The Chair {A Tribute to His Dad...}

It sits on our front porch and rocks gently in the breeze.  As though it has always been here - as though a long lost friend has come home.

Tony's mom and brother came to help with the move - they rolled up sleeves and bent backs to load and clean. They came to walk us through those first few days when I stood overwhelmed in a kitchen larger than I had ever had before.

I mean, seriously...what is supposed to go in all those drawers?


I know the dangers and it crosses my mind every once in a while when I curl up on the cushion and pull my legs in close.  I'm aware of my neighbours and the dealings that some of them deal and I know that guns could be involved at any moment...but I also know that there is nothing more soothing that a slow rock in the sunlight while the birds are singing and a little boy runs his trucks through the flower bed just below.

But his mom, she brings this chair and my only memory of it was of those dark days when we drove away from Canada. When we found refuge in her home in those transition days and Tony would build up that fire and I would curl up in that chair and rock in the firelight with my bible open but unread in my lap.

I didn't realize that there was a longer history that was about to come full circle.

She placed it there in its spot on the front porch and everyone took a turn over the next few days to sink down into its comfort and ease into this new space called "home".

And I think it was in the evening, when we were all exhausted but not ready to go to bed that she shared with me the story of the chair...

Over 40 years ago now, there was a boy and girl who fell madly in love and married faster than anyone could blink - and this groom? He found a perfect little spot for them to make a home in the middle of a not-so-great part in downtown Portland.

He brought his bride there the night of their wedding and in the rain and the mud their car got stuck and there they sat until a police officer showed up and offered them help.

He also offered some wisdom to this starry-eyed couple...

He told them to leave - to find a home in a safer part of town.

But this groom? He told this officer that *this* was going to be their home - that they were going to love Jesus and their neighbours here. That that this was part of their ministry.

And so they stayed.

So did this chair. It sat out in front of their home and rocked in rainy Portland nights and traveled through many miles to each home that they would settle in.

And that groom - his ministry...his legacy lives on in his son.

His son who wraps me up in his arms at night and prays brave prayers over me and loves us all fiercely. 

This chair...it's more than a place to rest. It's a testimony of sorts - that loving doesn't mean just loving the people most like you. It means loving all the people around you.

It's a reminder that failure and brokenness and sin don't have the last word - Jesus does.

This chair sits out on my front porch, not just because it looks right and perfect there, but because my heart needs to be reminded that when he died...no matter how he died...his dad passed the baton of faith on. And we are taking our turn in the race, running with Christ as our goal.

Because maybe one day, when we are gray and aging, this chair will grace the front porch of one of our children, beckoning them to keep running towards Home...

A Letter to My Four

We've been in this house for 21 days and I think I'm the only one who has dealt with any culture shock.

I wasn't expecting it - I think I was more prepared to walk the four of you through the change, but you made up your beds that first day and you snuggled in for the night and I was the one who sat up in the dark with eyes opened wide wondering about this path that God has led us on.

It wasn't fear that kept me up, but this feeling of being caught. Caught in the middle of two very different communities who both think that your daddy and I are slightly crazy for packing up this family of six and moving us "down here".

There's a woman, she's younger then me...I met her that first day we unloaded those boxes. I was in the backyard talking chickens with Valentina when she stopped at the fence and gave me her name.

She's had a few teeth knocked out by the looks of it.

She walked by the next day too and I waved, because that's what I do, and she approached me slowly and then asked,

Ummm...are you from around here?

I never know how to answer, because when you've moved as many times as we have, I'm not really from around anywhere, but your daddy stepped in because he saw where this was going and he told her why we were here and moving on to this street.

You were all running in the front yard with the dog so I'm pretty sure you didn't hear her response, but she looked at me like I was crazy.

Why would your move down here? You have kids! There are gang shootings and drugs all around you! You have kids! 

And then she said even quieter,

I would give anything to move away from this place...

Last night, an article started circulating around Facebook. I didn't read it, but by the gist of the comments I was reading *about* it, the city that we live in is apparently one of the top ten most terrifying cities to live in the United States.

And we moved right down into the thick of it.

We moved *you* right down into the thick of it.


The week before we moved in while Olivia and your daddy were outside in the playground, 7 shots were fired into the street. Right in front of this very house we now live in.

One bullet flies wrong and my world...

I don't have the words.


And yet...


I think of Jesus. How He left the beauty and the purity and the perfection of Heaven. How He gave up all that He had to come down here - to the brokenness and the the depravity of us. He did it because He loved us. Us? The very people who would insult Him and crucify Him - question His sanity and mock and ridicule Him at the end...He left the glory He had to be covered in our dust.

Our house that we left was simple, nothing grand or opulent. Our street was quiet, mostly seniors and maybe 4 other children. But what started out last summer as a quiet pull turned into a determination that could only come from the very Spirit of God. He moved us all out of what is considered safe into a situation that to some appears foolish.

But I want to write this down so that you will see. So that I will see. So that we will know.

Even here, where the world looks and raises eyebrows at our street number, where our sanity is questioned and our motives are scrutinized, even here we are safe.

We are safe, sweet ones, because the Eternal God Who became a man - Who died and rose again, He is our refuge.

Not this house, though at 108 years old, it is solid.

Not the lights I leave on at night, though they give a pretty glow.

Not a dog who growls and barks, because really, he's just a puppy anyways.

Nothing that we surround ourselves with is what keeps us safe.  Our God does that. Because even if a bullet flies wrong and our world is shattered and broken - His Hands surrounds us. He is our shelter. Nothing, nothing can rip us out of His Hands.

Call me crazy - I don't care. We moved because His love has moved in us.

Don't call me brave, because I'm not. I'm just desperate for Jesus, desperate to be in His Will. Desperate for you to see that living for Him is worth it.

You are my treasures, my sweet gifts, and you have been thrown into an adventure that you didn't choose, but the joy, the healing you are finding here in this place is a beautiful gift I didn't expect.

This is all a gift - one I am so grateful to have received.

I love you. So very much.

~Your Mama

The Hand of God

In December, the Hand of God jarred me awake.


I wanted to keep sleeping...sleeping in the dark that I had made with my words and with my own hands, but He wouldn't let me.

It's time, He said.

But I kept begging for Him to leave me alone.


For two and a half months I begged Him to back off. To let sleeping giants lie and to move on.

But He didn't.


His Hand began to press hard and I dreaded the morning, that moment I woke up and He would be there, reminding me that He is God and I am not and that it. was. time.


He began to close doors - that house we were supposed to move into at the beginning of March? Two days before the lease signing a gentlemen walked up the steps of that house and offered to buy it.


And I knew...he came because I wasn't obeying and I had a choice.

So I continued to ignore the God I claimed to love.


Until every word I said burned in my mouth. Until every thought was consumed with all the wrong I had done, until every breath that left my lungs heaved with 15 years worth of regret...

Until I whispered back in complete surrender,

You are right...It's time.

And as I peeled back layers and began to deal with the shame I had hidden, uncovering all the covering up I had done, He was there.

He was there in the forgiveness offered and in the weeping out of the poison I had let in.

He was there in the broken, trembling admittance that I was wrong.



I have been silent - nearly crushed under the weight of my sin.

And then silent again because of undeserved grace.


The God Who names each star and forms each bud has interacted with me - in the most painful and yet beautiful of ways.

His grace carried me when I tried to forget for all those long years and His grace wouldn't let me stay in that dead space and His grace peeled back the curtain and pressed hard against my soul until my heart burned back to life with His words,

Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for 

My sake will find it.

Two days after I submitted to the leading of Jesus? The buyer walked away from the house.

Five days after listing our own home? We found a renter.


We move to the inner city April 1st, but I am no fool anymore.


Jesus is living and real and active and my life is His, no questions asked.

His hesed surrounds my days and I am safe here, in the center of His will.

When the Cost is Counted

It's slated for the beginning of March.

That move that will take us closer to where our hearts are and his work is and my garage is starting to accumulate with boxes to fill.


Back in the summer, in the sweltering heat, my passion was ignited and waiting for the move felt eternally long...

but now that it's almost here?


There is a young woman, with beautiful eyes and a sweet spirit and every once in a while, across from those tables in the kitchen she'll ask me, Are you scared?

And for months I could look her in the eyes and truthfully say no.

But now, if He continues to open these doors over the next five weeks?

Yes, Yaz...I am feeling fear.


Proximity to something always seems to magnify it - the closer we get to the month of March, the reality of the area we are moving to seems a bit more obvious and we begin to count the cost and as I look at the lives of my children and husband, this decision feels weighty.

And it should.


Going against the pull of comfort always causes discomfort and when bullets and drugs and gangs will be the new reality, your eyes begin to see life a little differently.



Death has been a theme lately.


Not in a morbid sort of sense, no...though, I have wondered. Though I really have sat down in the middle of those moments and held them...because there is a cost to be counted when we say yes to the Lord.

I was driving home from somewhere last week, wrestling through the reality of the messes made and the brokenness of now and holding the thoughts of my own part and parcel of it all and wondering how it can all fit together...how Jesus could work all of my mistakes out for good.


Because when Jesus calls out our name - when He says, Come, follow Me; When He comes near and speaks into a trembling soul, Whoever saves his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it, do we truly understand what that means?

Have we really counted the cost?


There is a man here who has loved us like a father and this past Christmas placed a book in my hands that he knew I had wanted.

I crack open the pages through this month that has felt like a wrestling of Jacob's - all done in the dark and as though morning will never come.

It's these words that I read, when He lets His peace wash over me, gives me a day to breathe, and I feel the truth of them deeply,

It's kind of lengthy, but please, bear with me,

He was a righteous Jew, and had made his way back to

Jerusalem in order to celebrate Passover. He had no idea what

all the commotion was, but he obviously got close enough to

see what was happening.

As he stood at the edge of a rambunctious crowd, he saw

a man making his way up the hill, a cross on His shoulders

and a crown of thorns cutting into His sweaty skin...

...Simon was plucked from the masses and ordered to help

this guilty man as He continued to His place of execution.

There are only two times we are told that someone is "behind"

Jesus. The first is the woman with the issue of blood, and the

second is Simon of Cyrene, carrying the cross behind the King 

of all kings.

Carry the cross that would eventually bring His death and our

life.

Simon wasn't a disciple of Christ's, and it's not likely he 

even knew who He was. He was just one man, in a crowd, who 

thought he might escape notice. And as his hands lifted the beam, 

I wonder if he saw himself as a victim. Wrong place at the wrong 

time and nothing more...

What a horrific responsibility. To walk in the bloody footprints

of a man about to be executed, all the while painstakingly trying 

to keep balance and not succumb to the intense physical agony. 

Step after step, seeing enough of the man ahead of you to know

there is life in Him now that will soon be snuffed out.

In what we can piece together in the remaining narrative of Scripture,

Simon carried the cross to the place where Jesus was crucified, and

while we don't know the specifics of what he saw, we know he saw 

enough to believe Christ was the Messiah. He returned to his tiny 

hometown, where he informed his family of what he had seen and 

they too believed. From there a church began in Cyrene, and one of 

the members from that church would eventually gather with others in

sending Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journey years later...

So let me ask you this:

Was he randomly chosen from the crowd? Forced into submission

by an angry officer?

Or could it be that before there was time, God saw this town,

this crowd, and this moment?

~ Angie Smith Chasing God

I believe that God is doing something - and this thing He is doing requires a death of sorts. My hands tremble in time with the quaking of my soul as I type that out.


Take up your cross and Follow Me - His voice calls out from pages of my bible and I know that what He asks is necessary but sometimes, I just need to still under the weight of it to count out what it will mean.


In the middle of my fears, in the middle of that moment of now and the one where I will pick up one foot to set down in the footprints marked out by my Savior, my eyes fall to my wrist.

I don't know why the word for this year has felt the way it does - why I have felt the desperate need to have it wrapped around me - a still anchor of sorts for the uncertain days ahead.

I don't know why, and that scares me.

It does.

But Jesus - the Son of the Living God Who bled out on the road to Golgotha and gave up His last breath on that tree so that I could be found in Him alive and free - He remains steadfast. His love holds firm and faithful.


He doesn't give a map, He only gives a command spoken with love from a Heart that intimately knows that of what He asks,

Pick it up, child. That cross that feels so heavy and unwieldy that I have asked you to carry and die to yourself. Yes - it will be painful. But My yoke is easy...My burden is light. You won't do this alone.

 My Arms are carrying you the whole way.

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.

Dear Zeruiah {A Birthday Post}

You turn one today as the fog rolled in over the hills around us and the only fanfare you heard was the song of your brother and sisters.

You turn one only once and this mama's heart aches and that candle was blown out by the two sisters at your side.


I wanted today to last forever and I want tomorrow to stretch out long too.


You are the fourth and the youngest and wildly unique and the laughter you were born on is the laughter you bring and as you napped this afternoon I listened to the song that marked your transition and I long for you to know Jesus as holy and good.

The days will come, sure and steady - roll faster and faster one upon the other.  There will be days that seem sluggish and mundane and others that will leave you breathless and reaching to wring out just one. more. moment.

But my prayer for you, sweet Zeruiah, is that in all the days that He gives to you, you will offer each one back to Him. That He will give you eyes to see that what seems mundane and worthless to the world around you are actually sacred places for His glory to shine...through you.

You were created to be filled - may you be filled with the One Who created you.

You will be hurt and your heart broken - may those broken places be where He shines His light most brightly.

You will feel lost and unsure - may your feet always lead you back to the very feet of Jesus.

I think back to the moments between 2 pink lines and your heartbeat fluttering on that monitor...I was so unsure.

And then you, my precious girl whose very presence embodies the meaning of your name. You truly are a balm of God.


Tonight under clouds and stars you sleep, and tomorrow you will wake up and wave your hands until you have a banana on your plate, but know this little one - your mama loves you and the God Who planned out your very days is wooing you even now with a love faithful and strong.

I love you, sweet baby. Always.

~ Mama

The Naming of a Year

I sit in the middle of a pile of old and broken toys - the ones they've forgotten about and I just want to clear some new space.

As though cleaning out their mess will somehow clean out mine.


He has this week off and we have company coming and we slip out with the kids to run a few last errands. Sit on red benches as the little ones chew through drippy ketchup and steamy hot dogs and I can feel the heaviness press.


He notices as we begin the drive home - asks where the laughter went and where my thoughts are...and I don't know how to explain it, but the words are beating wildly against my heart as though they are caged and the key has been tossed and thrown away.

Four years ago today, he set out in the cold with two of his brothers - drove up that back canyon and found his dad frozen and hanging from a tree.

Four years ago today...


And I think that four years should make a difference, make the remembering less painful - but it doesn't. Still cuts just as sharp, just as joltingly cruel.


Four years ago today, I named my first year because in the days leading up to this day I had felt His prompting, Name this year and I will hold you close...

And He did.

Each year since, in the days or months leading up to the new, He has been faithful to open my eyes to His thoughts.


This year was no exception.


He can be subtle yet persistent and it was finally in August that I begin to catch on,

God kept leading me back to Himself, to Who He is - to the faithfulness and steadfastness of His love.


So I began to trace Him, follow where He was going, write down the scripture in the back of my Bible - desperate for just one more glimpse.

The week before Christmas, a dark doubt began creeping in - wound it's death grip around my heart.

I thought back to an afternoon conversation I had with a dear friend;

It was early fall and I confided in her what I thought the naming of this coming year would be and I told her I was scared - because what happens if? What happens if everything falls apart and He gave me this word because He needs me to know He is faithful, that His love is steadfast? What happens if?

I could feel the terror creep up my throat - since we lost his dad...nothing has been the same.

And I see where I fail so clearly - my faithlessness and the way my will bends so often to sin. His steadfastness only magnifies my shakiness and can I be reminded of this day in and day out, carry this weight of failure at all times?


He brings to mind that passage I memorized, that one in Romans 8 - right at the very beginning:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ

Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of Spirit Who gives

life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

And then, even before those words have a chance to re-sink in, He opens my eyes again, one last time before the old year closes out and the new one begins,

A Psalm.

                98 Oh sing to the Lord a new song,

for he has done marvelous things!

His right hand and his holy arm

have worked salvation for him.

2 The Lord has made known his salvation;

he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.

3 He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness

to the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen

the salvation of our God.

4 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;

break forth into joyous song and sing praises!

5 Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,

with the lyre and the sound of melody!

6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn

make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!

7 Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

the world and those who dwell in it!

8 Let the rivers clap their hands;

let the hills sing for joy together

9 before the Lord, for he comes

to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness,

and the peoples with equity.

His faithful and steadfast love, His Hesed, is not placed before me to magnify my shortcomings, but to open my eyes to Who He is in light of my lack. By seeing how magnificent and awe-inspiring He is, I find joy and feel joy and speak joy out of everything I am not.

So, before all the unknowns of 2014, even before the first day of January dawns cold and new, He has named this coming year and He has invited me along to know Him deeper, to trust Him more fully, to see with new eyes how faith in His faithfulness will draw out sweet joy.

As I let go of this old year and open my hands to the new, I say yes to my Jesus and to the year of Hesed...