ministry

Journeying through Hebrews

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 1 Comment

I’ve always loved Hebrews. Maybe its the mystery of not knowing exactly who wrote this letter or maybe its how its put together in a way that just makes sense to me. As I entered the summer months of routine changes, I realized I wanted to change up my morning time with the Lord so I ordered a study on Hebrews (Jen Wilkin’s Better) and dug in.

It’s a fill in the blanks type of guide to Hebrews and it got me thinking about why that’s just so nice sometimes, to fill in the blanks. To have someone else ask the questions and guide the study is filling a need to not ask myself the questions and be the guide. There’s much that I am feeling my way through this summer and the peace of just opening a study guide and contemplating someone else’s question to me is peaceful.

So what am I gleaning from Hebrews? As many times as I’ve read it, it just gets better, pardon the potential plagiarism! The truth of God’s love and power are sinking in again a little deeper. I think the truths of Jesus grace and mercy early on in our life with Christ can feel a little more like flash floods that uproot our former ways. The grace and mercy and love carve a new and disruptive path in a life-giving way, channeling a new path in life. But that early understanding of His love also needs the steady rains of truth to soak in to the ground of our life too.

What’s soaking in right now is the astounding completeness of what Christ did for us in coming to us as Jesus. We had a dire problem with our fallen nature that we always think we can probably at least help God solve when in reality our help is a joke. That God would take on the complete contract to bring us back to Him, all at His cost, is astounding in a slow-soaking-rain kind of way to me right now.

He welcomes the broken and the needy to His throne room, not the one who comes thinking they have something to offer. Not the one who has something to show off, but the one who has nothing is the one He invites. Right now, I sense that neediness and my inability to make myself whole or those around me.

It’s also striking me that Jesus prayed and asked for another way for our redemption to be accomplished and God told the One who lived a perfect life, no. The One most deserving of a yes from God received a no. And then that One submitted and accepted the no and chose to do what needed to be done to bring us back. Willingly, for the joy, for me, for you.

I’m pretty bad at no, both hearing a no and sometimes giving a no even if its in the best interest of the other person or myself. To know Jesus can even sympathize with us when our prayers are answered with a no is sticking with me right now.

Can I trust God’s no? Can I take up what is before me in joy and willingly even when I asked not to have to?

Well, the author of Hebrews knows what we face because he (or she) gives us some great direction in our journey with Christ to focus on Him who endured the pain, for the joy set before Him.

And so for today, that is enough, the blank that I focus on filling in…focusing on Him.

When It Hits Different

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 1 Comment

I sit here reading a great book, The Pastor by Eugene Peterson, thinking about posting an artsy shot on Insta recommending it to all who for some reason follow me. I got to wondering, though, if my younger friends would get this book the way I get it now at a different age and time in my life?

Would this book hit me at 25 like it does at 47? I don’t really know… I strongly suspect not.

I remember reading about a missionary in my early 20’s and felt so much internal conflict. It was the first time I’d walked away from a biography of someone so devoted to the Lord but who left me with some serious problems. I wasn’t sure I liked parts of her very much. In my 20’s I didn’t know what to do with that reality.

How could someone live for God so devotedly and not be completely likable? Well, now I grasp it a little more, ahem, personally.

As time passed and I contemplated that biography, it reflected back my own soul in all its light and shadows. Grace began shining through because I am that person, not totally likable, but completely loved by God…it’s ok to not be perfect. And God is not thwarted.

Another time I took a book on God’s love to read on a summer trip. I can’t remember all the details but it struck me deeply. I passed it on to a college student on the trip and it was meh for them. I wonder if reading it now after being pummeled by life if it would hit differently.

And it’s not just spiritually attuned books. Pride and Prejudice, when you identify with Elizabeth, reads differently than Pride and Prejudice when you identify with the mother in the story. Warnings abound!

So Eugene and I over the years are becoming well acquainted. Personally I’m not a huge fan of The Message translation when I read except that I love the purpose of why it was formed. My affinity for Eugene comes through more in his whole-hearted expression of what it means to walk with Jesus in our time, culture, and place with the people God’s put around us.

He works against my… American-ness I guess. That tendency to be productive or achieving in a way that silences the Spirit. Eugene points it out and beckons me to be with God and with others. To just be the child of God in the time I live. To be cautious of being lured by the business of spirituality, the fallacy of thinking I can fix anyone, the arrogant focus on achievement and accumulation that can run me off the road towards what I truly desire.

I still recommend The Pastor, but if it doesn’t hit you right now and you’re on the young side, put it back on the bookshelf to gather dust.

Then, read it again in 20 years and see if it hits different.

Resonance

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ Leave a comment

My son plays cello. No matter that we owned two violas, he wanted to play cello. Over the summer he took lessons because I wanted him to have something to do while his older siblings scampered around to jobs, hiking trips, and places with friends in cars.

Hearing him practice is a delight.

Once, his teacher moved one lesson online and a weird thing happened. While he was playing a scale, hitting the notes just right, the teacher’s cello all the way across town began picking up the sound waves and resonating a note. Through air, wires, chips, internet lines, then back through chips and wires and air that note traveled and replicate itself in the other cello.

When you think about it, that’s pretty incredible. Sound and music is one of the ways its hard for me to get out from under believing in the existence of God.

That resonance is what got me. One note moved through the air from one object and caused movement in another object.

Today I read about Peter at the last supper and then at that fateful campfire where he denied his friend, his teacher, the One he believed was the savior of his people.

It struck me that Peter didn’t know what was in himself. He was so sure that he would be loyal, that he would never… That all others might but not him.

And then he did the thing.

And Jesus turned and looked directly at Peter in that moment. When Peter met His gaze, he remembered what Jesus said would happen, what Peter so confidently denied could ever happen.

We don’t know anything about that look Jesus gave Peter. In my humanity I see raised eyebrows with I-told-you-so vibes because that’s how it works with me. Those moments when something comes true that I warned a kid about it takes everything in me not to raise my brows and waft off a distinct vibe even while I hold back the actual words.

What’s even more interesting is the interchange a few hours before. Jesus says to Peter three astounding things:

  1. Satan asked to mess with all of the disciples to see what will shake out
  2. I (Jesus) personally prayed for Peter that your faith would not fail
  3. I predict you’ll come back

I mean, tons of questions here for me. Did all the disciples get sifted or just Peter? I assume Jesus said ok? Jesus prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail yet Peter did fail.

And! Jesus seems to know that Peter will fail or why else would Jesus tell Peter that “when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers”?

That kind of blows my circuits when I really think about it. Did one of Jesus’ prayers not get answered with a yes? Of course we know that in the end Peter did betray Jesus but he also turned back and strengthened others.

Did Peter’s response right after this affect what happened? Did Peter’s following confident assertion that he was ready to go with Jesus to prison and death reveal that Peter needed to know more about himself without which he would not be ready to strengthen others?

There’s so much we don’t know but so much to know as well.

For me, I hate that so much of ministering to people involves living out of weakness, failure and suffering. Why does it have to be this way? Why is it that to follow Him, I must see and embrace those aspects of me that feel like nothing but failure?

I believe it relates to resonance. That phenomenon where some chord strikes the chord of another.

Could Peter ever lead the way Jesus displayed to him without a colossal failure followed by repentance and then restoration?

I don’t think so. Peter’s failure led him to an experience of restoration that transformed him into the humble servant Christ taught him to be.

And I don’t believe I or anyone can connect with the soul of another without the experience of being fully known in that moment of failure and then fully accepted and forgiven there too.

Those who are forgiven much love much, right?

And so it is that embracing our weakness is the striking chord that resonates in the souls of others who also seek the truth.

Rest: Leaving the Land Alone

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 1 Comment

Lately I’ve been contemplating a sabbatical, the strange option in my job to take three months of restorative rest from the day to day responsibilities of caring for souls. In our hurried world, this feels so out of the ordinary and strange that I’m a bit embarrassed its an option.

Who couldn’t use three months to restore their soul in our world these days?

But I have this option and I’m figuring out if I should take it. If I take it, when do I take it? Also I must talk through that time with someone beforehand which is a good idea because taking 3 months away could be difficult. That’s like 3 months of being unmoored from a central part of my every day life…for what purpose?

The last thing I want is heightened anxiety for three months because I can’t figure out how to rest!

I looked back at some key passages today about rest because rest was a big part of what God’s people were to do after they came out of Egypt and oppression. I guess rest wasn’t really a part of their enslavement because it sure was hard for them too.

How fitting that candles, illuminating lights, are part of ushering in Sabbath rest for God’s people…

In fact they never really did rest the way God told them to and God had such a problem with it that he forced them to go on a long trip to a foreign, deserty place to rest for the few decades worth of Saturdays they missed.

But it wasn’t only Saturdays, one day a week, they were to rest. Every seventh year, God’s people were supposed to just… not farm the land. That is stunning. They trusted God to provide a double crop on the 6th year. Then, that seventh year they trusted God to provide enough from what came up on its own to feed them until the next year’s crops came to harvest.

Not surprising that they mostly failed to live that out. It’s pretty radical.

As I think about sabbatical for myself, I anticipate disorientation, doubt, identity crisis, and anxiety. I also expect surprise, identity formation, and trust to build as I notice the budding of new growth from richer soil of belonging to Christ rather than performance for Him.

It seems somewhat wrong to plan a sabbatical or feel that it needs to produce something. Isn’t that antithetical to the true meaning of sabbath rest? To just be?

But I can imagine my B.C. self standing in my fields that I chose not to work looking over at my neighbors fields all neatly furrowed and planted…and feeling mightily tempted to grab my plow.

To rest is so counter-cultural that I need support and encouragement to stand firm in waiting and trusting God to provide. I am most needy for Him to provide my identity apart from my usefulness and productivity in this world. Instead of seeing planning a sabbatical as striving to make rest productive, maybe it is more that I need to cultivate my heart and time for rest, knowing my heart will gaze upon the striving of the world and be tempted to define myself again on my usefulness.

Expecting new growth to happen in the sabbatical waiting is truly different than striving to produce that growth.

As my book mentor Eugene Peterson says,

“Maybe if they [pastors] would all go into the wilderness for three months, not read their emails, announce a moratorium on all conventions and conferences, take a deep, long, prayerful time of doing nothing–maybe some equilibrium might return.” (Letters to a Young Pastor, 140)

By equilibrium, he means a groundedness that is not rushing to fix every crisis while missing the opportunities right before us. To be present in the life and people God has for us in the every day is what Eugene senses that we miss when we do not take sabbath rests.

As I write, I realize I’m sensing the value of the gift of sabbatical rest more and more. Coincidentally, we are approaching 7 years in our current ministry assignment…

What is it about the number seven!?

I’m curious to know from my readers, what struggles do you experience with rest? How does rest provoke your soul?

Past Year’s Reads

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 4 Comments

Reading without caring about time remains at the top of my list of indulgent behaviors. When I can crack a good book and just read late, late into the night I know I’m relaxing.

I’m learning this concept of “Total Work” that we live under especially in the western world. A philosopher named Pieper wrote about how people are transformed into workers and nothing else. As I read about it, I realized how much I live in this reality of feeling like I always need to be productive even in rest. Reading is one activity that combats this tendency for me, especially reading fiction.

Every night I read fiction. There are so many books out there about our world and how to live in it (see that total work thing in play?) but fiction inhabits my nightstand as a means to just enjoy life. Good fiction hopefully!

So, what good books can I recommend these days? Oh so many!

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

I ended my year with some Dickens, which I have not read for 20 some years. He’s just a lot, you know? But A Christmas Carol felt like an appropriate way to put my heart into the holidays. It did not disappoint or fail to convict either! If you haven’t read this one, I’m sure you can pick it up for a song at the used bookstore or on Kindle. Set it aside for Christmas 2022.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles:

How do you make a life within the walls of a hotel? Sounds a little too familiar, doesn’t it? The main character is sentenced to live out his days within a luxury hotel. He ends up leading a very full life within those walls, impacting many lives through some tumultuous times in Russian history. A delightful read.

Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China by Pearl S. Buck:

This telling of Chinese history from the imagined perspective of the Empress enthralled me. Some of the themes of grievances are still in play today in world events. If you want to understand some of the tension between China and the west now, this is a more engaging method than some others. The loss of position and prominence for this empire and the efforts to regain a footing on the world stage explain so much of what we see in the news today. Maybe it can be seen with a little more empathy after reading this book.

Letters to a Young Pastor by Eugene Peterson and Eric Peterson:

Ok, this one is not fiction. It’s more a memoir but its so good I can’t keep it a secret.

Eric Peterson compiled these letters his dad sent him at his request to learn more about his dad’s interior thoughts on pastoring. Eugene fleshes out so very personally what it means to live out the unique role of shepherding others spiritually in this day and age when so much is so impersonal. Each chapter takes us into Eugene’s mind, heart, and struggles to form out in real time how to live as a “faithful failure.”

Every time I read the sign off at the end of each chapter, I think of my own dad who was also so proud of his kids and so invested in our lives and life work. Sitting with Eugene is a little bit like sitting with dad again.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles:

What can I say? When I read one book by an author and resonate deeply with it, I look for other books they’ve written. My kids gifted me this book for Christmas and I enjoyed it. An almost modern day hero’s journey, the story follows two brothers as they strive to make a life of their own in the world. Who do they need to keep in their lives? What does loyalty look like? It is a worthy read!

Beyond these books, I read quite a bit of suspenseful fiction of the unreliable narrator sort. Trying to figure out what the heck was going on was pretty entertaining for a good chunk of this past year. They are edgier and may keep you up at night but sometimes that’s pretty fun.

Was it good fiction? I’m not sure! The Death of Mrs. Westaway and One by One by Ruth Ware are my top recommendations in that category.

I’m stumbling back into writing on my blog so if you got this far, you get a gold star for plodding through my rusty, low bar attempt to just get words out again. Thank you!

Leave any book recommendations you think I should check out in the comments please.

Finding Lost Things

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ Leave a comment

I am the #1 finder in our house. If something is lost, I’m the one that gets called in pretty quick. Sometimes too quickly.

I’ve threatened people in my family. If I find it upon entering your room and just looking around, I’m going to be…not happy, I say.

While I packed to go on a trip once, I opened the cabinet where we kept our nice DSLR camera. My destination was beautiful and I wanted to beef up my stock of photos. The cabinet opened and no camera.

This puzzled me because I’d taken a trip the week before with the camera and was sure it came home with me. I backtracked my steps and remembered that when I got off the plane at home, I left it in the overhead bin. I’d left it and lived in great peace and calmness not knowing our expensive camera was gone.

But I was headed to the airport so I decided to just check and see if they had a lost and found. My experience with losing things in Asia was not great. If you left something somehwere, it was no longer there 5 minutes later. My hope was almost nonexistent.

You know what? I came home with our camera.

There was a lost and found. The camera was waiting. To claim it, we needed to look at the photos. Bummer, dead battery. So I described the photos of the panda reserve, little blonde kids, and a wide smile wreathed the woman’s face.

She remembered the photos and gave me back our camera! I was so happy.

The camera is still with us taking great pictures.

Losing things is not fun. Finding things is so much more fun.

Here’s a few things that guide my searches…

It will not come to you. The essence of lost things is that they do not know they are lost and they cannot get back. We’re talking about things here. They just are where we left them. They’re not going to come back to us on their own. They must be found. Waiting around isn’t going to bring them back.

Lost things do not come back on their own.

Where was it last? Start there. You see, lost things are where they are. They are things and they don’t know they are lost. They do not move on their own. It’s obvious and easy to forget when looking, but you must backtrack and determine where the item was last.

You must go and discover where the lost thing is if you want to find it.

What was happening? If backtracking doesn’t work, then think about what was happening. In the panic of losing things, my family members generally resist my questions. They feel antagonistic and blaming. What were you doing? spoken to a sensitive soul feels accusatory.

But, it helps me to know if the shoes are under the chair where Xbox is played or in the backyard because they were contaminated with the dog waste.

Discovering the story around the loss will help you know where to look.

Why can’t we see it? So often, I find things because I lifted something else. The calculator was under the shirt. The keys were in the pants pocket. The stuffed tiger was in the microwave (yes, that’s a funny story of sibling rivalry).

Sometimes the item is hiding under something. Well, it isn’t hiding but it got covered up and needs to be uncovered.

Be persistent. Ask dumb questions. Basic elementary questions like what was I carrying? Where would I be if I were Ali’s camera after an airplane trip? Keep asking and don’t give up hope that there’s a lost and found when nothing ever seems to get found.

Persistence and hope lead us much farther than despair.

Wait. Somethings are only found by waiting. When we’ve exhausted the search, sometimes we need to wait. Often, one day it will just show up in the least expected place.

Time can uncover what our abilities cannot.

Pray. The much loved stuffed Tiger was lost for three days. Three days of comforting a crying boy with a second best toy at night. I related my small dilemma to a friend on the phone. She said she’d pray. I prayed a one liner to God that moment, looked to my left and saw Tigey stuffed between the fridge and the wall.

God can find things for us when we ask for help.

…

As I walked around campus and my city this week and talked to people who are seeking God, I started thinking about finding.

Do I really search for people? It haunts me a little

I hope I can be as good at finding lost people as I am at finding my kids calculator.

We don’t know what to do but…

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 1 Comment

I encounter more people now as our community stumbles forward and we try to feel each other out. How close is it ok to approach a person on a neighborhood walk? What criteria do I use to decide if I go back to church in-person or watch online? What level of risk is appropriate to be with people and for what purpose?

Figuring out this new world, learning how to live in it as we hold in tension so many competing realities is a weight we are all learning to carry.

The other times in my life that I remember talking this much about how to interact with people on a daily basis was when we first moved overseas. My husband and I experienced an onslaught of new our first few years overseas that left us speechless, staring at our McDonald’s cheeseburgers.

We are now back in the country we grew up in. But, with the sudden shift of culture caused by this pandemic, it again feels like we are learning a new world. We are in the same place physically as last year but doing so many things so differently adding to the strangeness of it all.

It’s like the world tilted and I’m left again grasping for firmer ground.

A passage of the Bible that captured my attention this past week was the story of Jehoshaphat (yes, like in Great Jehoshaphat!). He was one of the good kings in the Bible. He went around to the whole kingdom to talk to the judges and tell them, look guys, you’re working for God and He’s not a God of injustice, bribery or partiality so let the fear of God guide you.

Wow! I really appreciate that kind of leadership.

A lot of times you read these stories about the good kings and generally things go better for them, but not Jehoshophat. He soon learns a huge army is coming for them and they’re pretty powerless to stop it. He prays this great long prayer but at the end he says, We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You. 

So then, another guy stands up and says he’s got something to say from God. He basically says, don’t be afraid or discouraged. Go out to the battle but you will not need to fight in this one. Stand firm and hold your position. God ends up routing the enemy before they even get to Israel’s army.

There is something beatiful and right in determining you’re up against something bigger than you can deal with and saying I don’t know what to do. And, then, still showing up to the battle even when it’s not clear how it will all play out, just that God will be there.

53E754C2-65A4-4863-8279-5440C7FF3C93

In all this upheaval, I’m realizing the importance of showing up to see what God will do. When I say show up, I mean open up opportunities, be available and trust that God can do something no matter how meager and anemic the method feels.

Somehow, he’s not limited by our physicality. I can tell you, God shows up on video calls, phone calls (they’re back in again–just give younger folks a pre-call text), and conference calls.

I guess that’s where I am today, I don’t know what to do often. I feel overwhelmed some days. But I want my eyes to be on Him.

Sometimes its more that I don’t know how to do it this way, but I am trying to take the step and trust Him to be there in the middle of it with me.

Each time, as I look back I can see that He’s never deserted me.

 

On Bargains…

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ 2 Comments

I rode away with my new-to-me love seat stowed in the back of the minivan, crowing about my enormous good fortune to my son. Not only was it an exact match for my sofa I bought used a few years ago, it was a fraction of the cost I was willing to spend!

I almost felt guilty it was such a good deal. Almost.

That love seat pulled together my whole living room exactly how I wanted it and right before family arrived for Christmas. All fall I’d tried and missed in my efforts to source pieces (that’s decorator speak for find cool stuff) on online marketplaces.

My frustration had grown and given in to despair. I was settling and felt that was the best I could hope for, but then someone got tired of their love seat and wanted it gone. What a score!

Over the next week, and even now, I’m rather stunned at God’s timely provision for something so unnecessary to life as a well-arranged and beautiful living room set up. Food, clothing, shelter are the necessities…not nice food, nice clothing, and nice shelter.

God proved Himself, again, as a very personal God who is able to arrange some truly wonderful gifts when it seems good to do so. It seems that He cares for me and my wants along with my needs. He doesn’t always give me what I want, but He knows my wants as sure as He knows my thoughts from afar.

I got to reading Isaiah 9 and God likens the people’s joy at the coming of the Savior as to the joy when the harvest comes in and as when people divide the spoils. Literally, that is times when the profit comes in. Times when the warehouses are full from a year or season of hard work.

He’s talkin’ about payday, y’all. Dividing the spoils would be like finding valuable treasure or getting something for nothing. Or…a bargain?

I get this one. I love a bargain. How I love a bargain. I often check myself in conversation because I’m prone to bragging about the bargains I have made. I get this enormous joy from a good deal.

The paradox, though, is that I am not a bargain when I think about my life as a Christ-follower. This Light came into the world, His name is Jesus Christ, and He spent Himself completely–paid an enormous price–for me and people like me who are most definitely not perfect.

On the face of it, it stands out as an all-time bad deal. Why would He spend so much on me? And, why would He be so happy about it?

I rejoice over a good deal, but God rejoices over what appears to be a pretty bad deal. I  have nothing to offer. The moment I think I do, I’m like that person trying to sell some used earrings for what you can buy them for new. I’m a fraud who isn’t living in reality.

But this bad deal for Him is such a good deal for me that I can only accept and give thanks. Gratitude and love and obedience to such a God is about all I can respond with and its enough.

Oh! And with all good, truly great, bargains–I can tell everyone I know not to miss out. It’s not bragging on myself, because I did nothing!

If I can talk so extensively about my love seat deal, how much more I want to remember that it’s not the best deal ever. There is a better deal in life with Christ that is truly worthy of talking about any time there is a chance. Why wouldn’t I want to?

Haha…and answering that question is so important and has so much potential to change a life, it must be considered.

Why wouldn’t I want to tell someone about Jesus like I tell them about my sofa?

 

Slowing Down

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ Leave a comment

The first few days of January is the time for me to slow down. Our town is relatively quiet. There are New Year’s events but mostly I stay home with some or all of my children while my husband works a conference.

Generally, I have longer times reading my Bible in the morning and I stay up late (way too late) reading good books. In the daytime I get a few things done while children play more than normal amounts of Xbox. I make some returns, pack up Christmas, think about Bible study plans for the spring, and generally slow down.

The phone chimes pretty rarely and just about absolutely nothing is on the calendar as far as appointments or meetings. I can wear the same thing multiple days if I want, as long as its clean, or I can wear all the things that are comfortable, even if they don’t match! Its divine…and uncomfortable at times.

I realize during this time how much I like to do things to feel worthwhile. Spending the time with myself is like looking someone in the face for just a little longer than is socially acceptable. It’s a bit uncomfortable and revealing.  And, I think it is absolutely necessary to slow down enough to look yourself in the face long and hard at least once a year.img_6469

When I slow down I relearn stuff about myself. I regain my affection for cooking. It actually occurs to me that I would like to try a new recipe that I wouldn’t enjoy tackling when school is in session and life is busy. I stack up scheduled posts on my blog.

Slowing down restores my spiritual health. Reading the Bible a little longer and without much of an agenda is like having a date with my husband where there’s nothing we have to get at the store or plan and there’s no time we have to be home. It’s just free time together.

My life is a little peculiar in that it is very seasonal and shifts very quickly from a lot of people intensive time and scheduling then changes to working on more back burner stuff like planning and development. Then, we take the 6 week work related trip most summers! Not everyone has that kind of work.

So, how do you take time to face yourself? Consider wrestling with this question and figuring out some creative solutions like taking a day off for a long weekend spent without obligations. Or, wipe a week clear of anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be done. For a tax accountant, that won’t be April, but there’s probably a few days somewhere that the cycle of the job is at a low ebb.

It’s taken living in the U.S. for almost 5 years and our current home almost 4, to discover some rhythms. That’s one of the hard things about a move internationally, a change in jobs, or a significant life change like becoming a mother or kids going to school or leaving the nest. There are new rhythms and it takes at least 2 years to figure them out!

The first year, everything is new and I constantly adjusted. The second year, I remembered the first year and tried to figure out what was an every year thing, or an anomaly. The third year solidified some distinct patterns to life like this first week of the year slow down.

I’m glad I have it because next month our oldest kid gets her learner’s permit. Hopefully all these stored up reserves will be enough! She swears she is going to drive like a grandma and we need to worry about our middle kid who has some Michael Schumacher speed in him.

We will see. He’s 2 years away from a permit so I have 2 more slow downs before he drives.

 

Do You Confess?

~ eternalwaitofglory ~ Leave a comment

One of my kids has “reactive airways”, doc talk for asthma. Not all the time and not that sudden type but the type that whenever he gets sick, it goes straight to the chest.

Then he starts this distinctive cough that lets me know my next few days will be spent hauling out nebulizers, inhalers, Vick’s, netipots, and on and on. The cough’s purpose was to force out trapped air so when the airways relax, the cough goes away.

Breathing is a pretty essential activity to human life so asthma attacks are stressful. We’ve always been able to turn the tide and get out of danger. In the middle of it, though, you don’t know the end.

Spiritually, the concept of breathing has been on my mind. I talk often in ministry about spiritual breathing- a cycle of confession (exhale) and filling (inhale). A few tough situations over this past season, namely the August Smackdown, brought me close to exhaustion…and my own need to breathe.

That tightness in my chest would come, that prompt to take a deep breath. A sigh. Like an old lady lament. I was feeling it, the old lady weariness.

So I sighed. Then, with each sigh, I reminded myself of the need to breathe spiritually as well as physically.

Exhaling. Recognizing I was trying to take control of the humanly uncontrollable. Fearing that God was not in control. Releasing the toxic build up of the thoughts and emotions and very real sin so I could take in more life-giving breath. This is confessing.

Breathing in. Each time asking God for more of His resources, His oxygen to extend farther into my soul and strengthen me for the situation. To have mercy and help me. Filling.

So what about asthma? Asthma, if left alone and not treated, slowly suffocates the victim as I understand it. With no room in the lungs to take in more oxygen, and CO2 trapped inside the lungs, the body is deprived of the oxygen that keeps it alive.IMG_0587-0.JPG

All the while the body is trying to breathe in unsuccessfully.

The body begins using almost every muscle it can in the torso to bring air into the lungs. Retractions, where the skin sucks in at the collar bones and around the ribs, notify us that our son is really, really struggling to breathe. The lungs work overtime trying to cough out trapped air. Lips begin turning pale. It’s terrifying and it would be time to go to urgent care.

In the physical world, there is albuterol and steroids to resolve the problems of asthma. Steroids control the tendency to flare up. Albuterol treats a flare up.

Spiritually, there is ordering our lives to God and His revealed truth in the Bible, the fellowship with the community of believers, the Spirit of God convicting and directing us…and regular confession. These all serve as the anti-inflammatory control to prevent serious flare ups of spiritual asthma.

But asthma strikes still. When spiritual asthma comes and we struggle to breathe because we know we are not right with God. Or we are working overtime to win favor and status with God by doing, doing, doing…there is, again, confession.

Exhaling by agreeing with God about our sin or our human efforts to earn forgiveness. Inhaling by receiving the resources He gives through His Spirit to live a life pleasing to Him. Sometimes over and over about the same old things.

Slowly, surely the toxic is released so the pure and fresh can roll in and bring life again.