Bedtime Revelations

Well I haven’t written in a long time but I had really neat moment this weekend, or two depending on how you look at it.

Oftentimes, I get my revelations or whispers or whatever you want to call it, while I am laying with my son at his bedtime. There in the dark, quiet room, snuggled up to the amazing gift that God sent to us. I think it’s probably the calmest I am throughout a normal day. I don’t know if calmest is the proper English but I’m going with it.
Anyway, I was laying there thinking. I’d been praying some about what we are supposed to do with some changes going on in our church. We go to church about 66 miles from where we live. If you’ve read my previous entries, I’ve talked about it, yep we still commute there! We were in a small group and up until recently the groups met right after service there on the premises. That has now changed to meeting at a home throughout the week. The only group that we could even consider going to would be our old group since it meets Sundays so we are already out there, but the timing means we’d have to waste about 2-3 hours after church somewhere and most of the members are older/retired so we were concerned about our son not having any other kids around and being super bored during the 2 hour meeting. It kind of looks like there isn’t a place for us. I’d drive a second day but not everyone is on board with that and that’s understandable. I’m a stay at home mom and my husband has a long work commute. I get why he wouldn’t necessarily want to add even more to his weekly travels. Our levels of devotion to church in general are different right now, I’m sure that isn’t an uncommon thing in families. We’ve had some opportunities to get involved in things closer to home but something always seems to close those doors before we ever walk through them. I tend to take that as a sign. I truly believe that God closes and opens doors for a reason.
Our pastor has also been encouraging us to find “community” in the area we live in. It's how you know he’s one of the good ones, he’s more concerned about us than about his church’s attendance rolls.
So, this is where we get to what went through my mind in those quiet moments this Saturday night. I have always felt like we are where we are meant to be but always kind of questioned why God would have us move out here but travel so far and be so split from the people we enjoy being around. So, the first thing I got was how comfortable and even lazy we have become regarding church and faith in America. It’s something that has been talked about a lot but I was reminded about how, in other countries, people go to great lengths and at great peril in order to meet and worship together. When you have a church on every corner and you are free to come and go you get more interested in convenience than calling. I have even been asked why we drive so far when there must be churches all over the place near us. There definitely are. We have one we could walk to if we wanted to. So, should our attendance be based on convenience? I don’t think so. I think we go where we are told to go. I get the same answer when I ask God about the small group situation. It makes for a very long day if we do the Sunday group or it requires an additional commute for one of the others. Ugh such a hardship. While people in China are hiding in basements or being imprisoned or killed but they still do it anyway. That’s the difference between our comfortable faith, our “only if it’s convenient” attitude here in the US and people on fire for God who will risk life and limb to worship Him.

“Okay God I hear you.” He wasn’t quite done yet though. Then the words “maybe the community I have for you isn’t where you live”. Do “your people” truly have to be the ones that live near you? God sends people all over the place, to remote islands, to war torn countries, to wherever they are needed and also to the places THEY need for themselves. Why should we be different? Just because we aren’t being sent on some overseas mission doesn’t mean that our church isn’t our mission field. I like to think we are needed; we are told we are so that tells me we make a difference there. More so, I think we need them. I have never felt more comfortable or at home anywhere. I feel recharged on Sundays, if we miss for some reason I feel “off” all week. I am not a social person but I relish the conversations I have with the friends we have made there, even when its just small talk. It feels like family which is how it should feel. Our son has made friends, more friends than he has made in 2 years at school. He may fuss about the drive but he enjoys himself when we get there and the best part is, he knows he is cared about and feels safe. He knows the adults and who he can go to and he seems to add to his friend group fairly regularly. He needs stability and I don’t want him to have to start from scratch. I don’t want to go back to going to a service and then going home like we did when we attended a large church.

So, I got up with those words having been spoken into my mind with the intent to sit and write this very thing as soon as I was able but we had to get up early for church so I figured it would be after we got back. What I didn’t expect was to get some serious confirmation during our church service.
During the prayer right before getting into the message our pastor spoke about how privileged we are here to have the freedom to gather like we do to worship and spend time together as a church and how not everyone gets that. The sheer level of comfort we have in this country to assemble. It truly echoed exactly what went through my mind the night before. I had to wipe tears from my face when the prayer ended.
There were parts of the sermon that touched on the same sentiment as well and really, in other recent ones it had been mentioned that we should approach our faith sacrificially. Not to just be consumers but to give of ourselves even when it may not be comfortable or convenient. I left there today feeling surer than ever that we are where we are supposed to be.
Jesus gifted me with total life change when I fully accepted Him. He has provided me with a kind of life I never could have dreamed of. One not spent hiding behind the walls of my house. That healing is something I will never be able to repay so I am willing to go to whatever lengths I need to in order to be where He wants me to be. He gave His life for us, surely, we can give an entire day to him at the very least. That tank of gas doesn’t matter. We can have some pretty good conversations on those car rides, arguments too sometimes but you know the devil has to make himself known once in a while. 
I have a feeling the solution will come, we as a family will figure it out. Every fiber of my being knows we are where we are meant to be.

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans - Proverbs 16:3

And the Two Shall Become One Flesh

I've been thinking about a lot of the issues we have in this broken world, things that seem to be getting worse and worse and our church service today actually got me thinking even harder and finally helped me to puts these thoughts together. It was about things we allow to stick to us and get in between husband and wife in a marriage. It got me thinking about what things I allow to come between us in our marriage. I have always struggled with jealousy over my husband's past relationships. Part of that comes from anxiety over comparison, does he think I'm prettier or that he had to settle? Am I better at this or that, including in the bedroom. Am I the love of his life or the consolation prize? I'm also possessive and hate thinking someone else has had his heart and his body. That's mine, I deeply wish it was never anyone else's. I think that comes from the fact that God created us to be with one person for life and when we run off and do what feels good we throw that out of balance. I'm guilty too.

I saw a post recently regarding saving yourself until marriage. The comments on it were predictably sad. So much laughter and ridicule over the idea of it. As if waiting is so impossible as to be ludicrous. One person said “you wouldn't buy a car without test driving first would you?” At the time I thought that was kind of gross but thinking more deeply on it today it came to me that people don't even view each other as people anymore. Sex and even marriage is like a transaction. You just compared the choosing of a spouse to buying a car. Something basically disposable. Something you replace when it's worn out or you tire of it. Just the way marriage is handled nowadays. Another comment said “how do you know if the sex is good unless you've “ridden” around town first”. First  of all, if you haven't been with anyone else, how do you know it's bad? Secondly, and more importantly, you are inviting comparison into the relationship before it even exists! You are setting yourself up for failure and heartache. We shouldn't have to worry if our spouse is comparing us to someone else, we should be able to be fully open, naked in every way to them and not have to feel fear or shame.

God's plan was for us to choose a partner and that we then do lives together. We give ourselves to that one chosen person, forever. Now, think about how many things that are seen as problems, epidemic even, these days. STDs, abortion, divorce, the jealousies that wouldn't even exist if everyone would wait. How much of this stuff would be solved or at least be reduced to a minor blip if we just treated sex and marriage as the covenant that God created it to be?

What if we just listened to Him, instead of  that serpent whispering in our ear?

Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame - Genesis 2:25

Conviction on a Rainy Afternoon

So we've been watching this series on RightNow Media called Grace Based Parenting and the guy teaching it mentions how sometimes Christians can insulate themselves too much, that we need to be in the world, shining our light rather than sequestering ourselves in a "Christians only" environment.

Today, as I was driving, I was thinking man...sometimes I really wish I could insulate myself. Past few days have been rough with attacks on myself and Christians in general. It sure would be nice to just not have to deal with all of that. I wish I could just wrap myself up in a nice little Christ bubble and avoid all that nastiness.

As I parked at my son's school and kind of finished that thought to myself, a song I hadn't heard before came on the radio called "I Refuse" by Josh Wilson. The first bit goes like this:

"Sometimes I, I just want to close my eyes
And act like everyone's alright, when I know they're not
This world needs God, but it's easier to stand and watch
I could say a prayer and just move on, like nothing's wrong

But I refuse"

Yeah... if that's not the Spirit paying me a visit with a little conviction I don't know what is. The whole song is like that, like an answer to exactly what I was feeling, telling me what I should be thinking instead.

This life was never meant to be easy. This walk is a difficult one. Jesus told us it would be, that just as He was hated so too would we be and he wasn't joking. I have been called some the nastiest things and sometimes after only posting a Bible verse on my feed.

It would be nice to go hide myself under a basket, but God called us to get on top of that lamp post.

"You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."       Matthew 5:14-16

Just When I Think I've Failed...

Parenting is hard. It has to be one of if not the most difficult things to do in this world. I've been feeling like a failure lately. Our son just turned six, he's sweet and sensitive but also very selfish and, I guess, greedy. He just wants and wants and when he doesn't get something he gets angry and throws fits. When he does get what he asks for he doesn't really show appreciation, its like it was a given that he should receive it so why be thankful? He has a room dedicated to his toys, he plays with none of them unless a friend comes over. He also won't give anything up. When I told him there are kids that don't have toys he looked at me like I grew two heads, kids with no toys? Unthinkable. That's a funny story, Mom. When I see other kids choosing to have people donate to charities instead of giving them birthday gifts or kids that see a homeless person and are so moved they want to buy them food and help them I can't help but feel like I failed somewhere. So much so that I was looking into sending him to a private Christian school because I obviously am doing a terrible job of teaching our values so I need to pay someone else to do it. We decided not to but it's something we need to work on.

So last week, as we were coming up on Good Friday, I talked to him about what Good Friday is about. He was shocked. "Jesus is already dead???" he exclaimed. Again, that feeling of failure. My child doesn't even know the very basics of our faith, what have I done! So I go about searching for every resource I can find to teach him about the crucifixion and resurrection. Let me tell you it's not easy to find age appropriate info for a six year old. It was either extra vague stuff for toddlers that glosses over everything or full on, in your face violence. Thankfully, I found that there is an Adventure Bible made for early readers that said its for 6-10 year olds. I buy that, I pull it out on Good Friday at bedtime and I read Luke to him from the last supper until the end of the gospel. It was long, my throat was sore, but he needed to know the real story! He made some sad sounds as Jesus was arrested but I told him not to worry, everything turns out okay! He went to sleep without saying much. I had no idea if I'd done the right thing. Saturday went by uneventfully.

Sunday morning and we are getting ready for church. I pull out his Called to Duty t-shirt. It has the line "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" on it. I pointed out to him that in the background of the shirt was Jesus and the two criminals on crosses. He says to me "Yeah they all died." I told him but Jesus was going to take the one man to heaven with him because he believed. The other one did not believe so he didn't get to go be with Jesus. He looks at me and says "I want to be with Jesus in heaven" and I told him all you have to do is believe in Him and accept Him and you'll get to be with Him in heaven someday. He wanted to know how to let Jesus know that he believes and I told him to just say it. Just say Jesus I believe in you, that you are the Son of God and died for me. I told him a lot of people like to get baptized as a symbol of that acceptance and to tell other people you believe. He said he thought baptism was a bad thing, not sure where he got that idea. Then he said maybe he'll do that when he's a teenager. So cute. It was a neat moment though, it showed me he'd been thinking.

We get to church, take him to the kid's area and go to the service. Halfway through or so they come get me because our son is having problems and they need my help. He'd been crying. He held onto me and said he just wanted to be with us so I said he'd could come sit with us but had to be quiet for the rest of the sermon and he agreed. I was skeptical... to say the least. He surprised me again, he was not only quiet but after a few minutes he turned to face the front and was watching and listening fairly intently to our pastor. He'd started talking about the free gift that Jesus offers us and how all we have to do is accept it and he mentioned we'd be doing baptisms soon. All of the stuff we had talked about that morning was what our son was just in time to hear, authoritatively and passionately from our pastor. Interesting, how after months of going to this church and never a problem where he needed me to come get him out, he ends up needing to come sit with us and hears exactly what he'd been curious about. He even said he liked it and thought he heard some good stuff!

Last night as I put him to bed he said he was sad grandma wasn't there to sleep with him. Grandma had spent Sunday night at our house and he'd ended up sleeping with her. He said he is scared without someone to sleep with. I asked him "Grandma can't always be here, but who is always here?" and his response? "God, but He's dead isn't He?"

"No baby, He died but 3 days later He rose from the dead and then later ascended to heaven. Now He can be everywhere at once and can be in your heart and with you always, if you believe in Him."

"I do believe!" he tells me.

Then he says "I want to be in heaven with Jesus right now" annnnnnd I say why don't we wait on that for a long time okay? haha

Maybe I was trying to do too much on my own. All I needed to do was read to him from an actual Bible. Not a storybook for toddlers version, but the real thing. Let God speak for me. There is help for all of our problems right there in The Word.

And how from childhood you have been acquainted the the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.       2 Timothy 3:15

Not So Gracefully Broken

Our Heavenly Father is a loving and grace-filled God but let me tell you He is not afraid to throw your awfulness right into your face so you can see it and work on it! Here is what we have experienced over the past day and a half:

So, I have been having neck problems for a while and they have been getting worse. We just moved, we have a list of things we need and want to do for this house and for ourselves. A new mattress was not on this list. We both woke up yesterday morning, stiff, painful, feeling old and my husband pointed out that he thinks our mattress just isn't what it used to be. It's barely 3 years old but already isn't cutting it. I thought that could explain why the countless number of pillows I have tried haven't been fixing my neck issues. We briefly talked about how nice it would be to get a new mattress but it wasn't very high on the priority list and we left it at that.

Maybe an hour later or so I sit down at my computer and see there is a new post on our neighborhood Facebook page. A neighbor's friend had "adopted" a local family in need for the holidays, the whole family sleeps on the floor under one blanket because they don't have mattresses and is anyone looking to get rid of one? I had to get up and go tell my husband about this and I was like isn't that a freaky coincidence? He pointed out that we don't really believe in coincidence and I agreed, seemed like God was telling us something. We are over here complaining about something that some people don't even have, we have the means to finance a new mattress so we decided to offer the one we have to this family. It is a king size so, even if no one else came forward, that family could all fit and have a much better place to sleep this Christmas.

So that's what we did. I have pledged our mattress to this family, I have ordered ourselves a new one, and we will likely have to sleep on our guest bed in the in between time...but at least we HAVE a guest room!

Here is where the awfulness comes in. Right after the money was spent and we have added one more loan, one more monthly payment to our situation I started thinking about all the stuff I want. Selfish, material stuff. Unimportant luxuries. I start feeling annoyed about how much of that stuff I could have bought with the money I just spent on a new mattress. I start stressing out about my stuff. Oh how I want a new wedding ring set because my tastes have changed, how much I want this overpriced fancy vacuum cleaner, how I want to replace my carpet with wood flooring... stupid, materialistic stuff while this family has to share a blanket on the floor.

And then I cried. I spent a good part of this morning crying. Not over the money or the stuff. Over the realization that I'm a terrible, selfish person. What kind of monster am I that I lament over these non-essential objects while a family is suffering. I should just feel good that we helped them and who cares what it cost! I have been so wrapped up in my wants that I let it take control of me.

Pretty sure God is giving me a serious lesson on what is really important and showing me how blessed I truly am, even if I never get all of that stuff. I can tell my story about how God healed me and fixed my anxiety, showed me how to live free but I need to not lost sight of the fact that I am still so broken in many ways and need His guiding hand to show me what I need to work on. To remind me of what truly matters in this world. This isn't our forever home, don't let material things, temporary things stop us from doing what Jesus meant for us to do.

Sometimes, He has to hurt us to put us back on the path.

Where You Go, I Will Follow

Well I know I haven't written in quite some time. Life was pretty "normal", not much happening. We were in our routine of going to church and doing the family thing. Nothing particularly exciting or amazing to write about was going on and that's life sometimes.

This summer we made a rather spur of the moment decision to sell our house and move again. Our area was getting very congested very quickly and we just wanted out. We found a little bit of land out in a tiny country town, picked up everything and moved. We moved an hour away from friends, family, our church, everything. We made the decision, however, that we were so happy and attached to our church that we'd make the hour drive every weekend to keep going there. Our friends were there and we were comfortable there.

That's about the time that everything changed. We'd had a new worship pastor for a few months and I really liked him. His style had a bit of southern baptist flare, a bit of that fire and brimstone and I loved it. Worship was getting me fired up like never before.... and then he left, took a job in another state. Such a downer. At that time someone mentioned something about what if our campus pastor left. I replied that I was sure I'd pretty much just die. Yeah I know, I reverted back to being a teenager for a moment. Ha! For real though, he is a big part of my journey and how I got to where I am, why I ended up staying in the church that has become such a big part of our lives, he baptized me and when my husband came to faith he baptized him as well. Our first Bible study together, my husband agreed to go to because this pastor was teaching it. Just absolutely golden.

The very next week, he announced he was leaving to start his own church. It was going to be even further away than we were already driving. Knife to the heart.

I am not one to let things like this knock me down though, I just became determined to try to be involved regardless of distance. I did a LOT of praying about what I should do. How involved should I be? Do I just consider this the end of something? Have I learned all that God meant for me to learn from this person and I needed to accept it, say goodbye, and move on? What do I do and where do I go? I was on the hour long drive home from a church event, it was actually a going away reception for our pastor and his family, and I was asking God all of these questions. Driving in silence, just talking it out with my Creator. "Do I just follow along online, send my support long distance or do I sign up for the launch team and truly get involved? Do I commit even if it means doing it alone?" And I got a response.

The words "Step out of the boat" filled my mind. I didn't even have to question what that meant because I was immediately filled with the certainty that when I got home I was signing up. The distance didn't matter, I was meant to move forward. And so I did and I brought my husband along for the ride. He agreed to indulge me, he was put off by the distance but open minded. He just wanted me to be prepared that we may not like the vision for this new church, it may not be something we can really commit to.

Vision Night comes around and we secured babysitting so we could ride the Harley to it and check things out. I used to think I needed a large church with a lot of production. I wanted to be able to hide in the crowd and not get noticed. Sitting in a living room though, hearing about Jesus in a small intimate setting, singing worship songs to a single acoustic guitar, I had serious goosebumps. It felt so right, like the way it was really meant to be. There were tears and chills and a very real presence. On the ride home I was again talking through in my head what should we do? Is this where we are meant to go? Ahead of us there appeared a rainbow in the sky. Big and bright and not to be missed.

During all of this we were still attending our usual church, getting to know the new pastor, we switched to a more convenient service time for our long drive. It just didn't feel the same. Our son moved up to the next room in the children's ministry and it turned out to be not such a great fit for him. He hates loud noise, he has some sensory issues when it comes to sound and has to wear noise cancelling headphones sometimes and his new room was SUPER LOUD. We went to pick him up and he was sitting alone on the floor with a headset on a fidget toy just surviving til we got him out. He said it was NOT fun at all. I have to admit I found the volume level to be quite uncomfortable myself. Now I had a new dilemma. I don't want to keep sticking him in an environment he doesn't like, he isn't going to to be learning about Jesus if he has to curl up in a corner with a headset on. My mom said she felt he needed something more traditional, less production, less noise, not so busy.

Hmmm...I know of a small church with less production and less people that doesn't have massive amounts of sound equipment... haha. Which, quite frankly, seems to be hard to come by these days in contemporary churches. We could switch campuses but I am sure it is the same at all of them. By the time this new church plant gets big enough to have that sort of set up, maybe our son will have grown out of his sound issues and gotten a better foundation in Christ in the process.

The church I have called my home for the past 3 years, that I thought I would never want to leave, just doesn't feel like home anymore. We still have friends there. I am not totally sure how to reconcile all of this but I feel like God closes doors and opens new ones. If I were meant to stay where I am, wouldn't it still feel like home? Wouldn't I still feel drawn there? That is how He has always led me in the past, a gentle push in the direction I am meant to go. He got me into BSF when it was totally against my personality to join something like that because it felt like where I was supposed to go. He led me to the stage to face my fear and share my testimony, He led us to the home we bought which in turn led us to the church we called home. He led me to the baptismal to face a crippling fear of water, in His name. He called my husband to Him in that same church. Since, my interest in BSF has waned, perhaps His purpose for it in my life has been completed. Maybe the same holds true for the church I once called home.

God lead us to where you want us. We will follow you.


Your own ears will hear Him. Right behind you a voice will say, “This is the way you should go,” whether it be to the right or to the left. 

Isaiah 40:21

I Took My Eyes Off the Master

This past weekend I attended the local If:Gathering Women's Conference at my church. I sure did need it, badly. I had no idea how badly until I started listening to these wonderful speakers who, I'm pretty sure, God was using to speak directly to me. I have a feeling every woman in there heard just the message God wanted them to hear as well.

I have been so stressed lately, to the point of true, mental exhaustion. I have been grouchy, tired, super irritable, panicked even, just feeling like I have too much pressing down on me all at once. All of those feelings are the tools of the enemy. I lost a lot of my community and accountability this past year. I dropped from BSF, the home group we were studying with broke up, and I haven't been replacing those things with local Bible studies or even just reading and staying in the Word on my own. I fell away so to speak. I didn't lose faith, I just lost sight.

This terrific speaker during the conference, Lysa Terkeurst (look her up she's great), told this really cute, funny story about learning to scuba dive and panicking while 30 ft down in the ocean and it had a very serious and very important take away. When the dive master got them back up onto the boat he pointed at her family and said "Do you know why you panicked? You took your eyes off the dive master. Never take your eyes off of the master." This hit me pretty hard because all I have been doing these past weeks has been panicking. What was I panicking over? Oh, just my plans not going the way I want them too and my desperate scramble to try to force those plans to work anyway. This was something else Lysa touched on. That we want our plans as they are and for God to bless them but not touch them. I let the enemy creep in because I took my eyes off of the Master.

I also got some pretty awesome validation at the conference. I always love it when someone has an experience or a story that has similarities to my own because I feel like it just adds that much more to how undeniable the hand of God really is. Jill Briscoe, a really lovely British octogenarian with a truly inspiring story was talking about how she was involved in outreach ministry and that throughout it all she was scared, a lot! To explain how she had the courage to walk into the places she would go she described having a heart to heart talk with God where He tells her to go and do this and she'd respond "Do I have to?" and He'd urge her on and she'd say "Yes, alright" and she'd find she could do it. She put it like this, "After obedience, the courage was waiting for me." Not until she agreed and obeyed did God bestow that courage upon her. It's an echo of my BSF Share Day experience. I was terrified, wanted any excuse to back out, wanted someone to stand with me so I wasn't at that microphone alone but He kept nudging me, telling me people needed to hear my story and as I sat there ready to signal my friend to come up with me He told me to do it alone. Though I wasn't truly alone was I? I needed to learn that and by saying "Yes, okay." to God in that moment He gave me the courage I needed to step on that stage and beyond because that was the turning point in which my fear and anxiety would no longer hold sway over my life.

I haven't felt angry or panicked since the conference. I feel like I am back on track with a weight lifted and guess what? With a clear mind I was able to work out the little life issues I was concerned about, maybe they won't all resolve on my preferred time table but they will resolve. Maybe God has some more teaching to do so it needs to take just a little longer.

So, if you are feeling down, scared, overwhelmed, or any other negative weight is on you I urge you to turn your eyes to the Master. Dig in and see what He has to say to you, because I promise you He is reaching out to you.