For When it isn't Enough {A post by Tony}

People often ask me what the worst part of this job is.  

Contrary to popular belief it's not gunfire at all hours of the day and night, physical violence, constant lies, all our things that have gone missing, lice, broken promises, mice or a myriad of other things to choose from.

Jesus said (Mathew 10:22) that we would be hated for His namesake; that sending us out would be no easy task.  

Great, I know all that, I know what I signed on for.  I told the committee during my interview four years ago that I would never work in an office again.  

I did that job; where I answered to only the president of the college and had 12 departments under me.  

Boring. 

 60k a year, nice car, top level corner office, cheap college housing and good health care, boring, boring, and boring.  

I'm never going back.

So what is the worst part of this job? What did I miss when I signed up? 



She's only ten years old, maybe 11.  She's dragging her family behind her.  A brother,6 and a sister, 4 - about the age of my three oldest children.  They heard about the Madison House at school and came to check it out.  After a couple of weeks they decide they like it and stay.  

She's a nice girl, really shy but she's tough too, and funny.  Being the oldest she is responsible for little brother and sister and she does a good job.  

She loves to play pool and every day she asks me to play a game with her.  We talk and I learn that she doesn't have a mother, there's a father but he seems in and out of the picture.  

"He's gone," she says.

 We are playing pool and I look up from my shot, "Who's gone?" 

"My dad." 

"Where did he go?" I ask.  

"I don't know. He said he was going to the store and he never came back." 

"Ok...how long has he been gone?"

"He left on Friday."  It's Tuesday. 

"Well who's taking care of you?" 

"Grandma." 

"Oh, ok,"

I ask more questions about gangs or drugs, trying to find out details but she adroitly dodges all my questions from that point on. She's said all she's going to.  

A week goes by, we are playing pool again. 

"He came back." 

"Oh good, when?"

She shrugs, "a couple of days ago."

"Great," I say, "right?"

"I guess so." 

"Did he tell you were he went?"

"No." 

Weeks go by and Christmas approaches; we've been doing all we can as a staff to help her family in particular.

No mother, no father most of the time.  We give them extra food after dinner to take home, rides to church and tell them how much we care and are praying for them. 

It's a week before Christmas and there's a third day in a row of snowfall.  All the kids badly need gloves and I've given out all I have.  

"Tony, do you have any gloves?"

"No," I say "I'm all out." 

We gave them all away, 100 pairs, maybe more. 

"Ok," she says, clearly sad and looking at her red chapped hands.  

She starts to walk away and I feel a pang of guilt. 

"Wait," I say calling her back, "take my gloves, they might be a little big but you can have them,  I can always get more gloves."  

She yanks them on,  runs off down the hall.  

That is the last time I see her, a smile on her face, headed outside with floppy, oversized gloves. 

She never shows up for the Madison House party, or the Chistmas Party. 
 
None of the kids she attends school with have any idea where she is or where she went, they just keep telling us, "one day she just didn't come to school." 

We've driven her home enough times that I know where she lives so finally 2 weeks into January I drop by the house and knock  on the door. 

A lady, mid twenties, answers the door.  I've never seen her before and she's never seen me.  She says she's a cousin but she has no idea where the three kids have gone and clearly and understandably doesn't trust me, a perfect stranger. 

"Oregon maybe?" She finally offers in an effort to get me off the porch. 

I climb back into my car and head to Madison House filled more with sorrow than frustration. Wherever she is at least she has warm gloves. 

It's late February and my 8 year old daughter is holding something dirty, heading toward me. 

"Hey dad," she yells as she gets closer, "isn't this your glove?" 

"We found it under the last snow pile outside, do you want it?"

"No, just throw it in the garbage." 

This daughter is most like me and she immediately senses something is wrong and asks, "Are you proud of me for finding your glove dad?"

"Oh yes," I put my hand on her shoulder realizing my tone and body language have given her the wrong impression.  "You did a great job bringing it to me, but I bought another pair so I don't need the old ones anymore." 

She skips off happily to the garbage.  

I will see her again. 

That's what drives me crazy.  

I know kids are sold into sex slavery, I know they move from house to house, town to town. I know they are used as look outs and drug runners.  I know they are abused in every way imaginable.  We call CPS about something and they tell us, "We've already been to that house 3 times in the last year, there's nothing more we can do."  This is just one story where kids disappear and we never see them again.  It kills me more each time.
  
People will tell you that whatever I wanted to do, I could always do it:
 
Played on my state football all star team in high school, worked three jobs and paid my way through college, always made it to management level of every job in less than a year, 

Started a band in Seattle, made top seller of the year in my region for Starbucks, Director of operations at a college.

But I'm down here, living across the street from Madison House and I feel completely helpless.  I open up the field and building on weekends, I give away my own money and things constantly.  I have endless conversations about fundraising and volunteer work.  

There's nothing more I can do. 

 It isn't enough.  

I have perfect peace that God is in control but it doesn't take away the loss and pain.  It hurts and sometimes it overwhelms me to the point that all I can do is weep.  

For When You Aren't Always Sure

I don’t think he would have noticed it if the glass of that old window wasn’t in shards all over the ground.

It’s a window that I found hidden far back in a forgotten corner of the basement in this place we now call our own.

It’s been sitting on our porch for almost 2 years now, leaning up against a ladder that belonged to Tony’s grandfather, snugged up against an old screened in window that I found in the old chicken coop out back.

I was going to cover the glass with chalkboard paint this summer – that was my plan. It already had a place, and now it had a purpose and I was already thinking about all the things I was going to write on this fragile space.

Only, a bullet found it first.

One night in early February, while I was far away in Ohio and lost in conversation with a dear friend into the early hours of the morning, Tony listened as gunfire happened in the street right outside of our home. He told me it had sounded close, but he didn’t realize just how near until he went outside the next morning and his shoes crunched on glass. 

Until he looked closer and saw the hole that now scarred our siding.

He didn’t tell me this right away.

It was on the long drive home over the mountains and into our valley after that cross-country plane ride, when little ones had finally drifted off to sleep that he started to share with me what had happened that night. 

This home of ours, it’s old and marked. The siding is ugly and the paint colors drab. I look at it and see all kinds of potential and I’m still processing at how Jesus opened all the doors for this place to become our own.

But now, as I knelt down to look at this hole near our front door, I couldn’t see anything else; how it would draw my eyes as I would drive up to the curb and walk up those front steps.

It’s one thing to say that you are bulletproof until God calls you home,

It’s another thing to believe it when it marks your home.

I woke up slowly in the early hours of the morning this past Sunday, disoriented and unsure of what I was hearing as the slow and deliberate metallic boom of gun shots settled deep in my chest. This was no fast drive-by, but it was calculated and pointed. And it was right outside our four walls. Amazingly, all of our children slept through it all.

It was after this and  after church, Tony sent me out to a local Starbucks with my bible and journal and told me just to be for a bit.

I found myself in the book of Acts, following Paul and his many words and journeys when his impassioned voice  grabbed a hold of my heart:

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself,

If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the

Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

Acts 20:24

Because, as I had been praying and wrestling with that bullet hole on our front porch, as Jesus had been asking things of me that required great trust and I was fighting back by pointing out that hole, convinced He didn’t see the gravity of it, I was coming to realize that I *did* view my life as precious…and not only my life, but the life of my husband, of my children, of the young men and women we see at Madison House everyday and have grown to love like they are our own.

All life is precious because each life has been lovingly knit together and thought of before time even existed. 

But it was at that point  the words of Christ blazed brightly off the page as I flipped to the book of Matthew – 

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let Him deny himself

 and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, 

but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.   Matthew 16: 24-25

Yes, our lives are precious, but they should never be more precious than the life of Christ in us. 

As Easter approaches and my Lent study leads me closer to the path of the Cross, I am reminded daily of His sacrifice, of the One who counted His life as nothing so that we could have eternal life through Him.

As I sat in my leadership class last night at church, one phrase burned itself deep into my heart and I haven’t been able to let it go,

*We are saved to serve*.

Five words, but they are wrecking me.

I used to think that serving and ministry used to involve big and grand acts. But what I’m learning now is that it’s in the little things, the ordinary and mundane things.  The things that seem small and insignificant.

It’s in sitting on the steps on the side of your home and handing a glass of water to the woman beside you as she shares her story.

It’s in rejoicing with her as she shares that she learned that prostitution didn’t have to be her path – that she could find purpose and joy in salvaging discarded things and giving them purpose and then giving them away.

It’s in the moments spent in the kitchen baking cakes and cookies for ones you worry over and pray for and you know of no other way to show them they are loved than this.

It’s in stepping into the middle of squabbling siblings and pulling them all close and letting them know that their mama struggles with wanting her own way too and then pointing us all to Jesus.

It’s in messing up and failing in so many different ways, of getting overwhelmed and scared and frustrated and worried and then turning back to Jesus and asking Him for mercy and grace and help.

It’s in the little ways that we die to our selves – it’s bit by bit that we loosen the grip we have on our own lives and raise our open hands in praise of the One Whose own life gives us all we need.

It’s always in the ordinary and small ways that we die to ourselves.

While I was out this past Sunday, drinking coffee and lost in Acts there was another shooting right on our corner; the text from Tony flashed up on my screen telling me to stay out as long as I needed.

I’ll be honest here, it didn’t take long for fear to rise up and my imagination to run wild, until I believe the Holy Spirit led me to this verse in Psalm 116:15,

Precious in the sight of the Lord

Is the death of His saints.   

Whether a physical dying or a dying of self to His call on our lives…as our lives become smaller to us and His life becomes all, our lives don’t lose significance to Him. 

And I can’t help but wonder, as we, you and I, run the courses He has set before us with everything we have – as He becomes our focus and everything else becomes secondary, when we come to the end of all that He has given us and we finally see Him face to face, if the whole of all that we have given up and for Him in worship and love isn’t what marks our lives and our deaths as precious. 

It’s our dying that makes our living rich and full, because Jesus, Who is Light and Life, becomes center.

Sunday afternoon, I knelt before that bullet hole with a different purpose in mind.

I could either be gripped by fear each time I walked up those steps, or it could become a thing of beauty. 

Because the reality is, the siding on my house and the power of warring gangs aren’t bigger and stronger than my God who kept the bullet from going through the siding and into the house.

So I frame it, because it’s a picture of grace. A picture of the tenderness of the One Who gave us all we have and the One Who would still be worth it all, even if He took it all away.

 

For When You Come Home... {A Post by Tony}

Yakima, Washington.  

From time out of mind, it never mattered.  It was just another town I had to reduce my speed for on the way from Seattle to Sun Valley, Idaho.


I came here once, by accident, in 2005.  I ventured as far off the freeway as the Olive Garden where my wife and I stopped for lunch.  I remember us telling each other as we left, "It seems like a nice town".


In 2011, when Starbucks transferred me out to Yakima to open a new store, I wasn't too worried; I had no connection to Yakima and people telling me I would be killed or shot, or worse, seemed like the normal panic I assign to those who are overly concerned about a life and death they can't control anyway. 

      "Don't worry about it', I told my wife, '"There are bad parts of Seattle too and we avoided those once we were aware of their locations."

 So this week, early on a Monday morning I found myself in the Terrace Heights Cemetery stumbling and slipping in the wet grass and mud during a rare downpour, trying to find a body, or at least what was left of it.

  In 1858, Leonard Andrew Foster was born in Ohio.  In 1899 his wife died giving birth to his last child and he decided he'd had enough.  He didn't want to live with the memories her life and death brought by the very familiarity of his surroundings so Leonard packed up and moved to a place with no memories:  

Yakima, Washington.

He remarried a woman named Alvira who was from Kansas, lived in a quaint little house behind Target and worked as a night watchman until his death in 1942 at the age of 84. 


When Leonard moved west he brought his son Claud with him.  Claud settled down and had a son of his own named Ken and Ken had a daughter named Karolyn.


Karolyn lost a brother in Vietnam and swore that her sons would never play with guns. But, boys being boys, and fathers having the last word, the first time I was ever shot at was at the age of 13 while my father and I took cover in some rocks, bullets whining past our heads.  The hunters below us had buck fever and couldn't see past the deer they were shooting at so we hid in the rocks while they spent all their bullets, missing everything.


 The week of Thanksgiving, 2015, I was at my house, across the street from Madison House when 5 of the older kids dropped by needing gloves and scarfs.  I told them I would meet them at their house, and headed to Target.  


Their house is further up and further in to the area known as "The Hole". (As you can see, I've wisely taken my own advice and stayed out of the dangerous parts of town.)


 Before I can knock, shots ring out just down the street, another volunteer is with me and we stop and listen thankful for the concrete walls of the basement entrance.  More shots fire into the cold night air, 12 shots have been fired in total, two revolvers. A couple seconds later one of the kids I am bringing gloves to flees down the alley behind the house and looking back I see 3 more MH kids running along the front of the street. 


I head back out to the street knowing this is the moment when I could be killed, but I also know that fear is a weakness I have always resented when I sense it in myself.


Jesus did not call us to weakness but to acts faith and great kindness.  Besides, once the shooting starts, I am fully aware that it is over quickly and the instigators take flight almost immediately.  As I reach the street in front of the house I see residents coming out of the their homes armed with bats and other weapons in case further fighting breaks out.  I take a head count of the kids I was bringing clothing too, all are present.  An unmarked police car pulls up and I take point, explaining who I am, what I am doing down on 7th.  The police let us leave without further incident and I hug each of the kids and tell them to stay safe; I know they won't.  I head home to my wife and kids, thankful to be serving God in this capacity of His work - it is truly a blessing to be used by Him.

I never had a connection to Yakima until my sister was digging through some of my grandmothers old papers last week.


 I stare down at the small brick that has been depressed into the earth by time.  It is covered in mud and I had to kneel down on the soaked earth of Terrace Heights Cemetery and remove the leaves and filth just to read the name stamped into it: Leonard Foster. 

If I could speak to him I would tell him that his wife's death, was not in vain.  That even then, God, knowing everything, was planning to use his great great grandson's life to reach kids in Yakima, but that Leonard would have to lose someone he cared about for that purpose to come to fruition. 

 God gave us His son, someone He loves, because He loves us. For the same reason, I am not afraid to die, so that others may know Christ.

To Love: A Valentine's Post {by Tony}

I'm fifteen years old and I'm in the backseat of the car.   My friends and I have just left youth group and the conversation has turned strange to me.  They are discussing how attractive our youth leader's wife is.  I sit listening for a few minutes and then I blurt out, like a dumb kid, 

"Hey that's another man's wife!"  

 There's a pause and then the boldest and the oldest of us smirks and says, 

"Who cares, she's hot." 

 I don't respond because I've already said my peace and been overruled. Besides as I relive this conversation in my head, I also notice that I'm a scared, young kid, giving in to peer pressure and going down without much of a fight.   

  Fast forward 7 years and I'm in college, I'm listening to another conversation and feeling a different level of confusion.  Our friend who's getting married that summer is excited about his new discovery,  "I found a website where you can count down how many days it is until you get married. I only have 110 days until I can have sex!" 

 Internally I think, "You can actually have sex any time you want at this Christian institution as long you have a car and no conscience." 

  Out loud I say, "Why are you marrying this girl? What is it about her that you love?" 

There is initially a blank stare. I've ruined the joy, but the blank stare is quickly replaced by this explanation, 

"Well, uh, she loves God and is smart, and she's really hot!"  

"Yeah!" yell out the other guys in the room to much high-fiving and "that's what I'm talking about!"  I leave the room realizing that I'm probably just going to make people angry.  


 So let me get this straight: women are supposed to, 
- be smart and hot, 
- really hot, 
and, oh yeah, I almost forgot, if you're Christian,
- love God.  

Or...at least say you love God so your parents will approve of your spouse. 

OK, got it.  So apart from the standards of the world the only other criteria of Christianity is 'love God.'

     
I wasn't asking these questions at this age out of anything other than confusion and concern.  Women in general at the high school level did nothing I thought was very impressive (I wasn't impressive either) and in college I felt that the only reason women were there was to procure a husband.  I wasn't' there for a wife so I was not meeting any of their expectations.  My wife still laughs at the story I told her about the time I didn't hold the door open for a girl in college and she yelled at me, as a large group of us headed into church,

"Hey Tony Baker, you didn't hold the door open for me!" 

 "Why should I?", I shot back, "Your arms don't look broken. You can open it yourself." 

Yeah I know, subtly wasn't my forte, or necessary in the mind of a 21 year old. She quickly lost interest the second those words left my mouth.  

Good.
 
Nowadays I just fight a war of sedition and contrition against any woman showing more than passing interest. A well placed e-mail or a disappearing act are just as effective and no one gets as embarrassed or hurt.

So, what did I want?  

I kept coming back to, 'Love God.'  


Taylor Swift, in the song, Blank Space, states,

"'cause darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream." 

I believe this is a excellent description of the entire human race.  

All of us walking around in this macabre attire pretending to be Snow White, but that poison apple we willing took from the wicked witch is slowing seeping it's way into our already tainted blood, just waiting for the perfect set of pride and circumstance to eliminate our witness and neutralize any threat we pose to the king of evil angels.    

 If you really believe the Bible is true, that Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour then, 'love God' is really your only chance.  Besides, isn't Jesus seeking you, not to devour, but because you are his creation. He's the very sacrifice that paid for our salvation.  He FIRST loved us.  This is love, that Christ loved us and gave himself. 

  There it is: Jesus sacrificed.  In Ephesians 5, men are asked to love their wives as Christ loved the church.  


  When I got down and my knees at the age of 26 and asked Kimberley to marry me, I wasn't asking her to have sex with me for the rest of my life because she was hot.  Getting down on my knees was an act of service, not just that one time, but for all time.  I was asking her, "will you let me sacrifice myself for your every need for the rest of my life."

   This last weekend, Kimberley used the Madison House to put on an 'IF' women's conference.  She was going for small and intimate to reach a few women at a deeper level.  This still took hours of her time planning and organizing.  I put our four kids, ages 3-10, to bed by myself on Thursday night.  When she got home late I asked her, "What more can I do to help?"  She needed to talk for about an hour and then she really needed to sleep.  Since I had already done all the dishes and organized the kids into a house cleaning army before she got home, she could sleep in peace.  

 Photo credit: Nicole Spellman

 Friday night was the first day of the conference and it was supposed to run from 7-9pm,  I took the kids home from Madison House around 5:30pm. We cleaned the house again, washed dishes, solved 25 different fights about chocolate, seating, and so forth; did devotions, read a book and then I put the kids to bed around 9:30pm.  Kimberley  texted me and asked me to pray because the feed was going out on the Internet.  The conference lasted until 11:30pm.  Kimberley got home and into bed around 1am.  I tried to wake up and talk but I remember nothing except thinking, "she needs more from me tomorrow."

Saturday was the last day of the conference so I was responsible for the kids breakfast, lunch, and dinner and everything in between.  We re-cleaned the house, and then tackled laundry, mountains of laundry.  Elias claimed, like he claims every time, that he "forgot how to fold a pair of pants."   A quick frown from me and shake of the head got him back on track.  The 3 oldest quickly formed themselves into a laundry folding assembly line and we took about a hour to fold all the clothes.  We did the dishes, again, cleaned the house, again, and then it was time for shopping and dinner.  

 Midway through Costco I was practically hanging from the cart and my two oldest daughters grew concerned and asked, "Daddy, are you ok?"  "Oh yeah," I said, "just fine, I have been fasting today for your mother and her conference.". They asked what fasting was and I explained it was something that their dad does for spiritual reasons.  This particular day I was fasting and praying for their mother to be strengthened but more importantly that the ladies she was working for would be blessed and encouraged by the Word of God. 

 We got home, cleaned the house, again, did the dishes, again and folded the last of the laundry that had finished drying while we were shopping.  Wash, rinse, repeat - this is having children.  Next was devotions and jammies.  


  When Kimberley got home all she had to do was help me pray for the kids and then put them into bed.  I had let them stay up till ten because I knew she missed them and after three days with old dad, they REALLY missed her. 

  As Kimberley and I settled into the evening she needed to talk for a couple of hours about how well Saturday had gone, in juxtaposition to Friday.  She was glowing, the whole experience was a blessing.  She talked till it was late and I was so excited to have been a part of it.  I get deep satisfaction from working hard for her and seeing the fruit it produces in her life.  

  The next day, after church, we went over to Madison House and broke down all the set-up, did all the dishes and brought everything back over to our house.  The only truly happy marriage is one of sacrifice.  I didn't complain, I didn't throw any Mantrums(man tantrums), I found joy in serving Kimberley, her joy over the event was enough for me to feel that I had served the purpose that God has given me for that specific weekend.  

 So...what's the plan for Valentine's Day?  Our Friends from Seattle moved out to Ohio for a couple of years and I've conspired with them to send Kimberley out there for five days while I watch the kids.  I can't wait, I love Jesus, I love our children, I love my wife.  

For When You Want to See Through

The smallest, she turns three at the beginning of the month, and already she begins to claim she is four.

As though she has absorbed through the air the never ending thrum of the whispers around her, always searching for the next thing, the better thing.

And he, that man of mine, begins classes at a university a state away and I watch him hunch over iPad and notebooks and pencils begin to twirl in his fingers as that brow I love knits in deep concentration. I hear the professor's voice drone on about numbers and I hear his weary laugh and January never slows.

I don't know why I thought it would.

But like a newborn flailing, the days have all blurred together and like a sleep starved new mama I beg for eyes to see above the fog.


Instead, the fog grows heavy.


I have my green chair and he has his, placed  in front of the century-old stained glass window and we face each other in the quiet.

He had been stopped after an event at church, had been told some news about one of our children and my blood runs cold and I just want to see through the fog.

Grace, stamped in brass and wrapped around my wrist bumps against my skin and I reach for it with my other hand. There is grace in this too...there has to be.

Jesus, He promised to never leave us...to never forsake us. He gently leads those who are with young and that's me. I don't deserve His promises with my track record, with my history of failings, but I guess that's kind of what grace is.


So, on Sunday, as I am walking around the car to buckle Zee  into her seat, as three gun shots are fired into the quiet afternoon air; as I duck down and quietly count heads and reassure wide eyes and ask my fearless husband to maybe not stand so far out into the open, I don't really wonder at my lack of any fear.

It's not bravery that wraps around me, I know this.


There are puppies and geckos as I drop my children off at the home of a friend and as I drive away after hugs and kisses I find myself driving by the second home we lived in here in this town I've grown to love. The one we still own, but that someone else lives in. Our neighbours, the elderly ones, their house has sold and someone younger lives there now.  Dino had cancer, last I heard, and that's why their house was on the market.  And now they are gone and I'm wondering at how short our lives truly are.


But it's there in the dark, when it's time to drive back to pick up my four, after I slip through the Starbucks to pick up a card to say thank you. It's as I'm looking left and then right before I pull out into traffic that my breath catches in my throat and it's been a long time...almost 5 years and an Alberta horizon...since I've seen a moon that close and full.

Just a glimpse, but I didn't need more, though I chased it down side streets and got lost only once. Just one glimpse for me to feel the full magnitude of what my heart felt Him say.


That moon, full and wide as she was, could only shine the way she did when her whole surface was facing the light of the sun. It was only as shocking as it was because of how dark the sky of night had become.


My soul, parched and broken, clung to this and it was then I felt the fog lift.

Jesus, He is the Light of the World. He has said it and I desperately believe it. And He, who is Light, has, with stunning grace placed His light within me, within all who call on His name and believe. And as I stood in the middle of a dark street with my four children staring at me through foggy windows, I was reminded: The darkness can never overwhelm me with Christ in my life. Oh, it may feel like it - it may press in heavy and hopeless.  But the dark only seems darkest when I turn my face away from His glory.

I have known, and I have seen, when my face is turned towards Him, my heart is strengthened, my weakness seems like a gift and His grace is more than just an undeserved gift...it is the very breath and joy of my heart.


The moon, it's already turning away again from the blazing light of the sun...you can see it around the edges.

But my heart, it's begging to face Him, choosing to be set ablaze by the One who tenderly leads and gathers all the little ones close.

Lessons in The Naming of the Sixth

Six years ago, on another New Year's Eve, I sat down to type out words that my heart still wasn't able to fully comprehend.

Back then, I was surrounded by grief.

The night felt incredibly dark and the New Year felt anything but Merry.

But there was one word that I had been given in the quiet of the days leading up to this night that I clung to and I learned much about Christ from.

That night and that word draw out so many memories...

and so much hope.


I think on the other words that followed and how each one has been a tender gift -

a giving of a glimpse of the Father's heart to cling to when chaos would spin all dizzy around me,

each one having built on the previous year:

Abide
      
        I know

                  New

                          Expectancy

                                            Hesed

                                                     In the Midst

He is so good and faithful.

I've begun to collect the words stamped onto metal on my wrist, not quite brave enough to ink them deep into my skin, but near enough to flash my eyes back on to the promise Christ has given.

I wasn't surprised when this year's word began to appear more intentionally in the pages of scripture, in lessons, web pages and articles; I really didn't even bat an eye.

I may have sighed though, just a little.


Because it's a word I wrestle deeply with, not just to give, but to receive.


And yet, woven throughout the words in the Bible, an incredible picture of grace is given - one with many facets and much depth drawing me in past the surface sayings and "feel good" platitudes.


Olivia, the one named for all the wrong reasons by a mama desperate for a peace she didn't understand...her middle name was given under the same circumstances.

I just wanted an easy labor and my midwife assured me that all girl babies named Grace were born quickly and without much effort.

Olivia Grace broke every mold and almost broke me.

But, this wild and unruly child, this girl who wrestles hard with many and all, she has taught me much about the misconception of ease.


If grace is to be birthed into this year, I have to wonder if it doesn't come with a struggle. Grace, in all it's beauty isn't given without effort, even though it produces incredible peace with God.


Looking at 366 days ahead, I know there is much to learn and much to receive. There could be much to fear, if I let myself.

But the One Who is Sovereign over all things, the One Who has forgiven me of much and rescued me from more, He has already called these days into existence and nothing will happen outside of His will.

I can trust this.

Even if it hurts.

I can allow grace to change and shape me and my days.

Even if it hurts.


December 31st holds a world of pain, no matter how many years pass, but on the edges of all of that dark, truth and hope shine boldly promising that there will come a time when all pain and tears and grieving will be wiped away by His tender Hand.

Until then, I press forward with eyes lifted to Him, hands open to receive all that He will give.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. — 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV).