The Fullness of God’s Time

Dates imprint themselves on me. Not so much in the way of long past history, or a great recollection of them, rather they become signposts. My Bible is full of notations of a day (or year) alongside verses that have marked my place in life. Verses God has given me in seasons of pain, prayer, hoping, or rejoicing. Returning to them is a remembering of God’s faithfulness and goodness in my life.

On the early morning of my one year Anniversary to my dearest (but still sleeping) husband, I sat on a porch in the backwoods of Northwestern Arkansas. My soul breathed in the beauty of God all around me.

The view from the porch.

And on the forefront of my mind was the divine ordination of this day exactly one year ago, when He joined my life with my husband’s as one.

Wedded Day! October 3, 2020.

I opened my Bible on the porch and my eyes fell to my underscoring of Psalm 68:7-8a,

”O God when You went out before your people, when You marched through the wilderness, the earth shook: the heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God.”

Beside it was written: “2-12-19, AR.” I vividly recall that season. I had gone to Arkansas to spend time in a cabin with God. It was rainy and unwelcomingly cold. I was walking through some deep soul mending, trying to cling to what I was learning: God was sovereignly weaving everything in my life for His plans and His goodness to radiate through.

The streams flooded with the winter rain made magnificent waterfalls!

I did not know then I would meet my husband a month later.

On the same page, I had also marked our wedding date, 10-03-20, beside the 6th verse:

“God sets the solitary in families, He brings out those who are bound into prosperity.”

I am overjoyed for the earthly family He has given me in my husband. More than that, this has been a meaningful promise as a long time single- God sets his people in forever family.

That morning, I was struck by how good God is to remind us of what He has done, so that we remember who He is when life tells us otherwise. I sat inside those reminders for awhile watching the sun color the trees.

We invited the Lord into our day as we went in search of adventure. The lazy Buffalo River wound her way through hills, cutting cliffs as we hiked along her bluffs. I found a wedding band! I turned it into the park ranger station. She much too exuberantly gave me a junior ranger sticker. I guess the mask hid my 38 years well.

The Mighty Buffalo River was low, but lazily stretched on.

We went in search of more trails only to find they were quite overgrown or not marked. Our hunt for a final trail took us down a river access road. Gravelly and narrow, we gave way to an oncoming truck. Though he had room, he suddenly veered and parked. In the ditch. Perplexed I looked in the rearview and saw his truck door open. He must be going fishing in his hopefully four wheel drive.

We meandered on down to the river in search of the illusive trail. We never found it and discovered later you have to caulk the old wagon and ford the river to get to the trailhead! We drove back up the same road, dejected, our sense of adventure not satiated.

As we came to a little community church, two men were standing along the road. The younger of the two flagged us down, “Hey, could I borrow one of your phones? I don’t have any reception out here and my truck is stuck in a ditch.” We pulled over and spent the next half hour calling his brother and then AAA to come extricate his truck. The kind AAA lady tried to locate us on her GPS. The older gentleman native to the area, still in his work overalls, gently tried to guide her, “Yew see ma’am, yew just come to the end of the black top and hang a right and keep comin’.” She finally was able to locate us and send help. During all this, the man in distress was pacing back and forth, and chain smoking like he was in a foxhole. Seemed his mind was. Or he was on something other than oxygen.

His name was “C.J.”. He was very polite and grateful, but we sensed through the Spirit’s nudging that more than his truck was in the ditch. I asked him what we could pray for in his life. He starting spilling out how his life was in a bad way. How he was in a bad way when he went into that ditch. He seemed desperate, having offered his brother a substantial amount of money to come help him. He made the point he had been trying to be good, “and watch his beers.”

So we began to share what God had done for him. He said he couldn’t stop thinking of his past. We told him that Christ had nailed his past to the Cross including everything that was ever written in the law to condemn him. That Christ wanted to set him free and give him a new life. He responded and said he had read, “The truth will set you free.” “Yes, and who is the truth?” “Jesus!” we happily told him.

Jesus himself said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through Me” John 14:6.

The older gentleman nodded in agreement off to the side.

We told C.J. that none of us could ever be good enough to meet God’s standard. But that God had made a way for relationship with Him through the Cross. Through accepting what HE did in our place and receiving His forgiveness He gives us a new heart and a new life. He listened with his eyes intent, his feet still, his soul soaking in what his mind and heart had been wrestling with when, “God put him in that ditch”. (His words.)

We told C.J. he was the answer to our prayer that day, and that we would be praying for him and encouraged him to find believers to walk out his life with. He opened his empty wallet and told us he didn’t have anything to offer us.

Isn’t that the story of grace? To get God in exchange for emptiness?

We told him we just wanted to hear his story in heaven someday.

We drove away rejoicing that God had answered our prayer and marked our day with us!

God healed some disappointments in my heart that day, over the hard circumstances that had led to us getting married a week later than planned and with much fewer loved ones. His ways and his timing had perfectly led us to celebrate our anniversary in the timeline that put us on the trajectory of a man in a ditch needing a Savior.

I told you I had a thing for dates. I guess God does too, for he graciously sent His Son in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4). Jesus most certainly entered into the confines of time to show us just how infinite and everlasting His love is by becoming sin in exchange for giving us His righteousness.

One last gift the Lord gave. I had my husband open the first letter I ever wrote him, before I met him. God had put it on my heart to channel my desires for family through writing many years before. I hadn’t read it since.

The date I penned it was October 3, 2008.

Our wedding day.

If God is not moving on your timeline friend, stop panicking. He is able to accomplish far more in a nanosecond than you can in a lifetime of worrying. He does more in our resting than we can ever do in our doing.

I Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

God is weaving a thousand different details in the very detail of your life you think He is most neglectful of. He redeems the years the locusts have eaten and promises to bring good from evil. Don’t get ahead of his timing. God doesn’t need our help, He just wants our trust.

Right now I am praying for His timing in other desires of my heart. I am learning that He truly sets our boundaries and time on earth with the greatest of intentionally.

Keep pressing into the God who created time, who humbly entered into it, and who has seated us with Him forever.

“Who raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 2:6-7.

The Buffalo River looked quite different from the last season I had visited her in.
The wild river flooded the banks, 2-12-19.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

Obedience cost the Son of God His life.

Obedience to God always costs something.

I sat down to write about a story of obedience, (writing pouring from my own delayed obedience) not knowing that the circumstances surrounding it would be repeated this past month.

May we lift up Haiti.

I remember the waves of helplessness and grief over the nation of Haiti, a decade ago. On January 12, 2010, the impoverished island experienced a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, killing around 300,000 people.

 I had been a nurse for less than five years. I felt inadequate.

Surely I was too young, too inexperienced- I had only cared for babies. Several of my coworkers went, giving me courage.

I prayed over what to do.

I was to go.

Wanting to be prepared I went to a health clinic. They suggested certain vaccines and medications for what I may encounter. The vaccines were not ones routinely given in the U.S. I spent a little time praying over them. I took them given the unknown.

The trip to Haiti was eye-opening. You cannot un-see suffering. We stayed at an orphanage, flanked by high concrete walls. (Who would want to harm orphans anyways?) Three weeks post earthquake, all the children slept outside because the tremors shook still.

I met a boy, whose life had always been hard. It consisted of being wheeled in a chair by other children. He could not communicate. I am unsure of his actual diagnosis, but he must have had some form of cerebral palsy. Clearly abandoned. Trying to make small talk in a language I didn’t know, I asked the kids their names. I asked about the one who couldn’t speak.

“Samson.”

“As in the strongest man who ever lived?”

I smiled through the churning of my heart.

“Why would you name this one, “Samson,” God?

Clearly I do not have the eyes of God.

I Corinthians 1:27 says, “He has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.”

During my short stay, I helped in a gym turned post operative ward. I kept kids occupied, helped with bandages, and loved on them as best I could.

These kids accepted all the love.

We drove out into the villages to do a few pop up clinics. There was no advertising necessary. People came from everywhere.

Returning home, we drove through the Dominican Republic, nearly losing my life in the front seat -the driver playing chicken with the other cars on the road. I got back on a plane home, exhausted.

I felt like a literal drop in a bucket.

Haiti needed an ocean of God’s love.

My life was changed. My perspective changed- my life wasn’t hard. Theirs was impossibly sustainable. The stories that came from the tent cities weeks following haunted me.

I had done so little.

Days upon returning I felt sick. I thought I had malaria.

It was not malaria or a parasite. The years that followed would reveal my obedience had cost me my health. Unfortunately the cocktail of vaccines were the trigger to my autoimmune issues which I deal with to this day.

I have since wondered, “What was the point?” They wouldn’t have missed me. I handed out hugs, prayers, smiles, bandages, water, vitamins, and some meds.

Big deal.

That very short mission trip ironically kept me from pursuing a life of missions overseas.

It makes no sense to me.

Yet I am not God. He told me to go. I went.

I am not the one that determines the eternal value of my one act of obedience.

If God accomplished the redemption of the world on the shoulders of One who stooped down from the glories of heaven to obey His Father’s will, what more reason do I need? Jesus laid aside His rights as God, not to just carry His cross, but to carry yours as the Son of Man.

Consider for a moment.

God Himself suffered.

He suffered as a Father and as a Son.

That cross the Son carried entailed the judgment and wrath of God. Those stripes on Jesus’ back from the soldiers became rivulets for the cup of wrath God poured upon Him.

God’s justice and mercy met at the Cross.

Yet there is something revelatory about the attitude of Christ.

“Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” Hebrews 12:2.

Christ obeyed for the joy of displaying the glory of God.

And the joy of knowing you.

Don’t minimize then what He can do through your surrendered heart.

Even one act.

My life is no longer my own. The trajectory of its course changed when Christ trod the path to Calvary. It changed when He gave me His own righteousness for my sin. And put a new heart within me.

I have a sweet friend who told me she ended her engagement-out of obedience to Christ. My heart aches for her. The world will not understand this. Many in her circle likely won’t either. But neither will the world understand the cross, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” I Corinthians 1:18.

If you are suffering because of your faith steps- remember:

It was through one man’s obedience- Abraham, after 25 years waiting, he received the promised son. Through whom Messiah came. That every nation on earth would be blessed by the gathering of spiritual family in Christ.

Remember the boy who gave his small lunch? Jesus fed 5,000 plus women and children with it. And had far more leftovers than a Sunday potluck.

I since have seen God’s great kindness in orchestrating my life. Through my own struggles, He has given me a passion for health, encouraging others to find deeper healing. He kept me from sorrows He didn’t allot to me. And instead of going to one far away place He has given me the gift of going to many places through my relationships with my missionary friends all over the world. And hospitality is at my front door.

Our risen Savior bought us through His obedience.

And has purchased an inheritance for those who have placed their faith and trust in Him, where for all eternity, because of His act of submission we will experience His immeasurable kindness and love.

This little one was just so hungry for attention and full of giggles!
Such big smiles for having so little. She radiated joy.
This young boy, Mistal, wrote me a note. He lost his foot. I pray his resiliency has led him to a full life in Christ.

Please your stories of obedience and lessons along the way, I would love to hear!

God knows what you need. And meets you in your wanting.

I wouldn’t say that I was overly picky when it came to dating.

I just wanted to know if a dude was “it” before we launched into a full relationship.

I think you see the problem there, before I did.

I wasn’t over particular about looks. It was more of interests that drew me in further than one’s swagger. I never liked pretty boys and as a result can’t really name many Hollywood actors. Being too pretty usually goes to your head anyways.

I wanted someone who sought to love God more than himself, and put others before him. After all loving God and loving people are inseparable.

I wanted someone who treasured and lived God’s Word, valued family and community, and upheld my desires to serve my family full time someday, as well as my heart for missions.

These are good things to want. But then there was a much longer informal second list. I am embarrassed to admit some of its contents but, hey can’t a girl dream? I kinda wanted dating to look like a friendship in fast forward. With it ending in an engagement precisely 6 months later and marriage rounding out the perfect year of a homegrown relationship.

I probably don’t need to tell you at this point that I idealized. A lot. Especially about the future of a relationship. I sometimes missed seeing what was right in front of me.

That proved to be crushing.

So I swung the other side of the pendulum, and forgot that you need to at least share the same ideal ways of actually living the day to day.

I dated all types through the trajectory of my years. Common mistakes and erratic threads binding the two ends of that line into a circle. I found myself dizzy. I spent years looking for a man with a ministry focus, associating this with godliness. I unfairly judged some based on their lack thereof, and I missed the lack of relational character in those who hid behind the idea of one.

Turns out cracks in trust don’t make for a good foundation.

I pivoted towards those who drew the deepest empathy out of me. I dated a few not-so healthy guys in an attempt to convince myself, that together we made a whole.

Come to find out in relationship, it’s two wholly broken people healed by God’s grace who are made one in Christ.

I spent a lot of time chasing after a perception of who I thought someone was, and my perception of what God wanted for me.

Sometimes we have to circle around a few times to realize we are the ones digging the trench around trust instead of placing ourselves in it.

Over and over I would have these conversations with God.

“If you would just change his heart towards me.”

“If you would just change him.”

At one point even praying, “God, open my heart.”

There was a good reason it wasn’t.

God showed me that essentially there are two places for my faith-trust to be planted.

One- In Him, fully confident that every “no” brought a greater “yes.” (Certainly not all seen in this lifetime.) And to trust that God was walling my way in with great care and kindness.

Or I could believe that the painful doors closed were purposeless and careless of God as he “tried” to orchestrate good from the ground zero of mine and other’s disastrous choices. He appeared to be failing miserably as my health tanked more with every risking of my heart. I couldn’t see the imminent good from the piles of smoke and ash as I kept circling.

Or He just wasn’t finished yet.

Psalm 139:5-6 became an anthem for me in my resolve to trust, “You hem (wall) my way in, before and behind me, You lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, I cannot attain it.”

I didn’t know if marriage was something God had for me at age 36. But I was learning to trust that His ways really were good. And what I needed. And more than that, God was what I needed most.

About the time I surrendered again for the 100th time and was learning to let go of my ways, when I was contemplating why arranged marriages were not valued in our culture…

Enter Cap K.

He lived 1,234 miles away.

Who serenaded me with Kip songs. (As in Napoleon Dynamite. Told you I don’t care much for the bright lights of Hollywood.)

Did I mentioned how far away he was?

Who called me consistently.

This technology thing isn’t really the old fashioned love story I had in mind.

Who showed me he was really listening by lifting up my friends, family, and their stories in his prayers with me every evening. Before he even met them.

So… why isn’t he married??

Who flew down with renewed hope in his step and faith in his long-journeyed heart to meet a girl he had only talked to on the phone.

What kind of man does that?

Who confessed his faults. And showed me grace in mine.

This kind of man freaks me out a little. Ok, a lot.

And in whose broad shoulders I finally felt at home, at rest.

I could be me.

He was genuine.

Together we fit.

It’s as if God arranged it all along.

Where my heart finally found trust. Saginaw, MI

It turns out His severest kind of mercies were truly His kindest.

PRAISE GOD FOR ALL THE PAINFUL NO’S!

God knew in my health struggles I needed a man who would support and provide for me, not just financially/physically, but who would uphold and treasure my empathetically big heart, and encourage my spirit and giftings with his quiet, steady strength.

God knew I needed someone whose ministry was everyone around him, because that’s what my life had become, without even realizing it. (Through trial pursuit of far and away doors, God kept bringing me right back to where I was. “To be all here-” Jim Elliot.)

I am not trying to say that in finally letting go it all happened. I had let go 1,000 times before. We certainly don’t get everything we want. Thank God! But sometimes the wanting is hard. I learned that our journey through our desires is about trusting a God who is good, who hears our prayers, and is moving on our behalf, for our good. Always.

I am still learning this.

It’s coming up on two years now, of that fatal moment when we met. It wasn’t quite love at first sight. I was still a bit blind. God graciously knew my heart needed to set its vision on the right order of things. So He sent me the most patient man on earth.

We wholly committed our dating to the Lord. And slowly, God said yes through a thousand little flashes of sight into each other’s hearts. Like the fireflies that dance in quiet harmony, their illumination is only seen against the falling of time.

The fireflies, a personal reminder of God’s sovereignty, lit up the fields of Ohio, his home state.

A year later, after Cap K courageously had answered all the questions in my head, I answered his question with a resounding, “Yes!” from the depths of my heart.

At our wedding, we had our parents gather around us and pray. The beautiful irony of God ‘arranging’ our meet up through their life long prayers and love was not lost on me.

Psalm 139 was the passage my beloved brother unknowingly wrote our wedding sermon on.

Along the way of God “walling” me in, it taught me to look up. It caused me to trust in painfully real ways, but it brought me deeper into His goodness.

He filled the trenches of my weary walking with His unmeasured grace. The altar of trust I had encircled for many years had cost Him everything. What was the mere measure of my laying down what was not mine to own?

It’s amazing how God uses the disappointments of our wants to bring us to what we need.

Him.

Lake Superior, where we spent some of the happiest days of our dating.
Glory days in the U.P.!

This is written in honor of my husband of 6 months. Happy two years of growing in our wanting of each other, and having all we need supplied in Christ Jesus our God for all eternity.

It’s Holy Week.

The Creator of the cosmos, kingdoms, and all powers has ridden into town.

On a donkey.

It seems on par with the nativity scene of the Babe in an animal trough, in some damp dwelling, where animals live and eat. And do other things.

The humility of God is a bit overwhelming given the unfolding of His story. It would be easy to miss him in the crowd. The crowd He rode into that week before His death, waved palm branches, and shouted, “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

A few days later, they were yelling, “Crucify Him!”

Many still miss him.

I know I have at times.

Not much has changed in two millennia. All the world is still shouting this Holy week. Kids trafficked by drug lords. A Swiss missionary’s remains found after being kidnapped by Jihadists. Systematic torture, “re-education” of peoples not fit for China’s politics. Coups and threats, nations rising and falling, and failing.

And where is God?

He is found in the most obscure of places.

He is found here.

Emmanuel means, God with us. This very week, history culminates in the collision of God and man. The God-Man came to be one of us. And in this most Holy of weeks in the Jewish calendar, His eyes are on what is before Him.

Past the crowds and their palm branches.

The Cross.

And just beyond the cross, He sets His joyous sight on something else.

Us.

Our right-standing with God.

This is only accomplished as He willingly lays down the intimacy He shares in the Trinity, the rights and privileges of His Godhead.

God humbled himself to death. Even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8)

And while all the world is groaning, Christ is groaning in our place. If there’s any doubt your sin separates you from a just and holy God, listen to the utter agony of Christ’s words. As the sin of the world and the wrath of God is laid on His shoulders He cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”  Matthew 27:46.

Jesus is separated momentarily from His Father and the Spirit.

Because He knows we are separated from a Holy God through our immense offenses against His perfect law. When David sinned with Bathsheba, committing adultery, He said,

“Against You and You only have I sinned” Psalm 51:4.

Such is the case of every sinner. It is God we have sinned against. What is more grievous than this?  All the good we “do” can never satisfy the justice we deserve.

In this Holy week, this week in a world that has long passed insanity, God has undone the curse. The curse that came in that once perfect Eden. When we thought we knew better than God. When we broke communion with Him, fled the shade of the tall trees and His arms. And a sinful nature wrapped itself around us instead.

 “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles (all) in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” Galatians 3:13-14.

That promise to Abraham is a deeply cut one. It’s a covenant. More than a promise, it requires the spilling of life blood. And we broke our end of it. Someone has to pay.

Someone did.

“Jesus paid it all! All to Him I owe. My sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow” -Elvina M. Hall, 1865.

The question of God’s love is forever settled, His enduring goodness proclaimed in the Cross of Christ.

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” Romans 5:6-9.

While we were yet sinning, choosing the forbidden fruit, rebelling, yelling, seeking our own way, Christ died.

God spent Himself for us, how will we spend Holy Week?

Perhaps we pass around drinks, make food, and sit with family this weekend.

Let it remind you that Jesus has poured out His blood in the cup of His new covenant and broken His body like bread for us. He is gathering eternal family.

This blessed week, let us set our eyes on our Redeemer, the ONLY hope for this broken world. 

Let us rejoice in His triumphant entry into the gates of our hearts, where He conquers the reign of sin and sets us free from death.

True, the humility of God is a bit overwhelming given the unfolding of His story. But then there’s the folded grave clothes at the end of it.

Or rather the beginning.

Happy Resurrection Week!

Texas sunrise. Day of my engagement, April 25, 2020.

Don’t lose your warm heart, Texas.

I am sure by now it has circulated around the world how the inferno called Texas has frozen over. Talks of global warming have been shelved for more heated debates over the causes of the crisis in Texas. The downed power lines, the overloaded grids, the frozen pipes, the water shut offs, the rolling blackouts, the road conditions which have created chaos for those of us trying to get to essential jobs and for our emergency response teams.

This crisis will pass, we will learn, and be better prepared hopefully. I am praying everyone weathers the storm well. Together. It is in crises like this that reveal the condition of the human heart. I have experienced the kindness and sacrifices of so many. My nursing coworkers coming in early for each other, sleeping in the hospital on cots, no hot showers, staying days on end. My managers sleeping on their office floors so their nurses can have a bed as they care for our needs. My coworkers working tirelessly through their own exhaustion to keep our patients safe and harbored from the storm while their worried parents can’t visit. I have had countless people check in. A dear friend let me stay in her home so I could navigate a shorter drive to work. My husband helped me prep for my 30 mile drive in and as I said goodbye the power went out. He weathered the worst of it by himself in a 40 degree house, yet I never heard him gripe about it.

I want to thank all the police officers- my cousin Cody, our neighbor Al, all the emergency workers out there in this craziness keeping us sane and safe- Andrew, my cousin’s husband. All the people working around the clock so people in nursing homes and hospitals can have the life giving things they need. All the workers keeping our city going, my brother-n-law, Justin working to keep people safe from downed lines and to keep lines of communication open. My church and all the others for opening their doors to those who can’t keep warm. Friends offering homes, food, water, shelter. My coworkers for bringing laughter to a hard situation and just doing what we have to do and doing it well.

It’s easy in these situations to let our heart show. And Texas has a big one.

As hours and days wear on, it’s warring on our hearts. It is tiresome.

I confess, I have a heart condition.

And it lived there long before this crisis brought it to the surface. I know this because I know its tendencies everyday, when little crises spin their scripts. I have seen my reflection many times in the faces of others I have hurt. I thought I had trained myself at this point in life to be fairly selfless. And then marriage reflected how many decisions I make in a day that are centered around me. I know how much my emotions and body can dictate what level of kindness comes forth. I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping my chin up until I actually have to do a pull up. I know my heart and its love of self. I know how it likes to tell its tale of woe to my head.

It talks a lot.

I thought I knew my heart best, and that I was resigned to the attached strings which pull at it. But God is far more acquainted with it than I am.

King David of Israel said, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down, and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether” Psalm 139:1-4.

We can hide our heart from others, and keep it together most of the time, but there is no hiding from the knowing of God.

How despairing! My heart sinks like the stone that it can be so often.

But God is also a good, kind Surgeon with a remedy, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” Ezekiel 36:26.

I had a moment of open heart surgery today. I don’t want to brave the roads anymore, pack another bag, leave my husband and stay overnight so I can work another dayshift. Home is my comfort, my safe haven, it is a healing place for me. There’s nothing wrong with wanting these good things. But God cares far more about the intents of my heart and its actions than He does any false bravado. (For the record I have none for Interstate 35.)

As I was throwing my own pebbles into the pond of despair, trying not to compare situations, all the while comparing other’s situations so as to remove the focus from my own, I hit a rock. Let’s just call that rock a revelation of a deeper desire that was fueling my mood. It is a good desire. But the way I was desiring it, my way- was not good because it is not the situation God has placed me in.

God showed me that I could give Him that rock, and trust. Trust that He places us in the situations we live in for greater purposes, or let it continue to sink the state of my heart.

After sinking for a few minutes longer, I was like, “Fine!”

“Fine?”

“Yes, fine, you can have it.” (You can see I have a very mature relationship with God.)

“Ok.”

“That’s all?”

“Until you give me all of it, your desires, your struggles, your heart, I can’t remove the stone that you think you so desperately need when in reality it is creating a hole that is hemorrhaging away the blessing of receiving a softer heart.”

Lord, give me a heart that is soft, open, and new! Plant in me a heart that doesn’t tire of well doing. Give me a heart that sees others as you do. And let my heart admit its sin. Grant me the heart that you created me for, one that reflects yours.

I pray that when all this ice turns into a puddle, we find our reflection is full of His glory and grace that got us through!

Iced daffodils
As I was posting, these fresh daffodils appeared on my FB memories from 6 years ago. God’s goodness in His timing of making all things new!

Belated Plans Are Often Better

I have longed dreamed of a honeymoon in paradise. When I close my eyes, I am laying there, on a white-washed beach, the sounds of nature serenading, my groom attentively at my side, the waves lapping at my feet and not a soul around.

Unfortunately this year required eyes wide open. And our honeymoon plans were delayed by the changing of our wedding plans. For the third time. That was a bit crushing… so we looked ahead. With our antibodies on board, boarded a plane for St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

Our path to the southern sun

After the flurry of travel we arrived. For someone who has a real love for third world countries and cultures, I was a bit shocked at the layout of this first world territory. The shuttle dropped us off at the rental car place, surrounded by barbwire over a falling down brick wall. “Do we need to document dings on the car before we go?” “Nope.” (For the first time I said yes to that expensive insurance.) In our freshly cleaned, “non-smoking” car, we took off. I navigated as my husband drove on the left side of the road, up the mountain, on actual hair pin turns. (Isn’t a pin straight?) No guard rails and the roads that were labeled were numbered, while my phone map had lovely names like Magen’s Bay Road.

Let’s just say it was tense.

We survived, and the next day headed for our beach, 1.3 miles from our house. We thought we could just hike down to it as our Airbnb had boasted. The “hike” was walking down that mountain snake of a road with no bike lane. We decided to roll down it in our little beat up car.

We sat on the beach at last, our first day in our paradise! It was beautiful especially after driving through the rough locale.

The change in scenery however, didn’t do much for my heart. I had been sorting through some serious conversations in my head of late. Didn’t realize I had packed them with me until I sat there.

I was struggling with the division all around me and in me. I sat there beside my new groom but words wouldn’t come. He had just loss his last grandparent and was missing her funeral because of our plans and timing. Our last grandparent. My last passed two months before our wedding. A lot had died with them. And their generation.

We sat in the stillness.

Not far from us on our beach, we overheard voices projected through a microphone. We had passed a tent set up, saw the people milling around, all dressed up.

A wedding was happening.

I wryly wondered if her plans had gone similar to mine.

A long blue aisleway led down into the water. We waited as the ceremony went on out of sight. People began to flank the aisleway, cameras ready. There she was, in a black swimsuit cover, being wheeled down… in her beach wheelchair.

Her wide, sun-splitting smile was her only needed adornment.

No groom, she was the bride of Christ. It was her baptismal day. More than a few people were gathered on that Tuesday morning. Clapping and rejoicing filled the air as the ocean roared in response. She was sent off with encouraging shouts, as she was wheeled into the sea by two strong gentlemen. She raised her hands. But it wasn’t enough for her to just float. They wheeled her back out, walked her back in, this time with a walker. The waves washed against her and she stood there for some time soaking in the grace of God, her sins washed out with the tide. Strangers on the beach watched and cheered.

The world had its eyes on the transition of our Commander in Chief, the changing of the guard.

Yet the host of heaven watched tenderly as this beloved daughter, who had fought her way through life, found a way to obey the commands of Christ, and shout to the world, “I am His, He is mine!”

Her act of obedience may have only produced a ripple here on earth, but it drew waves in eternity. For the things that earth barely notices, God keeps a careful watch out for- the sparrow that falls, the lily that grows, the woman who couldn’t walk unassisted to her own baptism, and the young bride sorting through her emotions. God cares and He sees. And I realized that in my disappointments, God has His own plans moving forward all the time, building His everlasting kingdom. One day we will realize His are far more real than the turning tides of any earthly one.

Every step in our life is gaining momentum towards something.

As I turned to my new husband, in awe of the gift God had shared with us, I saw how much it had touched him too. And I was thankful to be here, to witness this act of obedience. This reminder, which one day in eternity will reveal its fullness. Lord knows she doesn’t even know how it moved me outside of myself.

I let it soak in and wash away my disappointments heaped like a pile of sandy earth. They were going out with the tide. Because that is what the cares of this life become– not insignificant, but lighter, in comparison to a mighty God who is accomplishing far more than we could ever ask or imagine, much less see. Can you imagine a coming glory revealed through Jesus in us, that is incomparable with our current sufferings? (Romans 8:18)

The after rainbow

For all of us facing deep disappointment or despair, take courage in the next small step, that action that defies your emotions. That ripple is producing movement you don’t even have eyes for yet.

If I can know how to love you better by praying or encouraging, send me a message!

Magen’s Bay
Trunk Bay, St John