When I am Done

The snow falls the day after the last Christmas gift arrives.

He sheepishly holds it behind his back, says, Shoot. I thought you were in the other room...I was going to wrap it. But since you're here...

And his smile pulls me in when he places the book in my hands and I don't need gifts from him because I have him, but I love that in the last minute list I sent him, he knew which one would speak to my heart the most.

Fear straddles the old year and this new one and as I make a nest of blankets for Olivia at the foot of our bed and hold her hair back at midnight and then every 45 minutes until sunrise, this fear whispers in my ear through all the dark watches of the night.

I've known Jesus since I was 4...probably longer since my first memories are of counting the tiles in the ceiling above me while the preacher preached. I've known Him for 30 years and I've pushed away from Him and ran back to Him, I've been unfaithful to Him and returned broken and spent. My faith for years was yo-yo like, always moving, always trying. Always trying to figure out how to love Him.

The snow fell in these big clumpy flakes and winter was finally heralded in. My older two, they danced in the street out front of our home long past bedtime, long past the point of staying warm and dry.  This winter was lazy and late and I was fully unprepared with toques and mittens and so I grabbed a mismatch of things and thankfully fashion flew out the window in newness of white and Elias and I hovered close at the window while they twirled and spun in the glory of heaven falling.

I realize I'm tired. So tired of trying to search out how to love Jesus. So tired of trying to fill up my head in hopes of finally filling up my heart.  I'm tired of just sitting at the window, I want to fall out into grace falling and I want to let His glory just fall, just cover, just rest...

In between holding a bowl for her heaving and rinsing it out, bleary eyed at the sink - washing my hands for the 100th time it seems - in between crawling weary under covers and knowing that sleep is pointless because she needs her mama, I open the pages.

And had I known - had the truth of Who He is been unpacked like this before...would I have ever been tired? Would there ever had been a need to be?

He begins to name the coming year for me in the hot heat of the summer, begins to open my weary eyes and I track His prints through the Scripture. He leads and I long and I plead, Please. Please show me how to love You.

He speaks it through His Word, that He is steadfast and loving, faithful and kind and I see all the ways that I am not.

Until I see Jesus. Until His Incarnation is unpacked and my union with Him is explained and I can feel it - joy and love filling up my exhausted soul. And I want Him. I want to stop all the running and just stand in the realization that I am loved and He is loving and The Holy God Who created me steadfastly loves me because I am in His Son.

The Abundant God - He hears the cries of His children. He sees the weariness and all the not-quite-enough tries. He sees it, but when we are in Christ - He sees what Jesus has done.

There is rest here - rest for my heart that is done with the how's. I just want the Who.

Now, my track record for follow through has been a bit sketchy at best - but this book by one of my favorite author's is just that good. It is what I wish I had had 15 years ago when I first began all this trying - I want to unpack it chapter by chapter because I'm falling in love like I never have before.

Thursdays? Thursdays here (hopefully consistently) will open pages and underline notes and discover the beauty that Jesus is; feel the love that He has for sinners and find rest in the mystery of union with Him.

Thursdays will find my soul soaking in this truth: that I have undeservedly, incredibly, overwhelmingly been Found in Him.

There is a line in The Greatest Gift that held me steady throughout the beautiful and hard days of December - and it was this:

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

A God Who has made Himself known in the face of Jesus. A God Who fills with The Holy Spirit...The God Who loves His own with an immovable love. A steady love.

We can know Him and in knowing Him we can find the deepest love.  And the deepest joy.

And we can stop incessantly searching because are already found,

we are found safe and whole in His Son.

In the Silence

I love words.

I love to read them, love to type them out, love to put pen to paper and let the words flow.

I listen to my older daughters sound out words and read stories and learn to form words of their own.

Zeruiah, she babbles nonsensically and then claps three times when she is done.


Words tie hearts together and friendships and relationships are born and supported within the realm of what is spoken and written down and sent.

One of my daughters, she wept in my arms last night - so very terrified to get it all wrong. She curled herself up in the circle of my arms and whispered that she didn't pray.

She doesn't want to get the words wrong,

so tired of starting over every time she thinks she's messed up that she's just given up.


But she doesn't have to get the words right, how could I have never told her that? There is One Who has mined the depths of us and the words that seem to be lost on our tongues are found in His scars and He stands between us and Holy God and He intercedes for His own...

No, our words don't have to be perfect to be heard.

They squabble hard in long shadows of winter,

pick at each others hearts with barbed words that tear wounds into the tender places.

Their eyes are flint and arms crossed like shields and having never had a sister, I find myself lost.


But I know, though I wish I didn't, how words can destroy and lay waste and scar the landscape of a heart. I love words and their flow, but I also know intimately how destructive they can be.

Hardened eyes and protected hearts are only a ruse...

We want to be known and loved and cherished and when it's all threatened, when our greatest fears are realized, we go on the defensive instead of running to our Defender the words we love and cherish can turn into weapons that wreck havoc on the very heart we are trying to protect.

Over a kitchen sink and hot running water this morning, as words were boiling and churning deep inside - as I found myself restless over thoughts and questions I haven't found ways to voice, He spoke.

Not in loud audible ways, but in typed and printed out words that I have placed to the right of my window -

Life is hard and broken and it presses in and brings out the very worst.

But there is One...

There is One Who was beaten, broken, bruised, pierced for our every sin - He was smitten and rejected by His Father all because of the very humanity that was doing the breaking and the beating and the bruising...

And He didn't open His mouth.

He was oppressed, and He was afflicted,

yet He opened not His mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not His mouth.

I love words, the flow of them; the beauty of them.

I love how they sound and the perfect placement of each one.

But I am asked to love The Word Made Flesh more - to trust that His Words are the ones that can heal and restore.

The Lamb Who Kept Silent sings love over His own and there is healing there in the silence, in the rest.

Sometimes, in the heat of the moment or in the silence of the aftermath or the calm of a day gone right, the only words I need to trace are the ones that He Is...

When Christmas...and Joy...Are Near

It is five days until Christmas and the sun sinks lower and fast. Shadows begin just after noon and I am running low on candles.

They race to plug in the Christmas lights and I race to get everything done and they do what I used to do and they try and wish the days to race faster.

I just want them to slow down.

The youngest, the smallest, the one who this time last year stretched my skin taut, she stands shaky and takes that first step to the cheers of her daddy and braves 5 steps from table to dishwasher to the tears of her mama.

This is our last *first* Christmas.


The Wise Men Three come with me to the espresso machine in the early hours - I assume they must be weary as well. Maybe the aroma of ground coffee beans will be just the kick they need. They started their journey December 1st around our home and soon they'll find rest and the babe and the little ones won't frantically search for the Searchers each morning.

We light candles in the evening as we read of The Word in His Word and we read of the wait for His first coming and my eyes are opened a bit more to the tension as we wait for His second.

Those Three Kings searched with their eyes on the skies and I have found myself searching with eyes on tissue typed words...

The weeks of Advent have been intentional this year and as we entered into this week of Joy, I assumed that is what I would easily find - only, before there is to be Joy, there first needs to be a revealing...and as we draw nearer to the solstice, when the day will be shortest and the night longest the contrast between light and dark becomes ever clearer as one wick is ignited and then another into the hungry and surrounding shadows.

And His light - it is what He does - reveals the deepest and the darkest places in us that need examining. Lifts that curtain on hidden sin and pierces deeply.

Then waits expectantly.


Tuesday found me sitting with Nehemiah as he and Ezra and the priests and elders stood before and among the Israelites and read from the Torah - heavy words weighted down with all of the places they had fallen short.

They wept.

They were grieved.

They were failures.

And it is here that I realized that until there is deep and true repentance, Joy remains elusive. Until there is a turning from, there is never a turning up of the corners of a mouth or a lightness in the heart.

Nehemiah, he saw the grief and he knew the solution,

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law. Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. Nehemiah 8:9-11

I think of Mary, whose skin stretched tight with her Savior and who held His newborn skin close. The mama who clapped for God-in-the-flesh as He took His first wobbly steps across a dusty floor. The mama whose first born Son knew her before she ever was and she cradled Him in her arms and ached for days to slow by.

Ached as He was beaten.

Broke as He was nailed to a tree.

Wept as He died for her,

for me,

for you.


It's five days until Christmas and the One Who came as Mary's Firstborn, God as Babe - He came to be with us. To take on our skin and break the curse that courses through our sin-caked veins.  That tender, fragile Infant, born into the filth of a stable, He took on all our filth and became The Way for us to come Home.

But first, I sit with the Baby. I sit and I wonder at a limitless God Who took on the limitations of our dust and I hold on to the sureness of Him.

And I find Joy is His nearness...

Adoring:

You came as Mary's Firstborn. You came close and You took on the form of a small and helpless Babe.

Thank You. God Who flung the galaxy in space and created silky grass and the blue of the sky, You came near to be born, to fill lungs with our air and Your heart beat in time with our own.

You reveal the dark places in me and You, Light of the world break the curse of sin and darkness and You strengthen me with joy as I turn from and learn in towards You.

Thank you for coming, for coming to rescue us who are desperately lost without You.  

When Hope Meets Grief

It's been almost 4 Christmases since that rope and his neck and that tree out in the woods. 4 Christmases since everything changed and the landscape of our lives was lost under a flood of grief.

It has been 3 Christmases since we packed up our life and our children and dreams and left in the bright sunlight of that bitterly cold morning in January.


This season has become one that is marked now by the number of years since - since grief entered in. I can still remember how it was marked by the anticipation of songs and carols and decorations, crazy snowfalls and the warmth of home...

It can all change so quickly.


This season? Underneath all that is beautiful, all that is anticipated, all that is wonderful and bright - it can be marked with an undeniable ache, a yearning for what once was, what we wish could be and the darkened days can match that hollowed out howl and the days leading up to the days of Christ's birth can be a stark pain of salt rubbed into raw wounds.


I can forget, under all that is merry and bright that the One Who came wrapped in an infant's skin and wrapped in torn cloths and placed in the brittle straw of a manger, that He came not indifferent, but as God, as One acquainted with grief. 


Each night, the four little ones and us, we sit close and read of Christ's history, of the story of His coming that stretched right back into the very beginning of Genesis. Each night we light the advent candle that shines brightly into the hushed dark.

This week has been the week of Hope. Of a wick lit and a flame burning brightly when everything else around it is dark. All week I have been reading Words woven throughout Scripture that breathe Hope back into my heart. Back into the days that have become marked with dread.

He entered in, stepped through the veil of the unseen to become fully seen and it's the question that has been echoing in my heart as I grab hold of His Hope -

Will I cling to Him too? Will I cling to the One Who is a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, rejected, despised...One not esteemed?

Will I identify my life with One Who broke through and identified with mine so that He could save and mend and heal the brokenness and clothe me with His righteousness?

This season, with the holly and the twinkling lights and the softly lit nativity scenes - they are only the opening notes that move my heart to remember why it was that Jesus came.

Grief marks my Christmas, but grief and sorrow marked my Savior and out of Him came new life and hope and He comes to redeem and make new.


So I can worship and praise and sing carols with tears on my face because He knows. And He came. And in the darkest night, Hope shines brightly...

Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called “the rejoicing of hope” (Hebrews 3:6).  William Gurnall

Adoring:

God Who is acquainted with grief, Who is acquainted with the very depths of me - I come before You in quiet adoration. Underneath the unsteady days of memories and hearts that are still broken, You hold firm and hold us fast. You are peace in the darkest of storms and the Hope that shines brightly to pierce the blackest night.

I praise and thank You for Your compassion, for not coming to us as unfeeling or too lofty, but for bending low in the dirt of us and for weeping over the wreckage of sin in us and for dying for us so our souls could be redeemed. You are so good, so amazing and this season, with all its joys and grief is itself redeemed when my eyes are fixed on the beauty of You.

When He Sees

November is breathing her last and I want to try and figure out how to prolong these dark autumn days just a little longer.

I don't know where these days have gone.


I prepare the candles for advent and our home for Christmas and their excitement is building, but I just want to be back at the beginning of the cooling-down days of Fall; to hold on to the burning fire of fading leaves for just a few more moments before each memory made swirls on the blowing wind of time ticking fast.


I look back on this year and it has been beautiful and hard and the newborn haze has quickly been replaced with pre-toddler motion and my hands feel so empty and full all at the same time.


And I have been Sarai, the one who dreams of a dream fulfilled and always the answer seems to be no, not yet. 

The waiting of it aches.

And I have been her, the woman who sees the potential in other places and demands that that is where it will be made right.

But it isn't.

It never is.

Only Jesus is Savior and anything else crumbles under the weight of rushed ambition.


I have been Hagar, not empty but desperate and wandering, searching and not sure where to go next in a place void of all answers.


I have been both.


The angel of the Lord? He found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.

Her flight was taking her in the direction of Egypt.

She was heading back home.


She was moving towards the familiar. Where else could she go?


It feels that way, sometimes. When what I have planned for falls through and when what I am doing hurts and feels awkward and heavy. Why not just throw it all off and go back to what I know, what feels familiar and right and doesn't require too much of a change?


Hagar was heading back home, but she was also staying near a spring of water. She was staying near a source of life.

And it was here that the angel of the Lord stopped her, he met her, he called her by name.


She wasn't forgotten in the promise of another. She may have been discarded by the ones over her, but she was still treasured by the One Who formed her. Their eyes may have looked away as she started over that dusty plain, but His Eyes never, never left her.


He told her to go back. Back to shame and humiliation and what would be hard. He asked her to walk that path back and to submit to a woman who would despise her.

But she would go back with a promise.

And she would go back knowing that God Himself saw her.


The years and the days may whirl by in a dizzying speed,

my heart may ache at all that is changing and moving and these hands may cup small ones close because tomorrow, they won't be so small.

But as the seasons change and calendar pages are flipped and as we enter into a season of Advent and Christmas, I can know,

  always,

God sees me.

I am known.

And the One Who Sees is the One Who Provides and He will cover my days until He welcomes me home.

I can trust this.

I can trust Him.


Adoring:

Father God, You have given this day and You gave all the ones before and You hold me in the questioning and You see me in my wandering; You cover me and You know all that tomorrow holds. Like Hagar, help me to know You as the One Who sees, and like Sarai, let me know You as the God Who sustains in the waiting.

And as November fades in the quiet and crazy of Christmas, let my heart burn with a deep love that is unfading for You in the long nights that find me waiting for Your arrival.

I love you, Jesus. You are so good.

For When She Wonders (Day 21)

Mama, what happens if someday, someone calls me ugly?

She asked me that just as I was tucking the sheets under her 6 year old chin.

We are all dust and we all crumble under the pain and hurt of the brokenness around us.


And the one thing she longs for is beauty.

She searches it out and is the first one to point out the beauty of nature around us. The first one of my children to compliment a stranger, no matter how crazy or outlandish an outfit. She seeks beauty in all things and she is tender enough still to actually find it.


But what happens if...?


Somewhere along the way, over days or weeks or mere seconds, the thought crossed through her mind that the one who seeks the beauty may never have the beauty sought out in her...

And she was crushed.


Dust crumbles under the weight of worry and expectation and just like the ground we will return to, when it is dry enough, it will all just blow away...


I hold her close and recite those words long ago memorized at a bible camp when a longing for home made the tears run down my face; when I was all awkward and gangly and thought these words were never meant for me,

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.  Psalm 139:13-14

God creates beauty and that means that you are beauty in motion. You are beautiful and there are only beautiful people. The only ugliness that we see are the ugly attitudes we allow...but when God created you all wonderful, He created true beauty.

She needs to know that He has His hand on her. That there is no where she can go that He won't find her...There is a God Who sees her. That when she is lost in a sea of loneliness or when the darkness of sin sweeps over her, she is never unseen by Him. He sees her and loves her and relentlessly pursues her.

Her covering of dust may make her feel ordinary, hidden, like nothing really special at all, but the One Who knit her together in my womb lifts her up and calls her beauty His own because He sees and He pursues and He gently lifts her up.


Then He turns to her mama, to me, and I see that He says this for my dusty and broken heart too...



Adoring:
God Who raises me from the dust, You use the fears of my daughter to speak into the fears of this heart and instead of ash blowing away, You cup this heart and pour Your love into a simple, fragile jar of clay.  You are the Lifter of my head and the Lover of this soul and eyes that are lifted and filled with You, see true Beauty and lives are transformed...

To Become Small

The desire to be seen,

to be known,

can be so strong at times.


As though being where you are and who you are is never quite enough.


But the Father sees. He sees when you take a step back from all that striving to be noticed. He sees that step you take back, away from chasing after all the mirages of what you think will satisfy.  He sees, when in the quiet, in the mundane, in the routine of what He has given to you now, you step away from it all. Not to enter into a fight for recognition, but to enter into the quiet, intimate spaces of being known fully and completely by the very God Who created you.

He sees what is done in the secret places, in the quiet places, in the questioning of your worth and in the feeling small.


Because it is then you see Him most clearly.

If God doesn't rule your mundane, then He doesn't

rule you. Because that's where you live.   ~Paul Tripp

Adoring:

My Father Who sees in secret, make me fearless of being small. Of being unknown. Of being known fully by the One Fully God. Nothing escapes Your eyes that always see and when I place myself before Your greatness, there is no other place safer for my soul.

Rule the mundane spaces, the places I despise. Transform them into an oasis where I see you most clearly. 

When I Can't See {Day 13}

We meet in that familiar stance again this morning, as the sun streams in the window by the front door and defiance flashes in her eyes.

My face is set to match her will and we stand at that standstill, again, for the one thousandth time.

We both know that as the mama, I will eventually win, but she is going to give me a run for my money before she allows that to happen.

And it isn't until later that I remember those verses from this morning, after the battle has been won in my favor and she is calmed down and quietly working that His Word sinks deep:

But now, you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander,

and obscene talk from your mouth...Put on then, as God's chosen ones, 

holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and

patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against 

another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also

must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything 

together in perfect harmony.  Colossians 3:8, 12-14

I can forget often, that before her anger can be addressed, my heart needs examining; while her eyes are flashing, mine need to soften. Before we stand, locked in a heated battle, my arms need to open and pull her in close.

It feels more natural to allow frustration to take the wheel - for my position as the mama to be the driving force behind compliance...but that isn't what Jesus asks of us.

Instead of putting on what feels normal, He asks us to go against the grain and to put on what our flesh will want to rip off:

Peel off anger and cup compassion.

Remove wrath and receive kindness.

Throw away malice and kneel in humility...

And when everything in me wants to complain about the attitudes and the immaturity, forgive. Bear with the child, the friend, the stranger, the one out to harm; bear with them and lean into the Holy Spirit - receive from Him all that is needed to speak His Life and Love to the broken soul in front of me.

Because I am only seeing with my eyes what is going on around me. I don't know what is going on deep down in her heart. I don't know what set off the first battle cry and in the heat of the moment, it is going to be even harder to decipher. 

Like Samuel, He asks us to look beyond what our eyes see and trust that He alone knows the very depths of her heart and I can make all the judgments I want to about the situation, but her heart will remain unreachable, her will unteachable unless He reveals the way through.

Tomorrow, we will try again. 

Tomorrow, I will meet her at the bottom of the stairs and trust that Jesus will show me how He sees her heart.

And the white flag will wave in surrender to the One Who gave her to me.

Adoring:

You are the God Who Looks at the Heart and most days I fall into that chair exhausted because I don't know what is going on in that head of hers, of his...of theirs. I fall exhausted because I don't fall on You and if I just would...I would find You to be faithful and loving and kind.  God Who Looks at the Heart, of them and of me, You give when we ask for wisdom and You graciously, along with Jesus, give.  Today is done, tomorrow is new and Your Mercy will be mine for the taking - so be with us in our sleep, be with us in our waking and surround us with Your Love in our interacting with one another. You are so good and so amazing, to love us and to draw near to us the way that You do.  Thank You, Jesus.

Because He Freely Gives {Day 11}

He's been saying it more and more these last few weeks. Really, he's been saying it since our anniversary. And I want to be careful with his words, because, they are *his* words and because I know the amazing heart behind them.

However, they are hard words.

Because they have lived hard. They have witnessed hard.


But as he held me close over our anniversary weekend, he whispered in my ear that he was thankful. Not just for us, for our marriage and this life - but he was coming to be thankful for his dad's suicide.

I heard the ache behind his words and the longing of a son for his father because no matter how clear a gift becomes in the unwrapping - loss of any kind still stings even as time begins to soothe.

He said those words because he sees how his loss has opened up places in him that God is using. That the broken places are becoming healing places and the loss of a father has cultivated a father's-love in his own heart for the father-less around us.

What would happen if we opened our eyes more to see the working and weaving of good around us that God the Father does for those who love Him?

Really - what would happen? I want to know.

I drove in the dark on the freeway this evening, over to a neighbouring town just to sit and be with a tea and a book and on the way back, as I took each exit I began to wonder at the absurdity of where I am.

I had a plan.

I had a plan and it was a good plan. Well thought out and safe, it would have kept us in a quiet neighbourhood in a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere and we would have lived out our days and we would have grown old and quiet together there and in the end, been buried together under piles of snow and ice in the winter and harvest dust come fall.

Then God stepped in and shook things up a little. Or a lot.

It all depends on how you look on things like that.


And I found myself driving home on a freeway, debating whether to take the exit into downtown or the taking the long circuitous route instead and choosing the former I entered into the city that I'm still trying to stretch into feeling like home.

I asked Tony tonight when the shock would wear off - when the surprise of *here* would no longer be surprising.

He didn't really have an answer.

And the thing is - I am grateful. I am so very grateful to be found here. To be given all that we have been given here. That it is here where we have been able to heal. Where we have found the footing we lost and been thrown back together. It is here that we have jumped back into ministry and where we have found our calling, where we have sought God and His Will like we have never done before.

We have been found desperate for Jesus here in the place and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Which seems wrong to type, given what we have lost in the living we have done. But it's true. Jesus said that to follow Him we need to lay down our lives, take up our cross and follow Him. To love Him above family and friends and houses and cities and those lives we long to protect.  He is to be longed for above everything else and in all of that losing,

we will find the greatest Gift.

When we give of ourselves freely to Him,

we find the One Who Freely Gives.


Because more than quiet, safe lives; more than fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, more than comfort and ease and the right clothes and neighbours, He longs to give us life - abundant and full. But that life comes with a cost: His Life. And when we allow that to sink in, deep down into the very depth of us - we'll begin too see, each hard loss that feels like it's going to kill us, each blow to our bodies, our wallets and status quo, each question that is sobbed into feathered pillows each night - it all finds it's answer in Jesus.

No, what He asks isn't easy, but what He gives carries great worth. When we offer up to Him, what we would rather freely hold back onto, He freely gives His strength, love, faith and peace and He will lead us through the hard things He allows, opening our eyes to see past the circumstances that are paved in sorrow to find the incredible gift of incredible Life with Him.

All because He freely Gives.

Adoring:

You did not spare Your Own Son but gave Him up for us all and because of the weight of that, I can trust that each gift You offer and each promise You make and each provision you give - You graciously give because it is in Your nature. You give because You love. You discipline because You love. You provide for the desperate because Your love is desperate that all should come to repentance. I can trust You - even when it seems impossible and crazy. I can trust that as I walk in Your leading that You will lead me to a place where I can hear You - where I can see Your glory at work.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?  Romans 8:32

When He is Gracious {Day 7}

Failure can settle in deep and I won't want to stand at my sink to see what the days Naming will be. Instead, I become tempted to wallow in that deep sea of self-pity and wrap myself in rags of defeat instead of a heart washed white as snow.

Until I look up and see that He is Gracious - a Gracious God full of mercy.

Until I look up to see my daughter crumble - her tears on her face and her head laid on her arms.

Until I look up to see the face of a friend who shows grace to the broken heart of my 7 year old and gives her a way to express her pain through art.

Until I climb those stairs in the old, creaky building and hear laughter coming out of the room closest to me.

Until I peek my head in and see her head thrown back in laughter with one who so willingly steps in as an older brother to my four.

He is Gracious and He delights to show mercy and so many days I forget. I forget that His grace is a gift and His mercy is tender and He wraps my days up in both - will I willingly open up my eyes to find them?

We carry home drawings and brownie crumbs and a sleeping baby curled up in my arms and we nestle in close at the close of the day and His Hand has never left us - His graciousness has kept us secure.

Adoring:
You wait to be Gracious and You exult to show Mercy and I am desperate for both. Tender Savior, Your eyes never leave Your children and in the dark of night or in the dark of sorrow or in the light of great joy, You wait for me to look to You, to trace Your movements throughout my days. Blessing is found when I still and wait for You, the riches of Your Grace most clearly seen when I sit with whatever You allow to come my way. Gracious God, You are so very good and Your Mercy calms my heart.

In the Suddenness of Loss {Day 5}

He is there in the corner of the small video Tony took of Elias learning to ride a bike while Geraldo held him steady.

He is sitting on his own bike grinning away at my son while Elias giggles loudly and forgets to keep his feet on the peddles.

He is sitting on his own bike and his smile doesn't give away the news that Tony waited to share with me once the little ones are sleeping and I'm curled up in my own chair.

And I hear the news and I'm frustrated that today of all days is the one where I'm sick and Zeruiah is wheezy and he sat there on his bike with that smile hiding big emotions and today was the last day that he and his 3 brothers and 1 sister would be at Madison House.

I can sit here in the dark and remind myself for the 100th time that this was what we were told - that this is a transient community and a child we would see today and for the next 30 days may one day not show up again. Sometimes ever, sometimes until the next season would come around.

So be prepared - I kept hearing this: Be prepared.

And you can prepare your mind and you can say the words over and over, but these are children and they are precious and they get under your skin and deep down into your heart and you lay awake at night praying over lives that you begin to love like your very own.

And I'm not ready to say goodbye.

I'm not ready to not have that chance and I think of the five of them and how they have played and loved and fought with my own four.

I'm not ready to not have at least one of them come quietly up beside me and just be, just to tell me about their day, just to play with Zeruiah.

I'm not ready to not see the smiles and to not hear the laughter and to not hear the jokes or the stories or the questions.

I'm not ready to not know if they are okay.

More than anything, I wish I could have said goodbye. I wish I could have reminded them how very loved they are by Jesus and by us; how amazing they are and that no matter what, God has a very specific plan for their lives.

Because you can see it - you really can. God's Hand is there and evident on lives of these kids and you can see it on these 5 as well. God sees them He knows them.

I may not be ready to let them go, but I can trust that He never will.

I have hope in the God of Hope.

I have hope that He hears and He holds the prayers that I pray for them. 

I have hope that His eyes will never leave them.

And I wonder if this is what hope does - not that it numbs and deadens the ache, but that it gives it a purpose.  That the ache and the hurt, when cupped by hope and filled with joy and peace in the believing - in the act of faith -  that it grows a soul more tender towards Christ. 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13

I don't want to become used to the transience. I don't want to become used to the goodbyes. I hope each one aches as much as the first so I can stand witness to His cupping of pain with hope and faith and trust - reminding my heart that keeps growing larger and larger to pray and to entrust each one into His faithful care.


Adoring:

You know that the words tonight are few but that the hope is desperate and tenacious. You see sparrows and know the number of hairs on each head and You see each child that comes and goes out those front doors. You know them. You love them. You aren't going to let them go. My helplessness can be be transformed into hope-full-ness and even in loss I can be filled with Your joy and peace.  Go before them. Go before us. Weave our days with hope in You.

When I want to Fight {Day 4}

She stands there with fists clenched and eyes narrowed as her teeth grit out the word no. It's a simple request that doesn't suit her schedule and we stand there with wills locked and eyes clashing.

Even in the beauty of a sun drenched day, there is a warring. A constant striving to prove that I'm right or he's wrong or she has no idea what she is talking about.

And then that coin flips and I'm not going to forgive, I'm going to build this wall - I'm going to keep them out and you at a distance and if there is a battle to be won or fought or lost, I'm going to enter in. I will do anything to keep myself safe.


I have forgotten, over and over, when emotions are high and tension pulls taut that the battle, the main one in the places I can't see, has already been won.


I've already fought. I've already won, He whispers, so just be still.

Political climates can tip precariously and leave the air uncertain, a child (or parent) can wake up exhausted from unrelenting dreams and the cloud above them heaves dark and foreboding,


A fight can be just waiting to happen.


But as the unrest circles and presses in close, when temptation to take up arms seems like the more productive and right thing to do,

step back and wait.


The striving your flesh wants to do already has a Victor in the work of Jesus Christ.  He fought the battle. He conquered sin and His grace, His favor is sufficient for you. For this day. For this time.


Just be still.


Adoring:

You are God and You have already won the greatest battle that needed to be fought and that victory still spills over into every area if only I would stop huddling over the broken places that pride has convinced me I need to win.  Your victory fills in the sin-gaps and You ask me to only be still - to believe in Your work on the cross and Your resurrection from the dead; in You alone, my salvation is sure.  You fight for me and even if the broken places still crumble, they crumble in the presence of Mighty God and I can know and be assured that one day, my eyes will see and I will know and finally understand. I can rest and I can be still.

He Hasn't Forgotten {Day 2}

I can easily forget, in the mama-ing to my four little ones, in the needing to be big, that I too am so very small.

As my youngest flashes her dimple at me and tucks her face away - as I hold her close to my chest, the calendar pages still turn and 10 months fly by and my heart aches with the passing and the aging and I am not big enough to slow them all down.

Time feels constricting and aloof in the same moment and somewhere in the middle I stand, caught in the ever-changing illusions of giant needs and the stepping away smallness that comes with the territory of motherhood.

I can forget my own fragility until they begin to take that step away.

Jesus, He says, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

Peter, his pen scratched out the words, Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.

And Isaiah, pointing always to the coming Messiah, he leans in to the people of God,

He will tend His flock like a shepherd

He will gather the lambs in His arms;

He will carry them in His bosom,

and gently lead those who are with young.

I drive home in the fading light and sometimes the weight of what we carry feels too much - as though my soul is threatening to give way and my heart is one quickened beat from shattering. I grip the steering wheel as though it is a lifeline and the I-can-handle-this that I have wrapped around me begins to unravel and the very guttural lowness of who I really am cries out for Him; For the One Who gently leads, Who lends His yoke, Who takes my anxiety because He cares. For me. For the ones He has made.

My days carry responsibilities, both big and small, but there is One Who is a Tender God Who takes note. I don't have to come before Him boasting that I can handle it all on my own. In His tenderness, He welcomes me, crawling, grasping, sin-stained and broken because He knows my frame. He knows I am but dust and His compassion gathers me close and a daughter finds rest in the presence of her Father.

 

Adoring:

As a father shows compassion to his children, so You show compassion to me - to those who fear You. For You know my frame, You have never forgotten that I am but dust. In Your holiness, You remain gentle to Your children and Your faithfulness becomes a safe harbor for Your weary daughter who forgets, at times, just how very small she is.  Thank You for your mercy and grace. For Your yoke that binds me to You, for Your arms that gather this mama-heart close and for Your invitation to take my anxieties from me - all because You love. All because You see and know of what I am made.  How can I not love You in return?

{November rolls around again and again, I place a singular focus on the 30 days of this month. Seems kind of silly to choose Adoration, since I had decided to try to Adore Jesus here for the next year. But Adoration can feel unexpectedly awkward and that awkwardness can cause a pulling back. So really, this month is to relight that fire I first felt back in the heat of summer and as the coolness of fall settles in, as the days grow darker, I want to refocus my heart back on this discipline. In a way, this is a restarting and a settling back in on a journey to know Him more...)

{Day 1} Provider God

It is the first of November and my front window is cracked open because I burnt the popcorn and sugar and this house needs some fresh air. My toes are ridiculously cold and my slippers lay in a jumbled heap by the front door - there is no need to bother with them...I will be warm under covers soon.

My culinary attempts backfired this evening and instead of kettle corn, the little ones wolfed down chocolate popcorn instead. They seemed to appreciate the added flair of sea salt tossed in and we settled in and snuggled close while the movie flashed across the screen.

These moments this evening, the ones filled with giggles and tears and warm little bodies scooting in closer, there didn't seem to be enough time, enough awareness to soak it all in.

Provision - that word so tightly linked with money and finances and making certain that one always has enough.  But what happens if it is more?  

What if the Provider God provides what is needed on a more deeper level? 

For those moments when the kind word is the last word you want to say, 

When they are all asking and clinging and pulling and each one convinced that their request is the greater one,

When patience is so thin it can't even be seen and that cereal bowl filled full with milk and cheerios falls to the floor and you are already running behind,

When you say one thing and he hears another and there is that moment between the word you are going to regret saying and the breath you could take in instead.

Could we pause long enough instead to look for the ram in the thicket? Instead of grabbing hold of the tangible, the obvious, the flesh-bent answer, could we stop to listen for His voice?

As we journey up our own Moriah, taking faithful footsteps forward through questions and confusion and chaos, can we, can I, trust Him enough to know, to really know, that at just the right time, when I need Him to come through most, He will.

It may come all tangled up - I may still have to wrestle it out into the open, but I know that in my desperation, He will prove Himself faithful.

He is the God Who Provides.

Adoring:

I have known You as the One Who provides for our very physical needs, but I have overlooked the deeper, more intimate ways that You provide. For each moment that could erupt in tempers flaring or fears flailing, You provide the words, the attitudes that could bring You the most glory, if only I would open my eyes and my heart. You don't leave Your people caught in brokenness. You aren't after the death of a situation but You come near to breathe Life back into it.   

My days are spent sorting out the tangled emotions of siblings growing and learning and being - to know that I can call on You and You will hear this mama's desperation and not only hear me, but deliver me - provide the insight, the wisdom, the words that I need - does more than settle my heart...it lifts my soul towards You and I can't help but glorify Your Name.

{November rolls around again and again, I place a singular focus on the 30 days of this month. Seems kind of silly to choose Adoration, since I had decided to try to Adore Jesus here for the next year. But Adoration can feel unexpectedly awkward and that awkwardness can cause a pulling back. So really, this month is to relight that fire I first felt back in the heat of summer and as the coolness of fall settles in, as the days grow darker, I want to refocus my heart back on this discipline. In a way, this is a restarting and a settling back in on a journey to know Him more...)

When You Keep Looking

The muddled middle and the dusty ground scattered with leaves - have your eyes been caught there?


It's the last evening of October and our pumpkins are glowing out on the front step, the doorbell rung over and over, even after we ran out of candy. I am piled high with little ones while I read of Caspian and Lucy and Edmund. Eustace no longer whining and Reepicheep so brave. The Dawn Treader turned towards the End of the World before I closed those pages for goodnight kisses and I can hear the neighbours calling for their little girls to come inside.

The comfort of home settles in and everything that happens outside of these walls, as heavy and weight-filled as they are, lose their grip when we all come close together and the skin of those four that formed underneath my own and the hand of that man who promised his life to mine, we all press in close and for the few hours we have before we face another day, we are sure. We are safe. We are comforted.

The dark can press in close, but my eyes, they drift to find the light of home and I am anchored here to the ones I love most.


Morning can come bright and glaringly early - can shine a light on all that is uncertain and unsettled and all that is unknown can rudely invade to remind that control is but an illusion and humanity is really just fragments of fragile dust.

And the eyes drag down.


A friend, she posted all tongue-in-cheek about the weather here - how fall comes blowing in with the sun. Winter freezes white while the sun shines on. Spring and summer are rarely without the brightness of the sun and although the days are rare, my rain-loving self can't help but look for any evidence of heavy clouds building.

I keep lifting my eyes to find them pregnant with rain.


And my soul keeps longing for the One Coming on the Clouds.

James, he wrote those words while the Church was still so young, when the Voice of his half-Brother was still so fresh in his mind. When wearing the mantle of Christian was a risk and a gamble and life became uncertain. When death and persecution was a very real reality, he wrote to the dispersed Church around him:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds...

James 1:2

Don’t get over them. Don’t rush through them or past them. Rejoice –> IN <– them.

James tells us not to be too hasty to escape the faith-testing valleys, because it is those valleys which contain the fertile soil needed to produce steadfastness. And steadfastness – being immovable, unable to be shaken, deeply rooted  - is perhaps the true “wellness” we should be seeking. “Lacking in nothing,” as James says.... whenever you find yourself in a place of trial: do not minimize it or rush through it. And most of all, do not waste it! Instead, do it well.Let it have its full effect. This – as backwards as it may feel – THIS is the time to thank The Lord. This is a time to rejoice! Not because bad things happen. Not because this poor, fallen world is full of death and injustice and sorrow. Rejoice because the sovereign Lord calls you His own, and He loves you enough to descend with you into the dark-yet-mysteriously-fertile valleys (where even Christ Himself descended), to produce in you a steadfastness which cannot be shaken.   (#shereadstruth)

Autumn is settling in and air warmed by our lungs puffs out in frosty steam. The trees burn with the last of the season's passion and what is walked through in the valley, what is wrestled with in the quiet dark, what is held tenderly in opened hands is all meant to keep lifting these downcast eyes of mine, to remind an overwhelmed heart that those clouds I long for will one day hold The One Who will make all things right.


He is coming.

There is hope.


Just keep looking up.

Adoring:
The clouds sat on the edges of those mountains as I headed home into the glare of the setting sun and I thought of You and the moment when those clouds will hold You once again. Thoughts can rage wild at all the unknowns and the questions and my heart can become so troubled with what only my eyes can see. But You, the One Who is outside of all time and the One Who has all of time written and mapped out, You place those clouds on the edges of the mountains so that I will lift up my eyes and be reminded - You may not be coming in all of Your glory just yet, but I can lift my eyes up to the mountains and know where my Help comes from. My help come from You, Maker of heaven and earth and my soul can rest in Your sovereignty and hope for Your coming and rejoice in You in all of the ache of the in between spaces.