sour insides: dealing with what I can't fix.

I’m a “fixer.”  I consider it one of my strengths and also among my greatest down falls.  When I see things hurt, broken, or could just use improving, I want to jump in.  God has gifted me to be an encourager and to walk along side of people and I am so overwhelmed to say that he’s allowed me to watch how he’s healed and shaped people as I’ve joined them on journeys.  StrengthsFinders says I have the “restorative” strength.

But I have to confess something to you this morning.  Part of my motivation to fix or restore comes out of my desire for control, as well as often thinking I know what is best.  When I see gaps or conflicts in the lives of students I work with, friends, organizations, churches, governments, etc, I see the potential there is to be healthier, to grow, to take a risk.  There are times when I am able to have a conversation or give insight that encourages a person to consider what they might do to grow in wholeness.  

But the times where there’s really nothing I can do, when I'm completely out of control, I struggle so greatly with sour insides.  You know that feeling when your gut turns because something is broken beyond fixing, or so it seems.  A physical reaction to things not being the way they ought.  That’s sour insides.  The grief in your gut, the sad in your stomach.

• There’s nothing I can do about health issues that rattle my family and my friends’ families.  There’s no way I can fix it.  I try to offer up articles I’ve read for new food choices or exercise options (yeah, guys…I’m a fixer).  I have to come to admit that I don’t have healing powers or a cure for cancer, but a spot in my insides began to turn sour.

• Wars raging in our world and global conflicts are heartbreaking, terrifying, and seemingly endless.  People offer simplistic, flippant solutions from their safe American living rooms not seeing the layers of political narratives, instilled beliefs, and utter terror that reign in people that look just like us and just like the ones we see as the enemy.  Abuse and hurt continues year after year, even within the places and people that have claimed to be the presence of Christ on earth.  I get overwhelmed and angry.  I get sour insides.

• I grieve in helplessness about the day burned in my mind and heart when we visited people who lived in a dump in Managua, Nicaragua.  We handed out snacks and juice to children through our van windows, as it wasn’t safe to even get out of our vehicle.  In minutes, our van was swarmed with desperately hungry people who lived among garbage that even contained visible bio-hazard boxes and sharps containers.  Our time was short there, as police insisted we leave the area to limit the exposure the Americans had to such an incredible blind spot in the poorest country in Latin America.  A van full of energetic and playful students was silenced for the afternoon, as the weight of an issue crushed them.  Handing out juice did little to contribute.  The issue is so huge and multi-layered.  We are powerless to save.  And a part of my insides has never unsoured from that day because that’s not the way life is supposed to be.

• I grieve broken places in my story and the stories of those I love.  I grieve sometimes that life isn’t what I thought it would be.  Finances, struggles with children, broken relationships, lack of career direction, unfulfilled dreams, tragedy, thinking we'd be "ahead" of where we are in life by now (whatever that even means).  Circumstances that persist despite proactivity.  People that decide they don't respect, value, or even like you just because.  I find myself and others utterly out of control and at the mercy of so many factors.  And my insides sour for a moment more.

• I don’t have any ability to change the minds or soften the words of people that vehemently and brutally disagree in hurtful ugliness within politics, race issues, community issues, and even in my very own church body.  And this morning I ached from sour insides and gut grief.

Like so many other days, I’m forced to see my inability to be the savior and stop to plead with the One who is.  There’s some days where I’m so overwhelmed by what I can’t control.  Jesus speaks gently:

“Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

”Come to me, weary one.  You’re carrying such heavy burdens.  I’ll give you rest.”

“Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” 

Gut healing words.  Everything isn’t magically better, but in that time, to remember once again that Christ is King and he is the hope that will never disappoint, is enough (Rom. 5:5).  As songwriter, JJ Heller, put so eloquently, "sometimes I don't know what you're doing, but I know who you are."  (Check out the amazing song here.)

The truth is, if we could fix the world, if we could even fix ourselves, we wouldn’t need Jesus'--his saving death and resurrection--and we would quickly forget him.  I know I would be in great danger of doing so.  But we desperately see the need.  Our sour insides plead for a Savior and his “shalom” – that everything would be as it ought, whole and full of peace.  I was reminded once again this week of the power of praying “shalom” over people, situations, and seemingly hopeless conflicts.  Because I believe that there will be a day when the shalom of Christ will reign in fullness and all will be as it ought.  We pray for glimpses of it now.

So I pray once again.  Turning over my sour insides to my Savior.  Confessing my need for control and my inability to save.  Pleading for shalom where my efforts fall short.  And resting in the love of the One who overcame the world.

Christ, grant us your shalom and give us good bellies.

fall: God's lesson about the beauty of death.

Since I can remember, I’ve been the little girl that loved to soak up every moment of summer.  No school, bikes, pools.  But something in me has shifted in the last few years.  After years of summer confidently standing in the number one spot, fall has wiggled its way in to gain the gold.  Maybe it was my first Phoenix summer a few years ago that began a wedge between summer and me.  At just that time, I returned to Minnesota for the most magical season of color and crispness.  Some of my favorite moments with the Lord have been spent running or sitting along a lovely walking path that parallels the Mississippi River that splits Minneapolis from St. Paul.  The path is best in fall with massive deciduous trees shedding color combinations only God himself could create.  The crisp air on this girl’s face inspired and empowered me with new energy; perhaps a necessary jolt before the winter hibernation set in.

It’s the perfect time of year for a walk with a sweater and scarf.  Just when it gets a little too chilly, you can find your way into a cozy coffee shop that smells of sweet cider drinks and warm conversation.  There’s just something about this season.  Fall makes me feel alive and romanced.  I grieved missing the leaves, the orchards, and the sweatshirt weather this year as I sit by the pool in capris and a t-shirt.  The desert doesn’t do fall quite like Minnesota or New England, but there are echoes of the same refreshing sentiment.  I love the smell of fire pits in the evening and the ability to be outside again after our season of summer hibernation.

This season just resonates in me.  Its beauty and romance are just captivating to me and I wanted to figure out why.  Why is a season of death so stunning?  That’s really what it is.  The trees shedding their dead and burying them into expired lawns.  It’s a gorgeous death.  I got a little concerned for a bit that maybe at my core, I was enamored with a season of dying and my future will be resigned to reading Poe and wear black jackets and eyeliner.

But I don’t think that’s the case.  What if God, at the fall of humanity, weaved His redemption narrative into creation?  I mean, that sounds pretty simple, right?  We see dead things making soil rich to bring new life.  New growth emerges from out of the snowy winter.  We see parallel stories to Christ everywhere.  Maybe it’s been obvious to everyone else all along, but I have been captured these past few weeks by this notion:  God weaved a season of beautiful death into creation’s rhythm so it would already be familiar to our souls.

Think about it.  Death is the most ugly thing in existence.  It can be gory, gross, the most destructive and permanent part of life.  It goes against everything we are as created beings to find death beautiful.  So perhaps God did some foreshadowing in nature to prepare us and familiarize our beings with this seemingly oxymoronic concept that is essential to the Gospel.  Jesus took the most horrid death imaginable and redefined love and beauty where a curse once lived.  It’s a stretch for us to believe that God not only makes beautiful things out of the dust and dead, but He made death itself beautiful.  God shedding and killing our old selves to make us look more like him is beautiful death.  In a very literal way, letting go of life here to enter into eternity will be the most beautiful and true moment our souls will ever know.  I struggle to grasp it all, but Fall helps me to trust it’s possible.  I’m grateful today that God helps us see images of His truth in what He’s created because He knows our lack of faith and understanding.  What a good Dad.

Some of the most wonderful glory I’ve witnessed has been through this season of death.  It’s taught me to pay attention in other life seasons where death seems to prevail.  In relationships, in jobs, in health, in tragedy.  The promise stands that God is making it beautiful.  If we don’t stop and take a walk among what is dying, we may miss the beauty He’s painting into death to woo us, comfort us, and draw us further into His romantic story of redemption.  May we never miss it.  

writing on the hard days: beautiful things in his time.

Creativity is an overflowing of life for me.  And when I “don’t feel like it,” it’s difficult to create, to design, to write.  I love writing.  More and more all the time it seems.  But on hard days, it’s a struggle to get there.

I don’t want to remember the junk and frankly, I think people have enough of that to read and deal with in life. 

***

Last week, God showed me something amazing.  It’s like He was letting me in on a backstage tour of some of His recent top-notch work.

I had coffee with a friend who was visiting from out of town.  It’d been awhile since I’d seen her and I was thrilled to meet her new little baby girl.  As I held this sweet angel in my arms, I looked up at her mama and reminded her where we were a year prior.  Just months before, we were pleading with the Lord to bless her family with another child.  Our eyes filled with tears just thinking about what God did in a year!  Beautiful things in His time.

Later that day, a dear friend called me to let me know she was engaged!  I knew it was coming and was so happy to celebrate with her.  She’s a long-time friend whom I’ve had the wonderful privilege of walking with through the ups and downs, the uncertainties and unknowns of life.  And we, too, had a moment of remembering the transformation of the past year and what God had done in her story in such a short time.

God delights in redeeming stories; in working things out in ways we could never ask for or even imagine.  (Eph. 3:20-21)  I loved how He let me watch that happen and made sure I noticed His mighty work of the past year, twice in one day.

***

After some days of not writing, I presented my struggle to the Lord in a conversation of prayer.

He said this: “I want you to write on the hard days.”

“Really?!  Why?” I reply.  “I don’t want to remember this or stay in this place.  I don’t want people to think this is who I am.  I just want things to be different.”

“That’s just the point.”  I imagined Him saying it with a smile.

“I want you to write on the hard days.  Remember the struggle and ache.  Remember all of the things you’ve laid before me in the midst of your hurt.  Remember that I'm there, reminding you of My love and promises; that my faithfulness is unwavering through difficulty.  Remember just where you are today, so when I’ve redeemed this day in your life and further unfolded your story, you will be able to look back with the deepest sense of awe and gratitude about what I’ve done.  You’ll be able to look back and be amazed at how I made everything beautiful in its time.  Just as I’m promising you, today, that I will.  Write about your hard days, so you can see just how I unveil my redemption in ways unexpected and in a time unknown.  Write today, so that a year from now, you will be able to see my beautifully creative work reshaping and guiding your story.  You’ll see how I’ve been working behind the scenes.  The more you trust Me, the more you will be different.  You won’t be in this same place when you look back.  This is your before picture, so you can more fully praise Me for what you see after.”

I know that sin runs too deep for hard days not to exist and that the resurrection of Christ is way too big for better days not to come.  So today, trusting that God’s living and active promises are bigger than what I see and feel in this moment, I write.

"stop telling me what I can't do with you."

It’s still a little surreal, but I’m here.  The first wave of reality hit about half way through the road trip.  I’m actually doing this. 

At the risk of completely blowing my confident cover as a single 20-something doing her thang, I’m going to level with you.  As utterly excited as I am for this move and new job, I get freaked out sometimes.  I let my thoughts get away from me and the enemy attacks with accusing questions.  Am I going to be any good at this?  Will I thrive here?  Will I be liked?  Will this be where I’ll stay forever?  What about buying a house?  What if I don’t make friends?  What if I stop growing?

What if I can’t do it?

Fears and doubts.  I don’t like them at all.  It’s a struggle I’ve seen surface in the past few months.  I’m sure it’s been there most of my life, but only recently have been able to see it for what it is.  It’s not all the time, but occasionally I’ll catch my mind jumping aboard this train of cyclical fear-filled thought.  I’ll act and realize that I’ve just made a decision out of fear.

Fear isn’t from God except if it’s for God.  It’s sinful—pulling circumstances from God’s capable hands and letting them overflow through our trembling fingers.  I want to stop making decisions out of fear.  Fear isn’t freedom.  Taking a big step despite fear is freedom, though.  A few months ago, I really felt God saying to me, “Stop telling me what I can’t do with you.”  I agreed with God.  I have been doing that for a long time in many areas of my life and I want to be done with it.  I’m excited to see what You’ll do, Lord.  You like using the improbable and scary.  Thank you, God, for helping me get to this place. 

Overcoming fear means trusting in the goodness and promises of God—for your life, for your eternity, for your family, your job, your future, your relationships, your well-being, for everything.  It’s trusting that God is so very faithful.  It’s trusting He brought me here for His holy purposes that He’s going to accomplish.  It’s trusting that He loves His people and His Church.  It’s trusting that He loves me.  Because of all these promises I know to be true, it’s going to be okay.  Better than okay. 

I read a quote today that went something like this:
“Memorizing God’s promises could be the difference between winning and losing the battles of your day.”

Philippians 4:6 has been my favorite as of late.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.  2 Timothy 1:7

I cling to these promises, keep breathing, and take one thing at a time.  It’s the enemy’s trick to make the storm look bigger and our God look smaller.  For me, too many thoughts easily turn into a mind tornado, but one at a time is a lovely breeze at my back that pushes me to steadily move forward.

Lord, today I’m choosing Your promises over my fears.  You know better and will be glorified and further Your Kingdom with Your plans.  I want to be part of that.  I need You’re help to trust, but I know You’re able to bring me peace and strength just as much as You are able to deal with all that surrounds me.  Help me to trust You’ll never leave me and that You can use me, even when I fear.

“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21