And then He does it all by Himself …
The details of life are the whispers of a Savior.
And we unearth the layers of His language as we live our lives each day. It’s true that the more we read through the Bible the more and more layers we discover. Not like secret meanings, but new personal applications, new “aha!” moments, new revelation as we read it again and again. Just this 13th time through Jeremiah I keep being amazed at the things I never noticed before.
When we rightly read daily life the same is true. When we read our days through the lens of His Word we discover new treasures, new applications and revelations, new nuances and “aha!” moments each and every day. God reveals Himself to us through life. But we must put on our Word-glasses each morning so we can see Him clearly, detect His fingerprints on our day.
I keep thinking back to how God sold our house. The details. He’s in them, and I keep marveling at the layers of His language. Yes, it is true, the fact that it sold on a crazy weekend when I didn’t even clean, spoke volumes to me about living authentically, opening wide my life and letting the world into all my “lovlimess” — the true, real, imperfect person that we often hide away for family only. Perhaps a spotted-mirror life is attractive after all? Perhaps that’s the kind of life the world might like to see from us? Honesty, humility, authenticity.
But the more I reflected on His provision this week, the more I see another facet: That He wants all the work to be His. That He wants to get all the glory. That it’s not about what I can do for Him but always what He does for us.
This great work, a miracle really, that I’d been praying for all year. We’d fasted, considered, discerned (schemed even if I’m honest) — and then He went and did it without our help. *smile*
A great reminder of the part we play.
The part of a child helping Daddy. He does call us to partner with Him, to work at His side, to engage, to labor. Why?
Because He loves being with us. The same way that Jeff lets Dutch & Heidi “help” him work in the garage. They aren’t actually contributing much, probably making the work way harder in fact, but Jeff loves to be with them and loves to teach them along the way.
Our Dada-God does the same. He let us partner with Him this last year in an adventure of faith selling a house. I’m thankful for that and certainly don’t regret a single minute of hard-work that went into it. But sometimes we (I) also need the reminder:
- All the work is God’s.
- He lets us work with Him because He loves to be with us and loves to teach us along the way.
- When we start to think it’s our responsibility to accomplish something He lovingly reminds us He’s got it covered.
- And just in case we might be tempted to touch the glory, He does it all by Himself so there can be no mistaking who deserves the praise.
- God isn’t pleased when we do stuff “for” God, He’s pleased when He can powerfully display His power on our behalf. When we trust Him enough to let Him.
When all you know is Him.
I clicked the site and started looking.
The website had been forbidden, off-limits for me until now. If you’ve ever known house-searching obsession you know the one:
RMLS.
Part of letting our house-dream die was committing to quitting the search. The mortgage-rate checking and the browsing through homes for sale. All throughout the year there had been many homes we’d found, fell in love with, then lost as they all sold before ours did. So I quit the search altogether and for the past month didn’t go on the forbidden site a single time. It was just a simple way for me to tangibly keep my eyes on Jesus and not circumstances. (And it was SO helpful — a life lesson to be sure.)
So when ours was pending, I carefully navigated my way onto the site, expecting, in all honesty, to find a miraculous jewel of a house all specially picked out for us. Somehow I figured that “by faith” if I waited then God would have some dream-house listed for a dime.
Nope.
No dream-houses and certainly none for a dime. All the ones we’d thought decent were now pending as well. None of our previous interests were still on the market.
Hmm…
We drove around Monday night, got the kids an ice cream cone, and passed by dreary run-down house after dreary run-down house. (Mind you, we don’t mind a little fixing and face-lifting but we’re not spending God’s money on a house about to fall down!) Hmm… We drove back home, put the kids to bed, and fell into our own bed, exhausted.
As we sat and prayed Jeff remarked, “This is the only time this entire year that we haven’t had a plan.” Funny how we both felt strangely happy about it. We always had some sort of plan this past year, and now … none. I leaned over and smiled, “We don’t know anything, but we know Him. He’s all we need to know.”
On the one hand, it really doesn’t matter. Our kids will be happy wherever, we’ll be happy wherever. On the other hand, I want whatever story God wants to write. I want His fingerprints. I want whatever it is that will tell the world, “Our God is so good!” As Joy said yesterday in Bible study, “God is not pleased when we perform for Him, He’s pleased when He performs for us.”
I want whatever story will show how cool God is. How He always performs for His kids. I don’t know how that will look, it might just look like Him giving us grace and peace in the middle of limbo. It might mean providing some big cool thing, it might not. But whatever it looks like, it’ll look like Him.
That’s what I’m looking for.
{Can you see His fingerprints on your story today? Are you looking for Him? He’s all we really need to know, amen? Thanks for reading.}
And just when you least expect it … it sells.
Of all God’s magnificent attributes, perhaps His sense of humor delights me the most.
He’d shown me that even the dreams He gives must die. The house-sell dream had died. Was dead. So dead that when I left the house on Friday for a weekend away with my dear group of mentor girls, I didn’t even bother to clean.
Read again: did not clean.
For 90 showings I had cleaned this house ’til I was dripping sweat. I had smoothed beds and walked around the vacuum lines and put out fresh fruit and wiped off smudges and made appliances shine. I had shoved toys under beds and put baskets of laundry in the back of my car. We busted our tails showing this house for a year.
Then I ran off to my mentor retreat without so much as wiping down counters. (It’d been a full week!)
Jeff threw the house in order for one last-minute showing on Saturday, then early Sunday he was out the door for a 16-hour workday. So when I finally checked my messages on Sunday, when the retreat was over, you can imagine my surprise when I returned a voicemail message to an agent, apologizing that I’d missed her call requesting to see the house.
She responded, a smile in her voice: “Oh no, I’m sorry we missed you. We already came and wrote an offer!”
My jaw dropped. You came? We didn’t even know. My mind ran ahead, “Were the beds made? Was there underwear on the floor?” (I later found the answer to both was no.)
Yes, that is how the story goes. We countered, they countered, and last night we accepted their offer.
Sale Pending.
Of course nothing’s certain. These things do fall through sometimes, but it IS a sweet kiss from our God and has my eyes and heart brim-full and laughing a little at his sweet sense of humor. This morning I looked around the house and had to shake my head at all the “imperfections” — spotted mirrors and dirty floor. Breakfast skillet still on the stove. Dutch’s schoolwork on the fridge, all the “un-show-worthy” items I usually tuck away.
I had to wonder if maybe all the imperfections are lovely after all …
Maybe life’s more beautiful when it’s just a bit messy?
Lovely-mess. Lovlimess. (The new word I’ll coin to describe my life.)
Maybe to the buyers fingerprints mean fun? Maybe to them laundry loads mean love?
We didn’t even know they were coming — had no time to prepare …
Maybe just letting people into our lives, as-is, is more attractive than anything else?
The mundane, ordinary world, the details of daily life never cease to whisper their lessons to us, don’t they?
Grace and authenticity are beautiful. The lovely-mess.
Here’s to spots on the mirror. To lovlimess. Your slightly spotted life is beautiful grace — invite the world to walk on in.
{Thanks for reading and HOORAY!}
A year's journey … continues
Fun to revisit these thoughts from this time last year …
the beginning of a journey.
I don’t even know where to start; God is SO amazing. Of course this story doesn’t start with me, it starts with God, but how fun is it when He decides to write us into His story in just a tiny little way. As you know, God has been rocking my world through several things–mostly through reading The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns the president of World Vision (now available on paperback here). And also, in a related way, through a couple documentaries which revolutionized the way I see food production, genetic engineering, and its impact on developing countries. It’s amazing how everything is related. Now, I certainly do not claim to be an expert on poverty, food production, or on anything for that matter (other than my own selfishness–-I’m pretty much the expert on that), but I feel like God has opened my eyes to a world of hurt and need and pain and sorrow that, I am ashamed to admit, I simply did not see.
Tonight at church we watched a video, and in the background played Brooke Fraser’s song about Rwanda: “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.” And here is the cool thing about God–-He only reveals to us what graces us to handle, and He only calls us to what we’re capable of doing. He doesn’t ask us to give what we don’t have, just what we do have. He doesn’t call us to change the world, He just calls us to obey when we hear His voice.
Just to obey when we hear His voice.
So we heard His voice.
All week, for whatever reason, Jeff and I just felt discouraged. The kids were both sick, Jeff was swamped with work to do, I had a 3-day migraine that just wouldn’t leave me alone–it was just one of those weeks. Friday came and it rained, so Jeff and Dutch spent the afternoon playing trains, and I ignored the dirty house and curled up with The Hole in our Gospel. Well, thankfully I have a wonderful husband who took the initiative to bathe our children and put them to bed, because I didn’t put it down until 8pm that night when I read the final page. Jeff came into our room. “Have you been crying?” He asked. ”Of course I have,” I responded. I held up the book, closed my eyes and shook my head. Of course I had been crying. How can we read the horrors of poverty, disease, exploitation, and not weep? I know you all have been there. When the reality of the sorrow in this world is revealed, for what it really is, all we can do sometimes is grieve.
“What are we doing?”
I took some time to pray and think and Jeff went ahead (he wasn’t quite finished with the book), and read some more. Then we met back up to talk about what we would do.
Now that we have seen we are responsible.
Here’s what shook me. Really shook me. I’ve always thought of myself as a faithful giver. I mean, I’ve been tithing since I was old enough to hold a quarter in my hand (thanks to my parents who put the quarter there!). We do sponsor children, we do support missionaries, we do make special gifts for different causes. But what Richard Stearns points out from Scripture, from David’s example and the widow’s two mites, is that it doesn’t matter how much we give, what matters is what it costs. What matters is our faith.
Our current giving costs us nothing. The bottom line is our current giving does not require us to live by faith. Now, please hear me that God calls all of us to different things. This is why we CANNOT COMPARE our giving with someone else’s. All we can do is look at ourselves and ask, Does my current giving cost me anything? Does my current giving require me to life by faith? And, it’s worth noting, that this is true of all giving–our time, our talents, and our treasure. It’s so much bigger than money, but where our treasure is there our heart will be too.
So here I am, sitting in bed, praying, thinking of our budget and our life and I just don’t know what to do. I’ve laid everything out before the Lord and basically said, “Take it, whatever you want, show us what needs to go. We’ll move to Zambia, we’ll sell our house, we’ll sell a car. Just show us your will.”
Ok, so, we’re talking and I just keep saying how hard it is to live within this specific culture that God has called us to, without it costing so much that there’s nothing left to give! We can’t just not have utilities and not buy car insurance–that’s just life in the United States! And I kept thinking what’s the biggest expense/priority in our life. By a landslide it’s our house. In comparison to the rest of our spending, we spend a large portion on our house. More than any other single item. In fact, it’s 41% of our take home pay (30% of our gross income). So we’re sitting there and in a moment of silence Jeff says, “What if we determined to give away the same amount we spend on our home? You know, if giving was, even by a penny, the single largest portion of our income.” For a moment I felt like everything stood still. Then I laughed, “Yeah, that would cost us! That would require faith. We’d basically be living on less than 18% of a single income.” I calculated the number and laughed some more. It was impossible. Then shrugged my shoulders, “Well we can work toward it. That really would be cool.” Jeff rolled over and went to sleep.
Of course I could not sleep. Of course I couldn’t get Jeff’s words out of my head. Of course I could not get Scripture out of my head, images of children out of my head, stories of people who had given up everything they owned to help people in the name of Christ–of course none of that would get out of my head! I flipped on the light and started writing numbers. To my amazement I realized that if we only spent on life’s absolute essentials–food, gas (significantly limited amount), insurance, utilities (with some conservation), prescriptions and co-pays, and Jeff’s monthly haircut (please do not laugh, this is a necessity if you know how hard it is to cut his hair), then, to my astonishment, it actually was possible. It would require some cost, and some faith, but I got that unmistakable feeling when you know God is up to something that will change your life. Then, I crunched a few numbers to see what we could actually do with that money. If we continued to give the exact same amount to our church, without taking a dime away from the work God’s doing there, we’d be able to (are you ready?), sponsor THIRTY-FIVE children. THIRTY FIVE!!! Through some programs, that’s two whole orphanages! I about fell out of bed. Now I don’t know for sure if that’s how God’s leading us, but that helped me to understand the amazing potential! That is so exciting to me! Seeing faces–real individual lives made in the image of God, helped me get this all in perspective.
So, then I wrote out a list of the things that didn’t make the cut–savings, house repairs, vacations, retirement, car repairs. Obviously these things are truly wise and we would consider necessary expenditures. However, this is so cool. IF we gave in this way, and because of tax laws for clergy’s housing expenses, we would literally, at the end of the year have ZERO taxable income. That means that, Lord willing, we would get a sizable tax refund. We could simply commit to tucking that away for retirement and use for the year’s house repairs, car repairs, emergencies, etc. Thankfully we already have a Dave Ramsey-inspired emergency savings account, so it’s not as if we were being foolish, failing to have a back-up plan in case of emergency. I don’t believe that’s faith as much as poor planning.
But here is where the story gets fun because it gets personal. We have such a personal God! Three items I wrote down with question marks were–kids clothes (I certainly don’t need clothes but my kids actually grow out of theirs), toys (yes, I still want my children to have fun things to play with!), and learning/homeschooling materials/books for the kids. Bottom line? God loves our children more than we do, right? Well…
So today we talk about this plan, and though we’re 99% sure we want to do it, we commit to pray about it. We’d start on the 15th, so we have a few weeks to really pray and find out for sure God’s will in this. So today there’s a clean-up day scheduled and church so Jeff goes to that. Just as he’s leaving, some people pull in from church and say, “Hey! We have something for you.” They hand him a big bin FULL of kids toy Geotrax (train set), and another FULL of hot wheels cars, trucks, race ramps. Jeff and I are just laughing, “Um…there’s Christmas!” Guess I don’t have to worry about toys for my kids. God knows their favorite kind. Then, I got to church tonight, and as I’m leaving a friend says, “Hey, can you wait? I have something for you.” So I follow her out to the car and she hands me 2 HUGE boxes full of hand-me-down girl clothes from her daughter who is a year older than Heidi. We’re talking a ton of clothes. So much that I had to call a friend and ask if she wanted to take half because there’s more than I can use. Guess I don’t have to worry about clothes for my kids. 
Then, this girl hands me a brand new set of books, shrink wrapped, and she says that they are the reading curriculum that her son uses at his Montessori school. She knew I was “homeschooling” for preschool and bought me a set for Dutch. WHAT?!! Um, I guess I don’t have to worry about books and educational materials for my kids. God knows the best kind out there.
So that was tonight. I am now sitting in bed, overwhelmed at God’s goodness. Tonight at church Joel preached the good news of the Gospel:
1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Phil 2:1-10)
God. Has. Been. So. Good. God’s grace is astounding. We who were dead in our transgressions He has made alive. He has saved us by grace, and that not of ourselves. We have done nothing to deserve His kindness, but He lavishes it on us be His kindness. And He we are His, created for good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. That is the good news! We are loved beyond comprehension. And God has marvelous things in store for us.
I do not know all that God has in store, and I don’t share this story to claim to have the answers on giving or to say that anyone else needs to do the same, etc. etc. I am simply sharing one God story, of a gracious God and how He’s leading us right now. I know that your lives are full of the adventures of following a missional God who is out to share the world His power and glory. And, if this is all new to you, I invite you to embrace the truth of God’s grace, His finished work on the cross. We can add nothing to it. It is done. Now we simply can slip our hand in His and ask Him what He wants us to do. I don’t know exactly what that will be, but we’ll do our best, by grace, to obey.
90 house-showings later, we still walk by faith.
Still on the journey, still learning, still overwhelmed by extravagant GRACE.
{What journey are you on, and how can you trust Him for your specific steps today? Thanks for reading…}
The Only Place That's Safe {9/11}
They lined us up for execution — one by one — little white flags in our hands, words in a language I didn’t understand. Fear rolled through my stomach, “We’re actually going to die.” I stood, waiting … waiting … waiting …
Bang! The wind blew the fence gate shut outside my bedroom window. I sat up in bed, out of breath from the vivid, sickening dream, the curtains flapping from the night’s wind. I almost never have dreams.
The previous night’s dream was terror of a different kind — not physical death, just marital.
I looked at the clock — 6:03am. Feeling in the dark that Jeff was already up, I crept downstairs and found him in the corner chair, leaning over his Bible, the warm glow of a lamp behind him. When I’d settled in next to him he spoke, “I had the most horrible dreams last night …”
Him too?
Strangely, I felt comforted. God is on the move, of that I know. After hanging laundry on the line, I crept back upstairs for quiet time. Opened my Bible to my place, it’s always Jeremiah in September. Kind of wished I were in Psalms —will Jeremiah really have words for me today? I found my place, Chapter 26, and looked at the heading: “Jeremiah Threatened with Death.” Hmm. Maybe it will apply…
Jeremiah is prophesying to King Jehoiakim about the impending disaster coming upon them if they do not repent and turn from their evil deeds. His words aren’t popular, as you can imagine, so
“when he finished speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, ‘You shall die!’ (v.8)
“Then the priests and the prophets said to the officials and to all the people, ‘This man deserves the sentence of death, because he has prophesied against this city.” (v.11)
Is Jeremiah safe? How does he respond? First he exhorts them to mend their ways and obey the voice of the Lord, and then he says,
“But as for me, behold I am in your hands. Do with me as seems good and right to you … for in truth the LORD sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears.” (v.14-15)
I am in your hands.
How could Jeremiah say that? How could he entrust himself into the hands of an angry mob of people who most certainly intended to kill him?
He knew whose hands he really was in.
Jeremiah could entrust himself to their hands because he’d first entrusted himself to God’s hands.
Perhaps he knew the song of David by heart,
Jeremiah was safe because his heart was free of fear. He was then spared from death. But you know what the very next story holds? Another prophet, Uriah, who had spoken the same sort of words. His story is told,
There was another man who prophesied … Uriah … He prophesied against this city and against this land in words like those of Jeremiah. And when King Jehoiakim, with all his warriors and all the officials, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death. But when Uriah heard of it, he was afraid and fled and escaped to Egypt. Then … they took Uriah from Egypt and brought him down to King Jehoiakim, who struck him down with the sword and dumped his dead body into a burial place of the common people.” (vv.20-23)
Jeremiah knew whose hands he was in so he entrusted himself to the people and was spared. Uriah, who spoke the same message, was “afraid and fled and escaped,” and yet was put to death.
Where are we truly safe?
Today we are reminded that this world is not safe. I remember the emergency landing, the panic in the passengers, the calling my parents and hearing their sobs of relief knowing we were ok. I’m on my knees this weekend praying for friends who lost dear ones ten years ago. How can we trust when this world is not safe?
The only place we’re truly safe is the place of trusting God. Of refusing to escape, to fear, to flee. Sometimes escape, fleeing, is subtle — It can make us run to facebook, food, entertainment, control. But whenever we escape, we let the enemy win.
The only real enemy we face is fear. Fear will bury us deep and rob us of a life of experiencing the love of God.
Even if our dollar bills don’t say that we trust God …
Our lives must.
Because that is the only place that’s truly safe.
—
{I pray God’s comfort and grace to you whose pain is so real this day. Thank you for letting me be part of your day; thank you for reading.}
The palette of grace
I love stories. Life is story. God’s Word is the story of stories, the most majestic tale of love, loss, tragedy and victory that ever was told. And in God’s Word, He pulls no punches. He tells it like it is. And I love that. I love truth, love to see God’s super natural power intersecting our daily lives. And, well, I just love to tell stories.
This probably annoys some people, but I tend to think that everything is a fun story. So, I will tell about an odd encounter at the grocery store as if it were headline news. My dad is the same way. He can turn the stupidest event into a story and somehow make people listen. And, interestingly enough, I can already see this in my son. Everything is a larger-than-life adventure to him.
So while there’s nothing wrong with telling stories, I’ve been thinking lately about the weighty significance of how we tell them. For example, a few things recently have made me realize, Wow–there are definitely two sides to every story! So let’s say we have an event. There are two people involved, person A and person B. Person A sees it from her perspective, person B sees it from his perspective. They disagree. Then, here’s the scary part. Person A tells the story to another person, person C–and she emphasizes that part that she wants to emphasize. It’s still the truth, but it’s dramatized from her perspective. So now it’s interpreted by person C as a major mistreatment of person A. Now person B tells the story to another person, person D from his perspective, but heightened emphasizing the part that he wants to emphasize. Now person D interprets based on this heightened story, and it seems a major mistreatment of person B.
What began as a slight difference of opinion has just become a gross injustice.
What’s scary is that this happens all the time. Every single time we say something, we paint a picture. We paint pictures of each other, of circumstances, of events, of stories. We go around, all day long, every day, painting pictures. We use our words to paint: We paint those we don’t care for as villains, we paint ourselves as saints, we paint our spouses as one or the other based on what day it is .
And what this all boils down to is humility.
We paint the way we do because of either pride or humility.
Humility chooses to paint others with gentle strokes, a palette of grace, highlighting beauty and diminishing blemishes.
We wouldn’t dare post a horribly unflattering picture of someone on facebook (at least I hope you wouldn’t!) but might we consider painting an unflattering picture of them with our choice of words?
We reveal our pride or our humility by the way we describe those who believe differently than we do. “They have whacked-out views” reveals pride. “They believe a little differently than we do in this area” reveals humility.
God’s Word says that “Love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). When we paint with love, we paint in a way that is true, right, accurate, but tinted by the beautiful color of love. We dip our brush into the dye of grace and choose to add an extra hue of forbearance, of humility, of charity. Whether we’re painting our spouse, our best friend, the church across town, or the person who wronged us, we choose to paint with love.
We choose to immortalize a picture of them that they would thank us for.
It sounds funny but when I was praying to God about how this works, about how to describe things and situations fairly, it was impressed on my heart, “Paint them the way their mother would.” Wow. That settles it. No one has eyes of love for my kids more than me.
Do you know that this is what Christ has done for us? He has painted us for the Father. His sacrifice has once and for all painted us with the gracious strokes of forgiveness. His blood painted our picture–creating a masterpiece as perfect as Christ Himself.
He chose to die that we might be painted in a perfect way. This is love.
Lord increase our love. Teach us by your spirit. Lead us in humility. Help us in the way we paint.
Revisiting these thoughts from the archives…
—
{What stories will you paint today and what shades of humility will you use? I pray you choose the palette of of grace, today. Thanks for reading.}
When you might hold back just a bit for yourself…
Since embarrassing stories seem to be my specialty…
“Oh no,” I prayed as the proverb leaped off the page, “Now You want me to share that too?! I already shared the poop story. Do I have to share about how stingy I am too?” And of course the answer was yes.
I am stingy. In my flesh, that is. The word means, “Giving or spending reluctantly.” Note that it doesn’t say that you don’t give or spend. Oh I do. But deep down I’m still stingy. Now earlier this week we had a choice about giving. God clearly spoke to us from Proverbs 11:24-25: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” I knew what the “what he should give” meant in our situation and the words “give freely” jumped off the page. I thought, “freely we have received, freely give.” It was something that had been freely given to us and therefore should be freely given to someone else (who deserved it way more anyway!!). I didn’t know how it would “work out” because we’d calculated some numbers and it was tight, but we sensed God saying to leave the results to Him. Jeff and I were so happy once we made that choice. Freely giving was fun!
So then yesterday. We have this very sweet neighbor man, who I recently found out trims back the bushes outside our apartment door, so that I can push my stroller through the front walkway without slapping the kids’ faces with the bush. I always had to shove the stroller through, trying to avoid poking an eye out, and then one day I was thrilled to see they were all neatly trimmed away, parted like the Red Sea, creating a perfect walkway for my stroller. I thought it odd that the apartment complex had done that, since none of the other bushes were trimmed. Then finally through casually chatting with him one day I realized he had done it. I was floored. So thoughtful. So kind. So above and beyond the neighborly call of duty (if there is one). So yesterday we arrived home from visiting friends, and I found that they had been neatly trimmed again. As I walked inside I thought, I should take him something, some cookies or something, to say thank you, and maybe that would even open a door to invite him to church sometime.
So later that night I get the kids to bed and Jeff is gone at church and I remember I’d just made a delicious batch of our favorite cookies and had taken a plate to our friends we’d just visited. I pulled the rest out of the freezer and figure I’d situate them on a small plate and keep a few for us. Well the only paper plates I had were huge, and it would look odd only giving him a few on such a big plate (read: it would look stingy which is an accurate representation of my heart!), but in order to fill up the huge plate it meant there wouldn’t be any leftover for us. Can you believe I’m actually having this conversation in my mind? And I can’t make any more cookies because we don’t have any more flour and my “rule” is that when I’m out of something for the month I just go without, I don’t go buy more until the next time to grocery shop, because it helps us stay on budget. And yes of course I could just give him ALL the cookies, but I really wanted to keep some! They’re my favorite!
I don’t remember what took me from this ridiculous inner monologue, but I ended up going to bed because I felt a cold coming on, and this morning felt even worse. So as I’m sitting here having my sweet time with God, and Proverbs 23:6-8 punches me in the face:
“Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy; do not desire his delicacies, for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsels that you have eaten, and waste your pleasant words.”
Can I get an “ouch!”? I am glad I didn’t take him cookies last night because I guess he would have vomited up those tasty morsels! I was certainly “one who is inwardly calculating.” Isn’t God’s Word amazing? Isn’t it amazing how it brings such clear conviction, even down to the exact scenario? I read those words and knew, I was the stingy man. I was the one inwardly calculating. And I’m not just talking about cookies–of course now I’m going to go give the neighbor the whole silly batch of cookies, I’m at least smart enough to figure that one out! But I know I do this in other areas. All the time. I know that much of my giving is not done freely–it’s done carefully, calculatingly… stingily. And though I know I’m freer than I used to be, I know I’m not where God wants me to be.
Oh that God would change my heart. That I wouldn’t be one inwardly calculating, but one who gives freely. Without reservation. With no thought of myself. Without letting my right hand know what my left hand is doing (mentally patting myself on the back), but just being so free from the love of money and stuff that it can come and go without a second thought. Let the calculating end and the giving freely begin.
Even when it comes to the cookies.
{From the archives. Thanks for reading…}
Just Call Me Eve
The story I’ll never live down…
So I’ve been waiting patiently to tell this story until I had the green light from my husband. Sometimes it takes some time before you can share things … and I knew I’d done enough harm that from now on I would let Jeff make the calls about, well, everything. This is a little story to you ladies about what not to do to your husbands.
So, my incredibly handsome, fit, trim, intelligent, amazing husband has some serious gray-hair genes. His dad was absolutely silver before he was 40. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I admit I’m not ready for my tall, dark, and handsome husband to be tall, silver, and handsome…at least not yet. So he’s got some gray hair which looks fabulous, but I came up with the idea that before he started his new job it’d be fun dye his hair, just to keep the gray from becoming, let’s say, overly aggressive and getting out of control. “It’ll be fun!” I said.
Jeff, however, is not a hair-dye kind of guy. He was adamately opposed. “It’s not honest,” he insisted. “I want to be the real me. Gray hair and all. I am who I am and I want people to know that what they see is what they get.” To my eternal chagrin I persisted: “But honey, you’re doing it for me. It’s not dishonest, it’s just like how I take care of myself to bless you. It’s just like that. Puh-lease??” Oh dear. I can almost hear Eve’s syrupy voice echoing through my head: “Come’on Adam…it’s so tasty. Won’t you show me how much you love me by eating with me. Puh-lease???” Batting her ridiculous eyelashes. Good grief.
So, he succombed to my pressure. So I tried a dark brown color, and though it was fine, it definitely did NOT look like his natural color. It was just off enough to draw my eye constantly to his head…definitely not what I’d hoped for. So, one week before he started his new job, late on a Friday night, after we’d watched a movie and were about to head to bed, I suggest that I do one more fix-it on his hair to get it to the darker black color that he naturally is. Again, sweet husband of mine, gave in.
Mind you this is 10pm on a Friday night. Where my idiotic mind was I have no idea. The next day we were both in a wedding, serving communion. The following day, Sunday, was our special going-away service at church where Jeff would be up front on the stage sharing with the congregation about our new plans. Then, he had school, then that following Wednesday we had a special Welcome Luncheon with all the staff at our new church. Then he would start work at his new job, Mr. Associate Pastor, the following Monday. Do you get the picture?
Fix-it dye #2 is a disaster. His hair, apparently because it had already been dyed, took the dye WAY to heavy and it turned GOTH black, like blue-black, the kind that’s so shiny it’s like a Halloween wig. Seriously. It also had gotten all over his forehead and ears and dyed them black. So he had a black hairline, black ears, and black nceck. I tried to pretend it wasn’t that bad, but when Jeff went downstairs to straighten things up, I crawled in bed and started crying. It was horrible. He looked ridiculous, like he had a big black wig on. What do I do? Panicking I get online and starting google searches about undoing horrible hair colors. I find out about a product called Color Woops or something and see that Walgreens carries it and that Walgreens is open until 11pm. WIthout a word I dry my tears, march downstairs, in my sweats, slip on some flipflops, grab my purse, walk out the door, and drive to Walgreens where I find my magic stuff.
Back home now, I show him the magic stuff and he agrees to let me try. His scalp is feeling a bit tender, having been dyed twice now, but we figure we’re almost done with the horror. This stuff will supposedly take hair “back to its natural color”. Perfect. We apply, wait the allotted time. Rinse. NO. No, no, no. HORROR beyond HORROR. Now the roots have turned BRIGHT orange, like a pumpkin, and the ends of his hair are still black. Plus, it’s blotchy, so it looks like he’s used that orange and black spray on color people use at Halloween or OSU football games. NOT ok for a wedding. NOT ok for a first day of work as the new pastor. Not ok. More tears. Prayers. Pleading with God to somehow erase my stupidity.
Trip to Fred Meyer. Another color. Again, it goes straight to GOTH black. This time we decide we must go to bed, as its midnight and Jeff’s scalp is burning so bad he’s groaning and clenching his fists while we wait for the color to set. I’m crying. Praying. Pleading.
The next morning I have to meet someone out of town, so I’m forced to leave my poor ebony-haired husband home with our son. He’s supposed to drive Dutch out to Mom & Dad’s so that we can leave for the wedding at 12:30. I have to leave the house at 8:20. At 8:05 I race to Fred Meyer to try one last color, a lighter one. We put it on, rinse. At 8:40 his hair is blacker than ever and I have to leave. Crying the whole way down I-5 I’m convinced I’ve ruined my husband’s life. We talk on the phone and decide that since he’s driving Dutch out to Mom & Dad’s he can stop by the store, get one more Oops Color and a lighter shade of brown, and dye his hair by himself at my parents’ house before coming back and meeting me for the wedding. Ok, good. I’m feeling horrible about the fact that he has to walk into a drug storeby himself and buy Oops Color and hair dye, feeling I’m sure like a complete idiot. I tell him to explain to everyone he sees that it’s his WIFE who is the idiot, not him. Of course he won’t do that.
So to make matters worse, we discover that the keys to his car are in my purse. He has no keys. Cannot take Dutch out to Mom and Dad’s. Cannot drive to the store to get hair product. So the man WALKS to the store, with our son, pushing a stroller. I still cannot even fathom the courage this must have taken, to walk proudly into a drug store, pushing a toddler boy in our ghetto stroller, and buying Oops color and hair dye. He wore a hat, but he said the lady at the counter couldn’t keep a straight face. Bless his heart.
To make a long story a tiny bit shorter, suffice it to say that we did a total of TEN treatments on Jeff’s hair. His scalp literally started blistering and falling off. For a week chunks of skin kept flaking off. And his hair is still an odd purple-red-blackish color. Do you think I’ve learned my lesson? Oh dearie. Yes I have.
But this is what amazes me about my husband. He never once blamed me or got angry. He NEVER lost his temper or got frustrated. In fact, selfish me was crying and saying how horrible the whole situation was and how stupid I am and he comforted ME, insisting it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t know how bad it would be. He never once told people, “My stupid wife did this to me.” He turned the whole thing into a joke, unafraid of admitting what had happened. Last week at church he was given a chance to introduce himself and briefly share his testimony. He opened by saying, “If my hair looks purple it’s because it is. In a few weeks it’ll be gray. You’ll have to ask us about that story.”
But this is what haunted me through this whole thing: How my stupid decision hurt no one but the one who deserved it least. I deserved to have ruined hair. I deserved to have my scalp burning off and blistering and flaking off in chunks. I deserved to look ridiculous and have to explain to everyone that I was an idiot. But my hair looks just fine. It’s my husband who suffers. My sweet, kind, caring, humble, gentle husband who suffers because of my decision. I kept pleading with God, “Lord, please don’t let Jeff suffer because of my stupidity.” And yet I kept sensing that God was teaching me something I would never forget–our selfish, stupid decisions hurt those we love the most. And so often others suffer the consequences of our stupid decisions. IT doesn’t seem fair, but it’s true. We see it everywhere. Children suffer from the divorce of their parents. Unborn children suffer for the decisions of their parents. Victims everywhere suffer because of others’ stupid decisions. Our actions and decisions affect others profoundly.
But more than any of those examples…our Lord Jesus Himself. Even now tears stream down my cheeks as I realize that ultimately THE Innocent One suffered for our sin. The one who least deserved to die was crucified so that our sin could be atoned. The innocent for the guilty. The consequences ofmy sin poured out on the perfect sinless One. Oh Jesus help us understand. Help us understand.
God also was showing me how costly our sin is. Though dyeing Jeff’s hair might not have been sin per se, it was definitely stupid and selfish, and selfishness is sin. You want to know how much we spent on hair treatments? Yeah, close to $100. That’s costly all right. Ridiculously costly. I lost sleep. I was exhausted Monday morning at school because I’d spent all night dyeing hair and all day worrying about it. I was anxious about meeting new people because I was afraid they’d think, “What on earth did he do to his hair?” The anxiety of it sapped my energy, my joy, my vitality. This is what sin does. This is what selfishness does. How costly was the sin in the garden? How costly is my daily sin? Your daily sin? Beyond comprehension. It was so costly that it took the perfect sinless Son of God to die a cruel death to remove our guilt. Do you think sin is costly? We have no idea.
So I take away from this hair dye trauma the lesson that we as women have incredible power to help or harm our husbands, children, friends. Every day we make decisions that bless, edify, help, encourage, or that harm. And others live with the consequences of our actions. No one sins in a bubble. I take away that my Savior suffered for my sin. He bore a lot more shame that Jeff did with his purple hair. He bore every ounce of sin and shame and pain from every sinful deed. He bore it all.
I will say that the $100 was worth it to gain this lesson. I will never forget it. I think I’ll forever walk a little less proudly. I think I’ll question myself a little more often. I pray that God gives me grace in the midst of my stupidity, my vanity, my selfishness. I pray He helps us understand the power of our influence, and the great cost of our selfish and stupid decisions. It may have only been Jeff’s hair, but it represents so much more. It represents Christ.
I’m thankful to report that Jeff’s scalp has healed. His hair is still kind of purpleish, but in a few weeks I’m sure he’ll be back to his normal, wonderful, dark graying self. I will never again try to alter my man. He is perfect for me. He is gracious, forgiving, gentle, merciful, loving. And I’ll forever understand just a little better the way Eve must have felt. I’m ashamed to admit how much like her I really am. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for suffering the consequences of our sin. I cannot say it enough. Thank You Lord Jesus.
Grace Picks Up the Poop
Sometimes I feel like God has a funny relationship with me because He likes to ask me to do funny things, or at least what seem funny to me. You see my husband is one of those who, when out walking, when he sees a piece of trash on the ground, he will stop, pick it up, and carry it with him to throw it away. He always does. And of course I admire that about him, but I don’t always necessarily do the same. I mean, I’ve got my kids, right? And who wants to pick up someone else’s garbage?
But sometimes I feel like God asks me to do something and, just like I do with Dutch, looks me in the eye sternly and challenges me: Will you obey me in all things? About a month ago I had such an experience. I was out doing my daily walk and right along Salamo Rd, there was a little blue garbage bag. Now Jeff and I often joke about West Linn and the little blue bags. Everyone has them. They are for picking up dog poop, and since everyone in West Linn seems to have a dog, and they all take them walking, they all carry around these little blue garbage bags which they use to pick up their poop, tie up, and carry with them on their walks.
So on my walk, there in the middle of the sidewalk was one of these poop bags–full. Sick. I veered around it, thinking, “Gross, who would leave their poop bag in the middle of the sidewalk.” And immediately the thought entered my mind: “Pick it up.” I shrugged it off. By now I was a ways past, and I didn’t want to turn around, march back along the busy road and scoop up the poop bag. Come on. I kept walking. After I got home I knew I’d disobeyed. It might sound silly but I knew that I’d missed an opportunity to obey God. But I was home, I didn’t want to go back, so I figured that was that.
The next day I went for my daily walk. To my amazement when I got to that spot, the poop bag was still there! I slowed down, and realized that God was probably giving me another chance to obey Him. But you know what? I’m ashamed to admit it but I didn’t pick it up. By then it was smashed on the sidwalk (sick!) and it’s always easier to disobey God the second time than it is the first, so I left it. The next time I went by it was gone, and I realized I really had missed a chance. Someone else had done what I was too proud to do.
Yesterday as we gathered for our women’s ministry meeting one of our leaders and I were talking. She said, “I have to show you this devotional I read the other day.” I took it from her and read the brief devotional story: A man was walking along the sidewalk just as an expensive flashy sports car was pulling up at a traffic light. The man finished his soda and tossed the empty pop can out the window into the ditch. The man walking, a Christian, continued walking across the street and thought to himself, “What kind of jerk throws his pop can out of the window? That is what sin does!” Immediately he sensed God’s voiced prodding his heart: “Sin throws out the pop can, but grace stoops down and picks it up.”
Grace picks it up. You know it’s so easy as Christians to expect the people around us to live as if they were Christ-followers. But why should they? How can people who are dead in sin be expected to live as if they are alive in Christ? Why should we expect unbelievers to have prayer in school, to speak wholesomely, to remain faithful to their spouses, when they don’t have Christ’s new life living in them. They live as sinners. Our lives should then be a response of grace.
So today I went walking, and would you believe it, as I turned the corner onto Salamo road, there it was–a blue bag, full of dog poop. I kept walking past, but only a few steps. Grace picks it up. I stopped. I turned around the stroller and went back. I was a little grossed out as I picked up the doggie defecation, but carried it home. And as silly and small as it may be, I finally sensed God’s smile on me, I finally had obeyed.
Well the humorous part was that I refused to bring the poop inside our apartment and we are a long ways from the dumpster, so I just sat it on our front porch. When Jeff came home from work he said, “Someone left their blue poop bag on our front porch!”
I smiled. “No hon. It was me. I learned something today. Grace picks up the poop.”
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From the archives. Learning it again…
Summer's scars and dancing in the rain
Reminiscing summer’s scars as we travel today for family vacation. This memory floods my mind: The year they cut open my face…
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I had this strange cyst on my face that developed when I was pregnant with Dutch. Now, three years later, they finally decided to remove it. It was probably a centimeter in diameter, not too bad. I figured they’d carefully slice it open, remove whatever, put in a stitch or two, (or maybe I wouldn’t even need stitches? I was optimistic.) and then I’d be on my merry way. Sure I’d probably have a little slice mark but we were leaving on vacation the next day and I was sure by the time we got back it’d be gone. Even as I type this I’m laughing to myself and shaking my head.
Oh was I wrong. When I went in, the surgeon proceeded to tell me that because of the way it “sat” on my face (like it was a person of something) she had to make a 2-inch long diamond shaped cut and remove a huge chunk of my face (that was my translation) so that as she sewed it back together it wouldn’t bunch up. Translation: So my face wouldn’t look like an old pair of nylons.
Now, I have given birth to two children. I am not squeamish in the least. I don’t mind needles, shots are fine. But as she described this and then proceeded to pull out a needle and dig it around in my face pumping me full of anasthetic until my eyeball started twitching, I got so light-headed I just sat there and prayed in my head, over and over, “Please Jesus don’t let me pass out. Please Jesus don’t let me pass out.” Then, as the room spun, they led me to another room, where she covered my eyes and said, “You’re going to feel a lot of pulling and tugging.” Oh dear Jesus, please let me not pass out. Call me a wimp, but I would rather push a baby out than go through that again–trying to make polite conversation as I can hear and feel the snipping of scissors as she cuts up my face.
So when she finally finished the inevitable moment of truth came and the nurse handed me a mirror. They both looked at me with pity, then the doctor said, “You’re still beautiful.” It was kind of her yes, because what I saw was scary. My face, with a huge two-inch slice, purple and blue with bruise, with ten big fat stitches squeezing together the bulging edges of my incision. Wow. No joke, when Jeff picked me up he looked scared. Joy was sweet at punch, but Joel’s face gave it all away–I’ve never seen his eyes that big. He gets squeamish just watching people cut vegetables so I didn’t share any gory details. My dad said, “Oh my gosh!” And Dutch ran over to me as I walked in the door, then stopped and looked concerned and said, “Mommy got owie!”
So you can imagine how excited I was to go to Corvallis and see people we haven’t seen in years then go to Jeff’s family reunion, and give an explanation 150 times, at least, that no I hadn’t gotten in a bar fight or a car accident… How many times can you say “cyst-removal” before you just start to get a little irritable?
But all in all that was no big deal. People were polite, no children ran away in horror, and the worst part was just that it hurt to smile and whenever the wind blew my hair would get stuck in the stitches and then I’d have to excuse myself to pull my hair out of my face.
But when we got to Bend I realized the bummer part–we are on vacation and my incision can’t be in the sun–at all. No water, no sunshine. So much for waterskiing, swimming in the lake, or basking in the sun. Yesterday I savored a day in the shade, watching the boys playing out in the wading pool. Then today I thought about the rest of the summer–how would I play with the kids, sit at softball games, enjoy the last summer barbecues? Then I remembered something I heard while in Corvallis.
Some dear friends of ours who are going through an extremely heart-breaking trial, responded to the question “How are you doing?” in this way: God’s not taking us out of this storm, but He’s teaching us to dance in the rain. Now a silly little surgery on my face is NOTHING compared to what they are going through. But I love the lesson. Dance in the rain. I knew that had application for my silly little trial.
So I bought a hat.
Not just any hat. Jeff took me to Ross and I bought the most humongous, wide-brimmed ridiculous sun hat you can imagine, the kind that necessitates wearing enormous sunglasses and sipping a tropical drink with a little umbrella. In fact, if I put on bright lipstick and stand on my tip-toes and hold my arms at right-angles I look like a desperate attempt to be totally tropical Barbie. So now, armed with my ridiculous hat, I can handle any angle of the sun. And if it kills me I will don that silly thing with all the confidence in the world, grinning from ear to ear–well, maybe not that big because it still hurts to smile… but you get the idea.
So now I must go. My little hat story may be silly, but I pray for the grace to apply the lesson even when the trail isn’t trivial, when it takes all the faith in the world to dance in the rain. I’m thankful for my friends who show me how it’s to be done.
And now today, I am thankful that yes, the incision has healed, leaving nothing but a faint scar, and I am free, again, to bask in the sun, and continue to dance in the rain. Thanks for reading.