Reason #1 to not quit writing in your blog… you might just forget the password

I didn’t really think about taking a break from blogging… not really. I just one day posted about sweet potato fries and then I didn’t post again.

You know how time flies when you are a grown up.

So, quickly let me tell you that things are good here. In fact, despite some circumstances that might have taken me out a year ago, I am feeling stronger and more in tune with God daily. I cannot tell you how I am looking forward to adding a tab to the top of this blog called “Where I am Going”… it is going to be so envigorating to get to share all of that… its just not.time.yet.

But soon and very soon…

So here are the highlights, in case anyone has been wondering what has been up with Co and I:

-I have been enjoying getting more plugged in at my church. Somehow I got so in my head that I forgot to get to know all of the lovely ladies I have been seeing week in and week out for 2 years. It kind of got to the point where I felt like the person who has just known someone to long to ask for their name… you know? I know everyone knows my name and I know theirs, so how do you introduce yourself after that?!?!

Anyway, I sucked it up and I cannot tell you how glad I am. I going to a step aerobics class at the church a few times a week, joined a ladies Bible study that will soon be beginning and even managed to attend a night out with like 60 other women at the church. Yeah you read that right… 60. It was wild.

-I got true, God-healing relief from my anxiety. (Story to follow. I started writing it here and realized that it deserves its own blog)

-My house is within a month from being move-in ready, thank you Jesus! I am going to update with new photos here in a few days.. I have tons still on my camera. We ended up tearing out every single wall and redoing everything to code. So basically when this is all said and done my house will be brand new. Its funny how much the restoration of the house is mirroring the work God is doing in my heart/life/soul/spirit… (again, that’s another blog in the making) But suffice it to say, I have the colors all picked out, cabinets ready to go and appliances waiting to be delivered. The outside of the house will need to wait until spring since it looks like this Ohio winter is coming in like a lion… (someone needs to tell Ohio there is this season called ‘Autumn’ we seem to keep missing)

-In other house-related news, my brother Aaron and his wife Beck finally sold their Nashville digs and they just got word this week that their offer on an Ohio house was accepted! And guess what? That Ohio house happens to be less than 1/4 mile from my house! Growing up no one could’ve possibly told me how happy I would be to have my little brother living 6 or so houses down the road. Congrats, Aaron and Beck!

-Cohen is doing/saying/pretending so many new things I would have a hard time fitting it all into a million blogs. He is such a perfect redemptive gift in my life. His personality is like sunshine… he is gregarious, warm, pesronal, insightful, engaging, silly… sometimes when he wakes me up at 5a, I don’t even mind. He’s that spectacular.

He’s now looking at pictures of himself or pointing into the mirror and saying “my name Co Bean” which cracks me up to no end. I ask him “what’s your name?” as long as he will humor me. I am gonig to get it on video (because I know you all just can’t wait to hear it )

He’s also making really grown up statements now that come out of nowhere and totally catch me off guard… like, the other day I asked him to hand me my phone which he had nabbed off of the counter and he looked at me all seriously and said, “Mommy, phone heavy. I hold it for you”. Cohen is a total foodie, so he never wants to share anything he is eating. We all give him a hard time about this and always ask for bites of his food. The other day I asked him for a bite and he looked at me like he was thinking about it and then said, “Sorry, mommy”, kissed me on the forehead and walked away. Then a few days ago we stopped by the new house to check on something and Cohen went right in, grabbed a tape measure, handed me one end and walked to the opposite wall. When I asked him what he was doing, he said “I need measure”. He is always claiming things are “ruined” now too. Anytime he drops something or touches a sticky hand to something clean (which, as you might suspect, is often) he said, “ah, no. its ruined” of course it sounds more like “WOO-end” which makes it all the better.

Cohen is obessed with trains now. He sleeps with his “Little Engine that Could” book at night and insists on wearing his one shirt with a train on it every single day it is clean. Everything becomes a train… chairs lined up in the dining room, pillows stacked on the floor, people he can get to participate. One day I heard him yell his normal “all aboard!” from the living room and then I heard him fussing over seats and seat belts and tickets. When I stepped into the room, he was trying to get my brother and sister in law’s huge dogs to sit on particular pillows on the floor…. he’s not large, but he certainly is in charge

-My little brother Josh said perhaps the funniest thing the other night that he has ever said. He was reciting Bible verses and made this oopsie with John 3:16,

“for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in would not be amish, but have everlasting life.”

Nice, eh?

Well I will leave with you with that giggle.

Be blessed friends!

Have you ever had a conversation that later you wish you’d have somehow taped? And I don’t mean so you could clear yourself or win a fight or some other mischief (although haven’t we all wished we had for those reasons at one point or another?) I mean, have you ever had such a Truth-packed conversation you wish you could have had it transcribed into a personal reference tool?

Can’t you just imagine it?

“Hold on just a second, friend”, you’d say with your first finger pointing and your eyes squinting and head nodding. Then putting the tape recorder on the table, “This is just such a rad interaction, I want to make sure I’d have it forever. On tape.”

Somehow I think it might stifle the moment… tape recorders just scream INTERROGATION, don’t they? Darn cop shows.

So until I figure out a way to secretly tape conversations (please note the sarcasm) , I guess I will be left trying to rely on my mom-brain to recall the highlights.

Yeeahhh…

I kind of won the pastor lottery twice in a row. When I was in high school Pastor Jason moved himself and his wonderful wife, Heidi, to Bellefontaine to pastor a mostly dead youth group in town. I didn’t go to that church, but then neither did most of the 200+ kids who showed up on Wednesday nights to hear the Word. Although he has a dynamic personality, what drew us there was quite simply the uncensored Word of God. There were no kid gloves on his teaching. When they moved to Michigan to pastor a new church, we were happy for him, just sad for our community.

Pastor Ricks is very different from Pastor Jason and yet his dynamism, like Jason’s, is not the thing that draws people to the church… its the Word. I think that’s a really good indicator about a body of believers… why do they congregate together? To be cool? To be ‘relevant’? To hear a good speaker? Or to get fed? hmmm…. that might be another thought for another post…

The point I was trying to get to (ahem, Digression) was this: anyone can read the Bible at face value and maybe even take away some moral guidelines or truths, but then there is the revelation of God through the Word that speaks to the regenerated heart of a believer. When I talk about winning the pastoral lottery, I mean getting to sit under the shepherding of two pastors who have a way of imparting the revelation of God as opposed to just coming up with a cute little sermon in which all the points start with the same letter of the alphabet. Not that those latter type of sermons are wrong or bad, just uninspiring….

I just swatted Digression on the knuckles…time to get on with the original thought for this post- what was it again? …. oh yeah…

I sat across from Pastor Ricks in the lilac colored conference room at the church for an hour or so yesterday. There was no pressing issue to discuss, really. He asked me how things were going and I meandered around the big concerns in my life, stopping at each to give a factual update of sorts. Then I told him about the Finish Line Fatigue and The Anxiety and we decided to pull up some chairs and sit with them for awhile.

He reminded me that The Anxiety really isn’t of God or mine, as I often assume. As a child of God, born again, The Anxiety, has no natural place in my life if I really believe in my heart that God created me and keeps the whole world spinning. I believe that He knows the number of hairs on my head, takes care of even the sparrows and that there is good reason for me to give up the worries for some peace.

And yet? Lately, I go from one fearful-avoidance-anxiety issue to another. I get one looming issue under control only to find something else has run amuck. Its like that game at Chuck E. Cheese with the weasels. I smack one with the hammer-like tool only to find two others have popped up somewhere else. I just can’t seem to get a handle on my life.

And in all fairness to myself, there is a lot going on.

Still, all explanations aside, The Anxiety isn’t a fun companion.

Pastor reminded me of a passage I have known since I was a little girl, but he brought light to a phrase I hadn’t paid much mind to before. And he said something when he had finished that settled a place deep in my spirit because its just True. “Kate, there are a lot of things not yet played out on earth that are already settled in heaven. Don’t fret. It is already decided. You are just waiting for it all to unfold.”

Sigh….. like, DEEP SIGH.

So soak in this familiar passage and let the God of the Universe bring peace to you as you run the race appointed to you, waiting for what is already settled in heaven to unfold here on earth.

Hebrews 12: 1-4 [Amplified Bible]

1THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
2Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God

…yeah, cause that’s what I did. You know how when you get email or a blog and you type in your password of choice, it gives you that meter that shows you the strength of the password? Yeah? Well, listen to the strength meter friends. I woke up a couple of weeks ago and all- yes ALL-of my passwords had been changed… and oh! one other tip, don’t have the same password for everything. It makes it so much easier for someone to throw your online world into chaos.

Anyway, after faxing in my identification and filling out paperwork, I am now back into my blog/emails/facebook/twitter. And now the passwords (yes, they each have their own now) are like strong, like OLYMPIC STRONG.

So I have like literally a thousand items to read in my google reader and a lot of catching up to do, so instead of writing a super long post, I thought I’d just let you know a few highlights of the last couple of weeks:

-I bought a house! We should be closing quite soon and I am ecstatic! After looking at homes for several months, the very first house I had put an offer on came back on the market. The person who had gotten to the bid on the house had to back out only a few days before it was to close so the bank was ready to sell. I ended up purchasing the house for almost $14,000 less than my original bid! Such a blessing!!! There is a bit of work to do on the house… some new wiring and gutting and windows and de-wallpapering galore. And the yard? Its a jungle. Which, I had to remind myself several times yesterday as I hacked through the yard in the 98 degree heat, I prefer to a bare yard with nothing to work with. I will post the before and after pics once there are after pics to post. They are going to be ridiculous! Right now there is pink tile and countertops in the kitchen…so the change, I promise, is going to be drastic!

-Cohen is growing like a weed and talking SO MUCH. He’s recently perfected his ‘cheesy grin’ as of late so be expecting to see photos/video of that!

-We are preparing for vacay in Texas here within in the week…some seriously good family time. Cannot wait!

Now, how are you all?!??! I’ve missed you! Cannot tell you how glad I am the hacker changed everything to the same password and didn’t post something awful posing as me… whew!

Great opportunity to give? Doing something for the Kingdom? Helping the fatherless get mentored?
Check. Check Check.
The Father’s Day gift is just the icing on the cake!

TMP Fathers Day Campaign from The Mentoring Project on Vimeo.

Its been a long time since the last Sunday Session and I figured its about high time we got back into A.W.Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy.

For any newbies who want to catch up, here are the links to the earlier Sunday Session posts:
The Sunday Sessions: a Prelude
The Sunday Sessions: Think Rightly About God
The Sunday Sessions: Is God Incomprehensible?
The Sunday Sessions: Something True About God
The Sunday Sessions: the Holy Trinity
The Sunday Sessions: the Self Existence of God
The Sunday Sessions: The Self Suffiency of God
The Sunday Sessions: the Eternity of God

The Infinitude of God

I’ve mentioned in a few posts before that I was a science geek in high school…and I was. There was not one single science course I had not taken when I graduated from Ben Logan some ten years ago. And our school was blessed with an incredible science teacher who spent his summers teaching at esteemed colleges…so when I say I had taken every course I am talking everything from Aquatic EcoSystems to Human Genetics. I enjoyed them all, but Genetics-related courses were my forte.

When I went to Africa in early 2007, I had the opportunity to observe one of the basic tenants of the nature vs. nurture debate. While visiting with the royal people of Zimbabwe (now one of the poorest countries in the world) I noticed how small the people were. Children I assumed to be 8 or 9 were really 13 or 14, but because of the lack of proper nutrition, their bodies were not able to reach full potential.

Our genes set the parameters of our characteristics, nutrition and health and life exeperiences determine how close we will get to those parameters.

Limits.

I’ve never met most of you, so you might not know that I am quite short. I am so short that I will say I am five foot two and a half because frankly, at my height a half inch makes a difference *grin* Being of small stature is only the tiniest example of the limitations I live with.

Human nature, in large part, is about learning how to live well within the confines of our own limitations. We brand those who push the limits brave, but even then we know on all endeavors there is a glass ceiling, even if said ceiling is quite high.

Our lives are ordered and numbered and contained by various units of measure which are even beyond the scope of our control… time, space, gravity, just to name a few. They march on without our consent, unmoved by how they often wound us…

…and yet, don’t we all have glimpses when time seems to fade? I was taking a walk the other night down my parents road. It was dusk and Cohen was asleep. The crickets were chirping and the breeze was the only other movement on the well worn country road. For a second, I remembered taking walk at dusk two years before, standing in almost the same location…Cohen was just a month old and I had come home for my brother Matt’s graduation. I remember thinking as I walked, ’someday Cohen will be two and I will remember this moment like it was a lifetime ago’ and it blew my mind. Right then it seemed like an eternity a way. I couldn’t imagine his face shedding its infantile chubbiness for a toddler boyishnes. And standing near my parents driveway, in the now of our lives, I realized that in some ways that night does seem like a lifetime ago and yet in others ways I can remember it like it was yesterday!

Time is a strange construct. I know its a created entity like the trees or the moon or mountain, but even knowing that, I cannot escape it. For a moment, my mind pushes past its weightiness…but its immediately snapped back into the reality that I too am a created being…a being ultimately defined by finiteness.

It is not so with God.

Though our lives are driven by time… calendars, dates, appointments, schedules…God stands outside of the ticking clock, unaffected by the system he put in place to help us order our limitedness. Though we measure and categorize and set boundaries to learn and understand and explore, God in himself has no measurable qualities or categorical traits… in fact, he has no ‘traits’, no ‘qualities’! Think about it, those are human words used to set a boundary on a particular experience…to draw a line between one thing and another…

Though we talk about God’s love as though it were a division of who He is, God says “I AM love”, reminding us there is no divisble quality in Him.

Our minds can hardly wrap themselves around the idea of anything or Anyone who exceeds our ability to define. Perhaps this is why the god of modern times has become so human… because not only do we want to get our minds around Him, but also our arms and our agendas and our timelines. We, in our Limited Human State prefer a god who can “never surprise us, never overwhelm us, nor astonish us, nor transcend us”.

There is one problem great problem about this god who fits so neatly into our two hour church slots and into our 30 minute devotional time in the morning…and that problem is, the god who mirrors and humors humanity is very unlike the God of the Bible who so often came and “revealed Himself like a sun to warm and bless, but also often came to astonish, overwhelm, and to blind before He healed and bestowed permant sight.”

I fear that in our culture, but even more so in my own life, that God has been minimized and shrunk to such a degree that I’ve forgotten that whatever God is and all that God is, He is without limit; that He is measureless; that He is without degree; that He is boundless.

“For God is greater than the mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived. Nay, could we conceive of His greatness He would less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him. Indeed, if any statement could express Him, He would be less than human speech which could by such statement comprehend and gather up all that He is. All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him”

Well said, Novatian, well said.

God is what He is in Himself…He is simply God.

So beyond blowing our minds and stretching the best of the best of our thoughts, what does it mean to us as Believers that we serve a God who is boundless? a God who is Infinite?

Certainly the gifts that God has given and created are finite… our lives have an expiration date. Our next breath is a gift, but some day we will breathe our last and the gift our life will be the next vapor that dissipates into the air. But, in stark constrast to our lives, is the life of God which as Believers we have become partakers. 2 Peter 1:4 says that we have indeed “may participate in the divine nature”… we are more than an audience- becoming a child of God isn’t a spectator sport- we have been grafted into the Foreverness of His Existence…for, “the life of God returns upon itself and never ceases. And this is eternal life: to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.”

Mercy isn’t not a created entity- no, it flows out of the God’s very nature. And this is good news for the world at large. Sin? Sin is a created thing. Sin is birthed in humankind; its enacted by humankind. It is not forever. But the mercy of God? Thank you, Jesus! It is forever! Mercy has no bounds and stands against our deep human sickness as God’s infinite ability to Be the Cure.

God is Love…, like Mercy, Love is not a created thing, but it IS God. No one can state the implications of this better than Tozer,

“The Christian witness thorough the centuries has been that ‘God so loved the world…’; it remains for us to see that love in the light of God’s Infinitude. His love is measureless. It is more: it is boundless. It has no bounds because it not a thing but a facet of the essential nature of God. His love is something He is, and because He is Infinite that love can enfold the whole create world in itself and have room still for ten thousand times ten thousand worlds beside.

How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. for Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast; before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands. The foe of the old human race becomes the friend of the new, and the stars in their courses fight for the man God delights to honor. This must we learn from the Divine Infinitude.”

This week as you deal with deadlines and hurry and check your calendar and think about the past or the future, let not your heart be troubled. Instead, let your mind drift to and flirt with the implications of being a Partaker, a Participator in the very nature of God who lives and moves outside of the limits which so easily come to define our lives.

Our Heavenly Father: Let us see Your Glory, if it must be from the shelter of the cleft rock and from beaneath the protection of Your covering hand. Whatever the cost to us in loss of friends or goods or length of days let us know You as You are, that we may adore You as we should. Through Jesus Christ, who is the Lord, So let it be.

May 28th has been highlighted on my calendar for a number of years now, not that the majority of those days have passed with fireworks or great celebration. In fact, last year I dreaded its approach and blackened out the date on the calendar, not that it helped… it was still highlighted in my mind. Highlighted because of its sheer importance and because of a series of events that had taken the legs out from under it. It was the elephant in the room. The big elephant on whose trunk my whole life was trying to find some balance.

The logisitics of going to the bathroom and lunching yesterday proved to be the most difficult part of my day at the zoo with my tot Cohen and my two youngest brothers, Joe (7) and Josh (5). First I had the whole debate about which was worse: letting the boys go into the men’s restroom alone while I waited outside or taking a 7 and 5 year old into the women’s…? In the end, I let them go into the men’s room while I spent the whole 2 minutes outside the door, chewing my nails and praying against any creeps who might be lurking inside.

Lunch was less unnerving, but balancing Cohen on one hip (he insisted on being held almost all day, despite the comfy stroller and the fact that his legs work quite well) and a tray with 3 kids meals and drinks and ketchup cups on the other. Eventually we all made it to the table as did the food. Cohen was so happy about the food that he didn’t mind sitting in the high chair. While the boys munched excitedly their food, I studied the receipt amazed at how expensive feeding three boys at the zoo can be…

It was at that very moment, sitting in a crowded cafeteria, surrounded by blue and red chairs occupied by tots and kids and their parents, that it hit me. I checked the date twice.

It had snuck up on me.

Luckily, time only stood still for a nano-second and then the noises rose from that muted moment back to full volume and the world started turning again. My stomach came back down out of my throat and I realized I needed to inhale. And then the day flew back into the busyness of tending to three wild boys and answering questions about the animals, including the one that seemed to be on repeat all day, “Are the animals real? Like really real?”

Driving home from Bible study last night was the next time the world was still enough for me to reflect again on the significance of the day fast approaching. I mentioned it to Aunt Deb, who had hitched a ride home. I could feel her eyes searching me, but she said nothing. My sweet brother Matt, whose mental impairments have never diminished his ability to be kind, piped up from the backseat, “I can buy you flowers, Kate.” For the first time, I felt my throat tighten. I assured him that wasn’t necessary…that celebrating wasn’t at the top of my list for the day. “Ok, but I want to,” he said.

Even though I was tired from the sun and the boys, something in me was compelled me to go to Bible Study last night. Matt and I went in a few minutes early and settled into seats near the front. A gregarious older man sitting across the aisle from me, engaged me in conversation and proceeded to encourage my heart about the path through the wilderness I’ve been beating down. Matt pointed out that Aunt Deb was sitting in the front row and then I saw someone fitting her with the wireless mic.

Aunt Deb found out a few weeks ago, after weeks of awaiting that call, that she has breast cancer. A little over a week ago she had surgery and got good news that not only did the get all of the cancerous cells, but that her lymph nodes were clean (Praise God)

She took the stage and sat in a chair next to the pulpit, confirming what most of the audience suspected. When she got that call, Pastor was there to take her scared phone call. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked him and wisely he answered, “Find out what God is like when you’re fighting cancer. Get all of Him you can get and then come and edify the body. Tell us. What God reveals to you now about Himself far outweighs any test result.”

So, she had listened and there she was …sitting on a chair next to the pulpit because she was too weak to stand for any amount of time. A normally exhuberant person who can’t stop moving, her quiet tone and stillness seemed a striking contrast. She spoke confidently and deliberately as she told us about the conversation she had with God that first night after hearing the word she’d dreaded.

God said three things to her and on this fittingly bleak Ohio day, I can still feel them resonating inside me. I won’t share them as eloquently as she did, but I want to share them with you…

Reading the book of Hosea some 30 years ago, Aunt Deb surrendered her heart to Jesus. And awake on a Friday night some 30 years later with the world dark around her, God began to whisper these words again,

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her [Israel] and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart.” [Hosea 2:14, Amplified Bible]

Isn’t that a strange, albeit poetic, refrain? If you want to speak tenderly to me can’t you just get dressed up and take me to a nice restaurant? Can’t we share a tender moment from the very tippy top of a glorious mountain? or at least while watching a perfect sunset melt into the horizon?

Why the wilderness?

And yet, the Lover of our souls often does just that. He woos us right into the wilderness… a place known for its alientation, its threat, its chaos. And there, in the middle of the of the fear and loneliness, He speaks tenderly and to the heart. There, on the rugged and treacherous journey from slavery to freedom, He shows up and changes us with the most personal revelations about Himself.

As the waves of His compassion bowled her over, she found herself praising God and singing a refrain we may all know, “You are Good and Your Love endures Forever”. As she sang, God said to her, “I am Good. I am more Good than I can explain to you.” Deb shared, that her thoughts drifted to the robin who had unknowningly made a nest and laid eggs in her fake tree on the back deck. (Apparently its convincing *grin*) At first, when she’d come on the back deck and sit down, the robin would hop away, keeping a close eye on Deb, thinking her a predator at best. Over the days and weeks the robin has ventured a little closer, but has kept the watchful eye. “I want to tell her ‘I am Good. I would never harm you or your young’ but how can that be explained to a robin?” Deb poignantly and softly said.

Her heart, overrun with all of the Compassion and Goodness of God a finite being can experience, began to ask for God to make her a fit vessel for whatever days she would have left.

With her intoxicating smile and a slight chuckle she recounted, “God said, ‘Well I am glad you brought that up. There are some things we need to talk about’” God, lovingly began to point out the kind of sins she’d grown used to, the ones she’d blamed on being a Holzbauer, the ones that so easily slip her up. God reminded her that in the surgery only days away, she wanted the surgeon to get every cancerous cell, not just the big ones. She knows if the whole area isn’t clean, if even one dirty cell is left… it can multiply…it can take over the healthy ones and contiminate them.

My mind was swirling.

I’ve told God on numerous occasions that I want to learn everything I can from this martial wilderness. When we side-step obedience, God has a way of bringing the lesson back around. Not out of spite, but out of a tremendous Love that acknowledges one dirty spot has a way of festering. I want to be purified. I want to obey now instead of waiting for the consequences and the streching to pile up for later. I want to not wince at the rod of correction.

Just like not everyone gets the good report or prognosis Deb thankfully received, some times the wildnerness leads to a place we’d not expected. I’d be lying to stay I’ve not questioned God in my trek to a destination I’d not hoped for or prayed for or expected. Will you come through? Do you care about me? Are you Good? like Really Really Good?

Sitting in the sanctuary, I saw myself as that robin, hopping around the edges of the deck, concerned for the all that is depending on me. I saw the distance, I recognized the watchful eye.

I saw his hand extended from behind the undergrowth of the wilderness where He’s already a step ahead of me, already making a way.

I strained to hear the kind words, the tender tone. I sat up last night doing the same. I drove to work this morning trying again to recall them.

Nothing.

Not nothing as in He’s not spoken. I can feel that He has. Nothing as in I’ve not heard because I’ve tuned my ears to the deafening shreiks of fear. Surely Perfect Love casts out fear, but Love won’t attempt to win a shouting match. Love speaks softly so that you must hop a little closer and then still a little closer to hear. Love wants us to lean in close enough to feel His Breath on our necks. Fear is cheap. Fear stands on the corner and advertises with big, blinding signs and once you’ve bought in, Fear raises the stakes. Its addciting. Its universal. Love stands in a stark contrast, beckoning to each one individually, whispering in satisfying tones.

I realized this morning that despite my words telling God I don’t want to wander about to learn this lesson, that’s precisely what I’ve done. I’ve run circles in this wilderness for months now. I’ve been searching for a lesson to learn, not for God to reveal more of Himself.

I am parched for Him.

I’m not at the clearing yet, the mountain top isn’t in view though I know its looming large. Why? Precisely because I’ve not allowed Him to reveal Himself in some particularly vulnerable places…

What is God like when you’ve been betrayed?
What is God like when all of your dreams are shattered?
What is God like when the future is uncertain?
What is God like when a marriage is broken?
What is God like in the depths of loneliness?
What is God like when you’ve failed your own standards?
What is God like when you’re a single mom?
What is God like when you’re hearts been crushed?
What is God like when you’re needy?
What is God like when you’re decisions are scrutinized?
What is God like when you can’t defend yourself?
What is God like when depression gets a grip?

Her words uncovered in me a deep hunger; a deep need. Whatever the outcome, nevermind the uncertainty or just what path my life is now aiming for… the real question has little to do with me and everything to do with God and what He is like in the wilderness He’s brought me to.

In a few short hours I will be packing up the car and heading out with three wild men to spend the day at the zoo…so wish me luck. (I will probably need it!)

And no, we won’t be taking a jet plane to the zoo. I am not taking a jet plane anywhere for a few months, but I’ve got some fantastic friends overseas that I wanted to connect y’all with…

…My sweet friend Joy @ Yetton Adventures is in Scotland right now. If you feel like drooling over the amazing photos and fighting back the urge to be ever-so-slightly jealous, head on over there. (follow her on twitter!)

…And my beloved bloggy friend Annie @ Annie Blogs is leaving tomorrow for AFRICA! Remember when we had a few posts here about the Mocha Club- and a series called ‘I Need Africa More Than Africa Needs Me’? Well, Miss Annie is going to Africa with Mocha Club so she can blog about what kind of headway they are making there with the help of those who pledge $7 a month or who’ve bought a t-shirt.

And..she’s not just going to blog when she gets back…no…she’s going to blogging from Africa.Every.Single.Day and knowing Annie, it will be as humorous as poignant.

I am going to post this cute button on my sidebar for the remainder of her trip so you can follow her posts with me! (You can also follow her on twitter!)

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Now for a few other loose ends before I let Jillian Michaels Shred me and get on with the packing:

-Please let me know if you live in or around the Denver area…I am making a trip in mid-July and want to invite you to a fun event!

-If you’ve signed up to be a LitFuse Blogger, please visit this link to find out more!

-Have you got talent? Join in the fun… The Blogospheres Got Talent! Seriously, this is going to be a riot! Subscriptions accepted until June 5th.

Any of you blogging buds live in or around the Denver area?

If so, please comment and let me know..

I recently have had the opportunity to exercise Mercy.

You know what that means, right? I’ve been hurt. I’ve been wronged. I’ve felt the sting of betrayal. I’ve experienced disappointment.

… you’ve been there before too, haven’t you? Haven’t we all?

I was training new employees yesterday morning and I heard myself say, “Anger is a secondary emotion. Its the easier one. Its the one that gives us a release…..” I thought for a moment and had to add, “And honestly? Sometimes it feels good.”

Doesn’t it? We are all friends here, so let’s just be real. It does.

Living in a fallen world, interacting with fallen people… we all probably could’ve written from experience the book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”… so anger? Its not really an option. Its not. From time to time you and I are going to get angry. Sometimes our anger might even be justified…the betrayal might not be just our perception.

We are all going to be angry at some point; what matters is how we handle that anger. If we give ourselves a license for revenge or bitterness or hatred, that will we also reap. But if we recognize that ground soaked in hurt feelings is also the breeding ground of character, who knows what good sprouts might just pop out of the ground…

Sitting in training, I kept thinking about how in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul echoed the psalmist, “in your anger do not sin.”

Easier said than done; easier written on a page than practiced in everyday life with our everyday stresses and everyday humans. Am I right or am I right?

So I had the opportunity to exercise Mercy… and I sat and stared in her in the face for a few days. I studied the softness in her eyes and inviting as it was, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the authority of justice.

Imagine me in cartoon version with Mercy hanging out on one shoulder, pleading to me with her sing-songy voice and Justice on the other, holding an account of the facts and you’ll have it about right.

I can’t think of another time in my life when a decision of how to handle something was so clear cut… or when I had days to really sit and ponder the kind of path I wanted to head down….

In the end, it came down to what kind of person I want to be. My mom famously says ‘your life is the sum total of a lot of small decisions’. I am sure someone else famously said it before her, but its her voice I hear in my head when I consider a fork in the road.

Justice is my natural bent. I am a warm person, but quite blunt. I don’t like to mince words or beat around the bush. I am probably most articulate when I am riled up (a gift and curse). In theory or philosophy the lines are blurred for me, but when it comes down to actions of right or wrong, black and white are easily defined.

Justice and Mercy both are of God…each has a time and place. The thing I love and hate about being a Christ-follower is that there are no hard and fast rules. Its not ‘in situation A, God requires Mercy and in situation B, God requires Justice’… instead it is a necessity to be in close communion with our God- ears pressed to His heart, following His will in each moment.

I found myself awake at night, trying desperately to do just that… and when the sounds of life were finally drowned out, I could hear the song of Mercy were wooing me to Righteousness.

I stumbled my way through it, kicking bitterness off of my heels nearly every step of the way. There were moments of Mercy that flowed out of me with complete sincerity and others that I fought to even allow. Ever heard the Sara Groves song “The Boxer”? If not, go download it. You’ll get the picture.

This morning the Lord brought a verse to mind from Hosea. I ended up looking it up in several different translations and thought you all might enjoy what I discovered… (BibleGateway is great for that)

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.” (NIV)

“For I desire and delight in dutiful steadfast love and goodness, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of and acquaintance with God more than burnt offerings.” (Amplified Bible)

Thinking back on the whole of my life, I can tell you what what I have prefered… sacrifice…and the kind of sacrifices I think up myself. Too often, I’ve prefered to give up something or do some good on my own terms, rather than to be merciful… rather than treating love and goodness like an important duty. Too often I’ve prefered to ’serve’ God than to be acquainted with Him at a level of dependence.

Growth and character and the delight of God don’t come from me thinking up ways to do things for Him all the while avoiding His call for submission… instead, character sprouts up from the hard ground of following God right into the middle of the kind of obedience that suffocates the appetites of the flesh.

I pray for Christ to be formed in me… and after years of being a Believer, I am just starting to get a grip on how much dying to myself that is going to require.

…its blue so I assume its a robin’s egg. Feel free to correct me if that assumption is way wrong, friends… I’ve got thick skin about my lack of bird knowledge *grin*

[For those of you who've not noticed the egg, scroll down this page a little and underneath my twitter info, you will see it.]

If you’ve been reading my wordy posts for long, you likely know I am a self-proclaimed Bookworm and aspiring wordsmith. There’s almost nothing enjoy more than reading an artfully written book or creating a picture with words.

I had to pinch myself for a few days when Amy at Litfuse Publicity contacted me about doing some work for her… help promote Christian authors? Um..hello.. dream work! I mean, honestly she probably could’ve talked me into paying her for the experience instead of the other way around… (shh! friends- that’ll be our secret)

So expect to be hearing about some good reads here even more often…and check out website…its pretty rad! Amy does a lot of blog tours for her authors, so if any of you are also card-carrying Book Lovers, comment and let me know! Perhaps you can join in on the next tour!

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