Five Minute Fridays: Release

Well, here it is another Friday.  I've only linked up once before, I think, cuz I can't seem to remember how and EVERY Friday is too much for this old gal.  But today it is release.

Release.  I am surprised that this is the theme this week.  But really I shouldn't be.  I simply LOVE to see God work things together in my heart before I realize He is there working.

You see, just today, as I was praying over many things, and many people I try to remind Him to take notice of, I was moved to release.

Release the worry about whether the VBS drama I am in charge of will work out okay or not.

Release the fear that the grumpies I experienced yesterday with my fussy ggirl will raise its ugly head next week when I'm trying to be an example to my ggirls and my actors.

Release the fear that The Pain will raise its ugly head and try to thwart God through me!

For all these things have come in the past.  All these things have come and God has always shown up.  And all has been as He desires it to be.

I know I love when He pushes me to my limits, physically, emotional and spiritually, then when I can't hold on any longer, He pries my fingers loose.  And when I free-fall, He is there beneath me (above me, around me, and always IN ME!) to carry the weight.

Release.  It does my soul good.

So join me with your 5 minutes of from the hip writing!



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All of Me?

"Here I am, Lord.  Send me!"

I have shouted those words over and over in my heart.  Missionaries come to share what they are doing out there in the world of the lost, and I beg God to send me.

Teens with such awesome faith travel to foreign lands and come home to share it with me.  And I beg God, "Please!  Send me!"

Then in His own time, in that still small voice, He shakes His head and says, "Not this time."

Have you ever wanted to serve God so fully that you shout to Him to use you, but He quietly refuses.  Or so it seems.

I have always believed Isaiah 40:31.

"Those who wait upon the LORD

Will gain new strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary."

I have believed these precious words.  I have waited.  And waited.  And waited.

But I have not waited unproductively.  I once heard a lesson on this waiting, that it is an anxious-for-the- arrival kind of waiting.  A running to the window every few seconds to see if it (they) have arrived.  Like waiting for company.

And that is the definition of the word waiting here in Isaiah 40:31.  The Hebrew word is qavah.  And the definition of it is "to wait, look for, hope, expect" (Stong's).

I know this kind of waiting.  Whenever guests are expected at our home, I clean and cook and clean some more.  I pace, I sit, I check the driveway.  Impatience personified.

I would be in trouble if the verse said to wait patiently for the Lord.  Patience.  Not so much.

One year ago I felt a tugging at my heart about my "service" to the Lord.  He was saying it was time to stop striving, to stop doing for Him, and just wait.  So I, more like we, hubby and I, resigned from youth work and began a period of waiting.

Again, remember, I am not good at patience.  But He kept reminding me that it is not my service He wanted, but me.

I figured okay I'll pray and wait and wonder.  In the mean time, I better have my foot looked at since I could no longer walk a block without pain.  I figured it was some type of strain and that I needed different walking shoes.

X-rays revealed nothing.  Confining my foot in one of those bulky, ortho, walking boots was my next step.

Okay.  I'm waiting.  Guess I can limp around in that.  

Ortho boots are not easy to get on and off, and since it was my right foot, that is exactly what I had to do if I wanted to drive anywhere alone.

Guess what?  I decided not to run errands during the week.  It was so much easier to stay put.

So I waited.  And waited.  6 weeks turned into 8 by the time I got an MRI (because the boot didn't help!).  Patience wearing very thin as the holidays came.  Passed.

Then the results of all the waiting.  A torn tendon in my foot.  Treatment:  surgery.

Now, I'm not new to surgery.  I've had a number of them, mostly simple, 2 rather intense.  And I know my body, the one with fibromyalgia.  The one that does not handle pain well.

Surgery.  This is not the type of service I had had in mind when I said, "Here I am, Lord.  Send me!"  I had meant, here I am, healthy and strong and raring to go and move mountains for You!  

And He is saying, "All of you?  You give me all of you?"  yes.  "Then this is what I'm calling for now."

So I wait.  I wait for the date of the surgery.  I wait to deal with crutches and some scooter thingy and pain and not seeing my ggirls as often.

Did I really expect His work for me to be fun and games?  Well, I had come from youth ministry with wild games of chase, over-night laser questing, and motivating summer camps.  Not to mention FOOD!

And now?  

I truly believe that there is no better place to be than in the center of God's will for you.  Someone said that once and I've thought of it often.

So I truly believe that strength will come as I wait.  I'll do the next thing, as Elisabeth Elliot wrote.

And I'll remind God--I'm not much of a patient. 

Forsaken

Forsaken.

Strong's Dictionary uses words like abandoned, secluded, alone.

This is the truth that God amped up for me this past Easter.

But let me start from, well, the beginning?  No, more like the middle, or even maybe more closer to the end of this revelation.

God the perfect Teacher took me from what I knew to a dive deep into the unknown.  Yet I had not known that I did not know it.

The known:  Jesus, my loving Savior, was one with my Father and His Spirit.  One.  A more one-ness than I have with my hubby of 42 years.  A one-ness so complete that they can be 3 in 1.  Words fail me.

Yet the Father asked the Son to break away, go away, leave.

Go down to earth, Son, and live among these hard-hearted people.  But you will have to give up your special-ness, your deity, not totally, but just so there is room for you to be All-Man and All-God.

The first slice.

Feel what mankind feels.  Be tired, hungry, crabby, joyful, loved, tempted.  All of it.  Experience every single thing that humans experience.  And live it like a human for 30 years.

The second slice.

Then top it off, be obedient to Me, Your Father, and give up all of Your deity.  That part of You that is God, perfect, holy.  Give up  ALL.  OF.  GOD-ness.  All of it. And take on the world's sin, ugliness, unholiness.

As a mom of four girls, I guess I always knew that I would have to give them up to their hubbies, leaving behind family, our family, and making a new one-ness with their hubbies, their children.  New families.

But when the time came to let go, I found some easier to release than others.  The oldest, though it should have been hardest, was easiest because I didn't understand the pain of separation.  How does a woman hold a child in her womb, near her heart, and then rip that child away without leaving scars?

I just didn't see how it would effect me.  Later.

So each daughter-child became woman-child and bride-child and finally mother-to-child herself.  And a mother's heart bleeds tears of loneliness and joy.

Did the God Father feel that same joy mixed with the aloneness?  I know the Son did.  His words have echoed through time, "My God!  My God!  Why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Jesus sliced up, dished out, emptied:  FORSAKEN.

I can only imagine the pain of that separation.  Forsaken.  No longer 3-in-1, but 1 minus 2 leaving less than 1.   One ripped from the Triune, bleeding and in pain.  And broken and suffering and ... evil.

I wasn't ready to learn this truth before now.  God made it so very real to me this year.  But first He removed all those things I had been clinging to.  He took "my" ministry to youth.  He took my mother.  He took my health.  He left me alone.

But NOT forsaken.  Not abandoned.  At least not by Him.  He was ever with me, filling me, guiding me with a welcoming light into His words for me.

And when I seemed to be at my lowest, He turned His light upon the truth of forsaken-ness, how He HAD to turn away, abandon, forsaken His Son, His other part, His Beloved that I might have life and have it abundantly.

Sisters, our God is holy.  Without sin.  And in His holiness.  He can not be near sin, unholiness.  And so when His Son delivered Himself up for me, for us, Jesus took on our ugliness.  Our sin.  "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf" 2 Cor. 5:21.

What love the Son must have for His Father that He would "deliver Himself up for ME"! (Gal. 2:20).  And what love for me who did not deserve it.

Did He know beforehand what pain there was in being forsaken?  I'm not sure.  But forsaken, left alone, separated from the Father, is what He willing did.

I thank my God for the fact that I have a part of Him in me.  If I did not have His Spirit in me, could I truly learn about being forsaken and endure it?  I think not.

Hello again dear friends

I can't believe that its been 4 months of silence from me!

How did that happen?  Where was I?

As I wonder on those words, I realize that its been "quite a year".  Not a year of busyness, commitments, events.  Rather a year of stepping back, sitting quiet, wondering what's next, waiting.  Waiting.

I've always thought of waiting as an active waiting.  I've heard it compared to waiting for a long unseen relative to arrive.  You know, that anxiousness of trying to focus on my quilting as I check the driveway every second or 2.

But my waiting this past school year has been a quiet, "be still and know that I am Lord" kind of waiting.

I'll let you in on a secret.  I'm not good with that kind of waiting.

The be still waiting does not seem to have a purpose to it.  There is no goal.  No promise of finding treasure in the end.

I know.  I was missing something in the verse.  Something important.

(Oops.  How did those cuties get in there?  My youngest four grandbabies.  I know, so cute!)

And God, in His infinite wisdom, said I needed to be still.  I needed to set aside all the strivings of good things to focus--on Him.  For the verse does say, "and know that I am God".

At first I wasn't ready for it.  It took Him 5 months of preparation before my heart could accept the quiet.  I had ignored His leading and prayed, "but what about this, Lord?"  Each time He countered with a quiet, even a longing for me, "Am I not enough?"

Am I not enough?  The great I AM, is He not enough?  Was I crazy! Did He need to ask?  I guess so.

I have always felt that loving my Lord was an agape love, an active love, an I-will-go-to-the-ends-of-the-world-or-die-trying kind of love.

Instead, He has been teaching me that it is a "I-will-go-to-the-ends-of...ME love".  A give it up, give me up, empty me of me, so He could find room in my heart.

I long to jump in and begin banging the keyboard with all the ways God has been moving in my life in the past year.

But not yet. Some of it is still a little raw, painful, tear-jerking. Right now as I remember this year it seems to be about me and not Him.  And I want it to be all about Him.

Thus, I will wait.  Waiting produces patience--eventually.   Perhaps in future blogs I can slowly, bit by bit, explain how He quieted me and prepared me for a season of just Him.  Perhaps.

But coming soon, in this blog near you, a recounting of death, death, life, death, and a love story.  So stay tuned.

For the Joy of it

Sunday was an awesome time of worship at our church as we met as one and let our hearts be stirred by the children.

We no longer have wee ones except of the grand kind.  But when the children sing there is always something, someone to watch.

There is the one in the front row who bows after the first song.

Or he who begins to cry because worshiping a Big God who created the world is scary  and all these people are watching.

But my joy came, even as tears threatened to blur my vision, at the multitude of little ones singing.  Their voices joined together as one, or in harmony a little tentatively.  But there was a multitude.

You see our little church has been having some growing pains.  A good problem to have, right?

We began a building project to ease the tight fit.  But building projects seem to always cause some to move on to the already built churches.

And many have moved.  Some leavings seemed to rip my heart out at the thought that I may never see them again, life being what it is.

Some were easier as they moved on to do missions in new towns in new ways at new churches.  These also hurt to think about but they seemed to heal more quickly.

I had begun to think that somehow our church had a hole that was oozing the blood of its members.  A hole I could not see nor knew how to fix.  Except through prayer.  For prayer eases all the pains, fixes the hurts, restores the Body of Christ.

But just as I was wondering who else might be leaving, there they were!  All those children!  Filling up our new larger stage.  Voices booming out to fill the rafters in sweet song!

The Advent candle for this 3rd week is JOY.  We sing of it, "Joy. Joy. Joy."  God's JOY is not that happy feeling of giddiness, but a contentedness that all is right with life, even when life is upside down.  The Gospel is JOY, God's JOY.

Ann Voskamp said on her vlog that the opposite of joy is not pessimism, but unbelief.  JOY, God's JOY, is the Gospel.

Maybe these 2 points don't come together in your mind.  For some reason they do in mine.  Just as I was uncertain of the ripple coming out of my church, hope was restores.  And with hope comes JOY, God's JOY.  And I can exhale in praise.

Unwrapping Tuesdays prompted by http://www.chattingatthesky.com/2013/12/17/tuesdays-unwrapped-15/ and http://loriharris.me/2013/12/17/on-showing-up-and-god-given-swagger-tuesdays-unwrapped/

When Service is Just Him

Service.  Ministry.  Mission.  Using my spiritual gift(s) in service to God is His plan for this world.

I guess I have always believed that true happiness comes in finding my spiritual gift and then using it to the utmost for Him.

Yes, that's what I thought.  Sounds lofty, doesn't it.  An honor to use my gift given to me by the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to honor the whole of the Trinity, especially God the Father.

And so I have served:  teaching Sunday school, running a mom's group, writing stuff, producing newsletters, drama work.  Doing.  Striving?  Yes, at times.  But always looking to the next meeting, program, event to fill some unnoticed need in my heart.

Until this summer.

Six years ago He called me (& Hubby) to serve in middle school ministry.  A new wild adventure to let go of the stuffy adult world and play, pray, and sing with some mighty awesome youths!  We felt we were finally in the midst of God's calling for us together--even though we were both in our 50's!  

We were amazed to be used by God to touch the lives of kids who are in the in-between stage, between being children and not adolescents yet.  We loved the singing with actions and praise and many woo-hoos!!  We enjoyed the games--maybe, well, at first.  Each year has shown us that we are too old to dart and reach and tag and run without feeling it afterwards.  

And we loved those kids who could feel comfortable enough to say what was on their minds and in their hearts, who felt safe, not threatened, not judged.  Great questions!  Great sharing!  Great love poured out from God through us into these middle-kids.

Until this summer.

It wasn't a sudden slap on the head or a removal of any strength left in us.  But it was a feeling of discontent.  (See my post The Secret of Contentment)  It was a slow assurance that our time with youth was up.  Too Soon!! My heart cried.  Yet the assurance was there.

Yet, I'm in a doldrum.  "Doldrums" is defined by Webster as "a belt of calms at the Equator".  It's a stillness at the center of the world that sailors hate.  It means being adrift for hours or days, waiting for the next gust of wind to fill the sails and propell them onward.

Some ships could row out of the doldrums, toiling and sweating and striving to get back into the "shipping lanes" that would relieve their tiredness.

But rowing, toiling, striving to move back, forward into the winds is not what God wants from me.  At least I don't think so.

Then, today, July 23, Sara at

Every Bitter Thing is Sweet sara@everybitterthingissweet.com wrote about this very thing.

 "The only thing I, personally, can uniquely do on this earth — that no one else can — is worship Him through my life. This worship is a construct of God’s, that in some seasons may look like keeping our hands still but our heart alive, and in some seasons it’s crazy messy with the dirt of another’s life in your story.

"This is a call to the mamas and the sick and the broken and the ones who, like I was once, are having their insides re-wired: you aren’t sidelined from mission — nor do you need to buck-up and make yourself do it to feel like you matter — you are invited. Now. To have private stories of encountering the living and active God that may, at times, make your public life look like it lacks impact."

Her words spoke to my heart.

If God is benching me, us, from youth ministry, then maybe it is a call to return to worship with Him in a more intimate way.

For like Sara writes, I am uniquely created to worship God in me.  Emanuel, God with us.  In my heart, in my very being.  He resides there, here, with me, next to me.

Liz Curtis Higgs is another favorite blogger.  I especially enjoy her weekly verse study.  You can find her at www.lizcurtishiggs.com.  Last week she wrote this:

“'The Lord your God is with you',… Zephaniah 3:17

"This is everything we need to know: his name, his relationship with us, and the assurance of his presence. The God of the universe, the one who claimed you long before you claimed him, is 'in your midst' (LEB). I’m telling you, he’s “right there with you” (CJB). Right. There."

Yes, He is right here with me.  And so I wait and worship.

No Room at the Inn?

It has been awhile since I wrote.  I think the gap occurred when my mother became ill and then passed into heaven.  At that time I did not seem to have any words in me to share.

Now, though, with the coming of Christmas, I have been immersing my heart in the old, old stories of the season.  But with new eyes.

First, let me highly recommend my 2 fav bloggers' Advent books.  The 1st is by Liz Curtis Higgs, entitled The Women of Christmas.  It is an awesome new look at the lives of three women from the first Advent of Christ.  (http://www.lizcurtishiggs.com/)

The second is a devotional by Ann Voskamp, The Greatest Gift.  It has 25 days of devotions that follow along with the Jesse Tree. (http://www.aholyexperience.com/)  Both of these women have a wonderful way with words that I cherish and appreciate.

So why this title "No Room at the Inn?'?  Because as I have been reliving the Christmas story I have been stopped cold by the thought that the Creator God has no room at the inn.  That the people of the story are saying no to their Creator!

Mary and Joseph are newly wed.  They are young, Mary much younger than I had thought she was.  They have traveled to the City of David, better known as Bethlehem, because God had stirred the heart of the ruler in those parts to count all the people.  This required them to travel about 100 miles to Joseph's family's town.

They must have walked, for few people could afford even a mule then.  I wonder if the roads were dusty and dry.  Or were they packed down hard by the many travelers ahead of them?  Maybe it was wet and muddy?  All I really know is that they were walking and walking while Mary's womb held God Himself.  (Gives me goosebumps!)

This weary couple knocked at the door of the inn as the noisy throngs partied about them.  Party, you ask.  I think there were some who viewed this required "vacation" as one big party.  A reunion for many with family they had not seen for some time.

Mary, young, pregnant with God's Only Son, stands and waits with hope that they will find room at the inn.  But alas, no room.  Perhaps they were late-comers to the reunion and their kinsmen had taken all the rooms.

Or, maybe, the innkeeper was a greedy person.  He had guests of varying status in life, some much richer than others, as seen by their fine robes.  Others not so well off, but still able to pay.  But this young couple?  He could tell that they could not pay as well as others.  Maybe he even considered turning someone out of their rooms.  But this couple could not begin to match the rent of those he already had.

Could Mary hear the paying customers behind the innkeeper's back?  Did they acknowledge her state and sympathize with her?  Poor girl.  Or did they turn their backs and drink their wine in disinterest?  Could not one of them offer to sleep in the dining room so the young couple could have a room?

The rich ones would not have even thought of such a thing.  Make room for this poor couple?  We don't move over for anyone!  Or maybe they feared being out in the street.  So many people, so many thieves and purse-cuts.  No, they could not give up the safety of their room.

And for a moment I am looking with angel-eyes at this scene:  the darkening sky contrasted with the fire burning brightly behind the innkeeper; the joy and noise from inside verses the eerie quietness outside in the street; the rested and well-fed guests highlighted behind the weary, even hungry couple.  God's Son, Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, rejected even before His birth.

I tell you we too fit into this picture.  When Jesus was preparing to die, He told His disciples that He was going to have to leave so that the Father could send His Helper to them.  He would die a dishonorable death crucified on a cross, the only charge against Him?  Our sins.  My sins.  Your sins.  To pay on our behalf.

He did not stay dead, but rose to new life.

Then God sent His Spirit to come and live in us if we only believe.

"...because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5).  

And "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?" (1Cor. 6:19).

Is there room in your heart for this "God-with-us"?  Most of us would not make room for Him, steeped in the Me-Generation that we are.  We fear that we will have to give up something.  Money.  Jobs.  Comfort. Self-sufficiency.  Safety.  Free time.

Yet Jesus said, "I stand at the door and knock" (Rev. 3:20)  He wants to know if there is room in your Heart's Inn?