiti. . . and then washed clean.

chloe truly epitomizes the term "daddy's girl" more every day. and the feeling is mutual. these two delight in each other and it is a joy to watch. i am so very grateful that my children are growing up basking in the love of a father who demonstrates such steadfast love. earthly fathers are meant to be - and often become - a depiction of our Heavenly Father. watching my daughter interact with the kind of father i could have only dreamed about has changed my perception of my Heavenly Father and ultimately, enabled me to accept this love that i never knew, but always longed for.

it is not because of our worthiness - or lack thereof - but only by His grace that He calls us His own. and He calls us by name.

"To know God as our father - as our almighty, loving Father - is the highest, richest, and most rewarding aspect of our whole relationship with Him." J.I. Packer

a light unto my [narrow] path...

"Your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path."

Psalm 119:105

so yesterday morning, i woke up at 4:45 a.m. which, in and of itself, required every fiber of strength and discipline in my being. i was on my bike in spin class for a two hour ride by 5:15. i was grocery shopping [with kids in tow] by 8:30. we spent midday at the pool, had afternoon nap time and then spent the evening at vacation bible school. immediately following their bath and bedtime, i collapsed into my bed at 9:45... stuffed miserably full of pizza rolls, nachos and vanilla pudding that i'd washed down with some delicious, generic fruit punch. i then drifted off into a carb/sugar induced coma...

oh, and how i'd began the day with such good intentions.

as the Lord has drastically shifted the focus of my life over the last few weeks, someone asked me whether or not i would continue to write about health/fitness/weight loss. the answer is a resounding yes. for those of us who have struggled with issues of food and weight, it is the other narrow path. paved with obstacles, temptations, detours and failures. there are so many proverbial parallels between the two, i could analogize all day long about the difficulties and the discipline required to travel either of them on a daily basis.

as we grow in both maturity and experience on either narrow path, the obstacles and temptations begin to change in equal proportion. what would've once caused me to fall flat on my face now causes me to stumble slightly. what was once a boulder is now a pebble. the difficulty of the course never changes, but our perspective changes constantly giving way to what becomes our perseverance.

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning." (Lam 3:22-23) ESV

i've been quiet the last week or so. the Lord constantly reminds me of the verse in Psalms, which says, "Be still and know that I am God". deepening a walk with Him is difficult with a heart that is closed and a mouth that is always open.

open heart. closed mouth. i repeat this to myself like a mantra, each phrase with each step. the desire of my heart is to adhere to His path and abide in Him. having lost my way so many, many, hear me - many - times before, i have pondered and prayed about how i can walk differently. obviously, walking alone has been an unwise choice. left up to my own will, i seem to have an affinity for wandering... and darkness.

when i was choosing the photograph for the header of this blog, this is the one i chose initially:

darker and foggier, the path barely visible. my good friend christian was quick to point this out to me. "but it really does look like my path", i thought to myself. you know, shady. difficult to follow. creepy. no wonder i kept getting lost. "Lord, if only there were a light... " and i was reminded...

"Your word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path." Psalm 119:105

Our pastor, Dr. David Platt, once said that "God's word is the only means by which our minds can be transformed." it is also the means by which the narrow path can be transformed, from dark and desolate to filled with light.

amazing grace...

the video of my friend traylor and his wife melody's story of marriage, divorce and reconciliation. and one of amazing grace.

Story of Marriage, Divorce, and Reconciliation from Traylor Lovvorn on Vimeo.

the furious longing of God

i just finished this book. although, it isn't a book that you really ever "finish", but one that you read again and again and every time that you turn the last page, you find both your mouth and your heart wide open with awe. i'm at a loss for words, so i will use an excerpt:

"The wild, unrestricted love of God is not simply an inspiring idea. When it imposes itself on mind and heart with the stark reality of ontological truth, it determines why and at what time you get up in the morning, how you pass your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, and who you hang with; it affects what breaks your heart, what amazes you and what makes your heart happy. The revolutionary thinking that God loves me as I am and not as I should be requires radical rethinking and profound emotional readjustment."

~ Brennan Manning

(music can be paused at the bottom of the blog to watch video)

maybe if i write...

one of my favorite songs by mandi mapes is titled "maybe if i sing" and the chorus says this: "maybe if i sing to a crowd of strangers, maybe somehow i would see, that the war is won, look how far we've come, did i forget all the times that you carried me?".

so, maybe if i write...

i've been thinking - and praying - and thinking some more about this path or rather, all the various paths, i have taken thus far in life. i had decided that i must be one of God's most stubborn children or most selfish and while that has certainly been true at times, it seems the majority of the detours and wrong turns are attributed to some sort of spiritul attention deficit disorder. i am so easily distracted, so easily drawn away, so oblivious to details that i've often found myself in the thick of the wilderness before i've even realized i'm not traveling any specific path.

i grew up in the woods. literally and figuratively. we had a literal beaten path that we could walk from our house to the mailbox and main road without having to use the long, winding driveway. i walked this path frequently in the mornings and afternoons to catch the bus. years later, i would walk it at night, sneaking out after my parents went to bed, to catch a ride with friends.

one could attribute my fearlessness of walking through the woods at night to the naivete of youth or lack of common sense. i prefer, of course, to think of it as the former - although, frankly, it doesn't seem that i've grown completely out of either.

one of those nights, it was darker than usual, and within a couple of steps, i was completely off the path and in the midst of thick brush and total darkness. suddenly, i wanted to go home. i stood still for a while, hoping to hear a passing car on the main road and move in that direction. silence. i looked back in what i thought was the direction of the house hoping to see a light. darkness. instinctively, i wanted to call for my parents. i wondered if they could hear me from where i was. but the consequences of their being awakened by the screams of their teenage daughter in the woods was more than i could bare. after all, i was already on restriction - which is why i was in this predicament to begin with.

more silence. more darkness. more longing for home, my home, my bed... my mommy. finally, a light. two of them, actually. headlights steady in the distance. it was my friends, waiting to pick me up. i made my way towards it, blindly, pushing branches out of the way, tripping over brush, getting scraped by briars. by the time i made my way out of the woods and into the driveway, i was dirty, tired, scratched and bleeding. i'm not sure where were going, but it couldn't have been worth the journey. only i couldn't see that. you know, because of the naivete of youth and all.

that story is a literal recount of one night in my early teenage years, but its also a figurative tale of how a couple of steps off the narrow path have led to many nights, months, sometimes years, of darkness, longing for home, often too fearful of the consequences to call for help.

this is my last postcard from adulthood and first of many from the narrow path. knowing myself, it will take more determination and perseverence and focus than i have ever known. God enables us to walk by faith, but we still have to learn the discipline of determination and focus.

so, maybe if i write...

this is where i will write about the journey. the walk. what will sometimes be, invariably, the crawl. and about all of the things He teaches me, reminds me of - and how He changes me - along the way.

change is gonna come.

changes are coming to the blog. new design. new domain. i have been wrestling with whether or not i would make such changes and then received the email that the domain name is about to expire. oh, the irony. along with so many other things.

stay tuned.

the narrow path home

i visited my Traylor's blog to read the story of how, after six years of divorce, God could ressurect their marriage and bring healing and reconciliation. i expected to be inspired, to have my hope renewed. what i didn't expect, is that through their story, God would speak directly to my heart and shatter walls of disbelief. he recently added part two of their story and this is what i wrote in response:

"so i woke up at four a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. my default, rather than grab a book and turning on a light, is to grab my phone and browse my facebook homepage to see if anyone else is awake, updating their facebook status... or catch up on all the status updates i missed while sleeping. and i saw your update about Act II, which i had been eagerly awaiting. within a few paragraphs, i was sitting straight up in my bed.

i think we might be the same person...

your story is my story. only names and circumstances are changed. i, too, was always preoccupied with my reputation, striving to maintain the beautiful facade i had created by having built a seemingly perfect life for myself, one that was pleasing for others and i assumed - for God - to see. of course, my specific struggle was not the same as yours, but i was caught in a destructive cycle which i seemed incapable of breaking free from.

i know the helplessness, the self-hatred, the disgust, the shame - the downward spiral into a black hole where there are no longer shadows because there is no longer any light to cast them.

i know what it is like to feel so powerless against something that is destroying every facet of your life and every fiber of your being and have others judge you in the midst of it. i know the lies the enemy tells you during that time: lies about who you are, who you have always been, who you will always be. lies about your inability to change, your inability to do what is right. lies about giving up and giving in and learning to "accept" that this is who you are and that this is the way things will always be. the ultimate lie that you aren't good enough for your spouse. you aren't good enough for your God.

we went through that vicious cycle more times than i can count, each time more brutal than the last. until there was nothing left - until we were both standing in the midst of the rubble of our life together and each waving our own white flags of utter defeat. and we both retreated.

but, God...

oh, "but God..." how i love that phrase. He remains in relentless pursuit of my heart and even in the clutchers of marital failure, He has never let me go - constantly calling me unto Himself. i do not know how our story ends. a wise counselor once told us that divorce isn't the end of marriage. remarriage is. however our story ends, i believe, now more than ever, that God will be glorified through it.

and so, this is where i begin. my future unknown. i'm reluctant to say with any amount of certainty that God will call us to reconciliation. but i can say with all certainty that He has called me - and is calling me still - to seek Him and only Him. and that is exactly what i am going to do, from this moment on, as i walk this narrow path home."

facades, mirages and reconciliations. part two.

i relented. God persisted.

this is the theme of my life, and of my walk with Christ.

post-divorce, what i wanted from God - if He was, in fact, not going to "leave me alone", was for Him to give me the grace and the peace to move forward with life. i wanted to date. i wanted to establish some level of normalcy. i wanted my marriage - and my divorce - in the past. of course, often what we want from God and what He wants for us are two completely different things. everytime i allowed Him in, the message to my heart was the same. always the same and yet, always opposite of what i wanted for myself.

i began dating, an act of willful disobedience. like most acts of disobedience and diversion, it was fun and exciting... for a while. but with time, the collective experiences of post-divorce dating left me, ultimately, disappointed. and exhausted. and perhaps more than either of those two things, empty. so eerily empty. He was definitely confirming that i did not need to be seeking relationships with other men. period.

c.s. lewis once said that we need to be reminded rather than instructed. and reminded, i was... of how i had so easily returned to my pattern of using other people and other things to fill the gaping hole in my heart and soul that He longed to fill.

facades, mirages, and reconciliations. part one.

it has been three years since the walls of my life and my marriage started crumbling. we had laid a very faulty foundation on which we built our life together. and while we are both guilt of having laid a poor foundation, i am the one who rushed construction, throwing up walls here and there. masking imperfections. sweeping dirt under rugs. constructing a beautiful facade in which to hide. i did this with my marriage. my life. my heart. more of a mirage than a facade, because what others saw was not just deceptively beautiful, it ceased to exist as you moved closer to it.

after a divorce, there are reconciliations to be made. with family. with friends. with God. with ourselves. out of our great love for our children, we easily reconciled our relationship to one of friendship and as co-parents. reconciliation with God wouldn't come so easily. for either of us.

the end of our marriage was a battle. emotionally. spiritually. we had been caught in a repetitive cycle of trying and failing and giving up and trying again. like my relationship with Christ, chris and i went through that vicious cycle - of confession and repentance and then, inevitably, failure - my failure - more times than i can count, each time more brutal than the one before. until there was nothing left - nothing for him to give - nothing for me to take. until we were both standing in the midst of the rubble of our life together and each waving our own white flags of utter defeat. and then, we retreated. he, into anger and bitterness, and me, further into darkness and shame and failure.

the finality of divorce came as a great relief. i now envision two soldiers at the end of a battle, barely alive and waving their white flags of defeat and surrender. relief washes over them as they realize they are actually going to live. that the war is over. but this relief is temporary and as it fades, the reality of the loss sets in. wounds begin to heal, but the magnitude of the loss will remain and often, becomes unbearable to face. so we don't pause to reflect. we rush to move forward. to put as much time and space between ourselves and the past as we can, hoping the distance of the memory will somehow diminish the pain it created.

i think, in some ways, i naively believed that God would somehow, finally leave me alone now. that i had somehow disappointed Him past the point of His forgiveness. i would be own my own, able to choose my own path for my life. it was my first legitimate taste of so-called 'freedom' and yet, it didn't feel like freedom at all. in fact, it felt just the opposite.

for the last year, i have busied myself with life, my kids, with friends, exercise... with anything and everything i could. i moved at a pace that never allowed for a quiet moment. i couldn't bare the thought of lying still. i was terrified that of what that moment would bring. and of what i would feel. i didn't want to feel anything. i used everything and everyone in my life to self-medicate and avoid anything below the surface. if i was hurting, i wouldn't let anyone, least of all myself, become aware of it.

needless to say, no one can move at such a pace for too long. and the moment that i paused to reflect, to allow myself to see even a glimpse of my own heart, it was even worse than i'd feared. and the heartache was compounded by the resounding reality of finality. it was too late.

i was divorced. i was a single mother. these are the circumstances - no, the consequences - that i would have to live with, that my children would have to live with. indefinitely. maybe forever.

i did what i do best: candy coated this harsh reality for myself and for others, making it shiny and sweet. i consoled myself with how much worse things could have been or could be still. and this worked, for a time - from time to time. but it was clear to me, as it had been for years, that God really was not going to leave me alone. "i - we- have made a terrible mistake", i finally, reluctantly confessed to Him - and to myself - one night in prayer. yes, you have. it wasn't an audible answer, of course. nor was it harsh, but more of a simple, emphathetic nodding - the same way i imagine a real father, like chris, would comfort his daughter, like our chloe, after realizing she had made a tragic, life-altering choice.

He ached not only for me, but with me and i felt it. but i also felt something else. something that had been foreign to me for some time. hope. "hope only in Me", He said, "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." (Romans 12:12 NIV)

joyful. patient. faithful. hope. affliction. prayer. i contemplated these words. affliction. check. i had one out of six down... i'd have to work on the others...

wandering. and wondering.

i have been wandering. and wondering. and wondering about my wandering... for so very long. i am tired from the wandering. i am weary from the wondering. it has been a vicious cycle for half of my life. i was fifteen the night i met Jesus Christ, sobbing face down at the altar of a tiny little church in rural alabama. conviction - although i hadn't yet identified it as such - had rankled me to my core that night and when an invitation was given, i was surprised at how fast i bolted down the aisle and into His arms.

i was not raised "in church" and yet this Jesus seemingly knew me, called me unto Himself and that night, although i had invited him into my heart, i didn't fully surrender my heart to Him. i wanted Him to have part of it. a corner of it, maybe. i wanted Him to be a part of my life. i couldn't comprehend that He wanted to be my life and my life be in Him. and thus, His pursuit of me was not over. it was only beginning.

for sixteen years, i would run. and rebel. and hide. wandering. wondering. each time, until i came to the end of myself and it was there, He would be. still. still calling me. still faithful to me. at times, His relentless pursuit of my heart was annoying. i was so undeserving of such. but most of the time, this expression of faithfulness was simply overwhelming. i would repent and return and after a time, inevitably run. again. until His calling and my conviction were unbearable. brennan manning calls this "the furious longing of God". and it is also the furious loving of God, calling by God and pursuing of God...

each time, i would have to wonder how long i would have to wander before i could walk the narrow path home with firmness in each step. how long would i tarry in my stubbornness and selfishness before i allowed God to transform my heart into one of patience and perseverence. patience. perseverance. among the many life lessons - and traits - i've needed and still have yet to learn, these are among the two greatest. even as my fingers type the letters of the words on the keyboard and my eyes see them as words on a screen, there is the longing in my heart to know them as reality in my life and even in this instant, i know that is His desire and His purpose in all of this cycling through wandering and wondering.

how much would i have to lose before i repent and return and walk, not in begrudging obedience, but with firm steps of faith, with longing to get closer to Him with each step, with the same furious love that He has displayed for me? everything. the answer is everything. i would have to lose everything. that was the depth of my stubbornness and my selfishness and of my sin. i am no longer a fifteen year old girl sobbing face down at the altar of a church. but oh, how i wish that i were. instead, i am thirty two year old woman, sobbing face down on the floor of her bedroom. but the fifteen year old me, she is still there. aching for the love of a father and desperately wanting to go home, wherever home really is.

i, like innumerable others through the ages, have tried to fill the gaping void in my heart and in my soul with everything else. refusing the love of the heavenly Father, refusing to abide in Him and despite the knowledge of Him, the intermittent loving of Him and consistent loving from Him, we wander. and wonder. and somewhere along the way, we believe the lie that we can really do this thing called life on our own. and we try. and fail. and try. and fail. until we find ourselves too tired to try anymore.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Mt 11:28 NIV

i have played the role of prodigal daughter more times than i can count. seventy times seven, at least. never returning under the same circumstances, but each time, full of hope that i am returning to Him for the last time... never to wander - or wonder - again. and this time is no different, perhaps because i am no different. but this time, oh, this time... when i turned around, i didn't feel the need to go back simply because i had to or only because He was [still] calling me to... it was - it is - because i am longing to and after so many years of searching, i know - i really, really know - and believe with all my heart that in Him is where i belong, to Him is to whom I belong and with Him is where i long to be.

"Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you'll remain intimately at home in my love." JN 15:9-10 MSG

concept to completion

mandi mapes attends my church and is simply awe-inspiring to hear. she has an album coming out later this year... i absolutely love this song. her testimony - and her music - is filled with the kind of grace and redemption that we all desperately need reminding of...

Concept to Completion: Mandi Mapes from Jason Wallis on Vimeo.

crayons in the carpet. and other things.

personalities captured perfectly

i was trying to clean up crayon marks out of my carpet last night, with tears in my eyes. there was a time when the thought of crayon marks on carpets and walls would've made me cry tears of a different angst. but these tears were ones of gratefulness for the little hands that scribbled the pale blue lines.

"crayons in the carpet" is a phrase i say often. when scraping play-doh out of my kitchen rug or silly putty out of parker's comforter or throwing away one of my children's new outfits after just one wear because it is irretrievably ruined. perfection in parenthood does not exist. to strive for it is simply, chasing after the wind. a futile, empty chase. mishaps and accidents that would have left me horrified pre-parenthood are simply crayons in the carpet to me now...

i started using this phrase after rick burgess shared a story about crayons at his three year old son's memorial service. they had instructed bronner countless times, like we all do, not to color on the carpet. he told a story of how, after bronner had died, he walked into his office to see his crayons scattered on the carpet. he intentionally stepped on them, crushing and grinding them into the carpet. he paused for a moment and then said, "i couldn't care less about that stupid carpet". and from that moment on, neither could i.

there are countless things that God changed in my heart the day i heard that message - this heart-wrenching change of perspective was just one of them.

of course, i don't advocate carpet coloring, or wall coloring, or furniture coloring and i still reprimand for such... but i don't shed tears over material posessions and i don't have a total come apart when something gets destroyed. not anymore. its all just crayons in the carpet.

but even more than that, i was reminded of how - in the not so distant future - there will not be crayons marks to scrub or play-doh to scrape. chloe, who starts kindergarten this fall, is already beginning her ascent out of preschool and into all things "big girl". "don't you want to watch barney", i ask... "or blues clues?". .. she laughs. but i am not joking. and my parker, my carpet artist, is following closely behind in her footsteps, shunning such preschool characters for dinosaurs and spiderman and all things superhero related. it makes my stomach turn when people tell me at every turn how very fast it all goes by, as if i'm not wretchedly, painfully aware...

we are always caught off guard by unexpected tragedy. in the wake of sudden death, an enormous part of the grief is realizing how much we had taken for granted and contemplating how we would do things differently... or how we will do things differently. as a mother, every time we hear about the death of a child we are shaken to our core. we tell ourselves that we'll do better, to live in every moment, to live without regrets... but the truth is, we can't live every moment allowing ourselves to grasp the magnitude of such a loss, because even the theoretical pain is too much to bare. a few moments spent scrubbing crayons out of my carpet is reminder enough of how grateful i am for the little, albeit mischievous, scribbling hands...