"Everything" by Lifehouse

I need you to watch the video that I have attached. A friend of mine sent it to me a while back, and I find it just incredible. From my perspective I see a girl, adored by her loving creator. He teaches her to dance with freedom, shows her the “abundant” life. She really loves it, she loves him. She dances around in awe and wonderment. She knows true joy.

Then, sin approaches. It is the world knocking at her door. She didn’t really go looking for it. In spite of this beautiful Saviour she dances, what seems like the same dance, with evil. It seduces her first with love, attention, probably sex. She is still dancing, but confused. Then money and power are thrown at her feet. She frantically scampers around to catch the money that has fallen to the floor. She is desperate for it. Then she is introduced to vices, like alcohol… things that make her feel better... but it isn’t enough. Then enticed by beauty yet also condemned, she meets this beautiful woman who I think represents perfection. Alas, all of these other things lead her into darkness. She cuts herself, to numb the pain. Then it seems she is hopeless and bound. She reaches for a way to end it. No more chains.

But, she remembers the dance. The freedom. She desires it above all other things. She turns back to the source of that peace she once felt. But so many things are in her way... so many temptations, sins, disappointments, failures, addictions. But, she is sure. She is desperate for it. So she fights! She suffers. She is beaten and pulled. She wants to turn her back on those things that magnetized her to the darkness. She can not do it herself. Like a hero, he ferociously, defends her. He then takes her place and fights for her. He saves her from their attack. He holds them off with his two hands and in one move he destroys them. He destroys the power they have over her life. She then trusts and relies on the source of that great power... for the power to be free. She is free because he makes her free.

I love how physical this video is. Notice she did not pick up her pink polka dotted monogrammed Bible and walk off into the sunset unscathed in her pretty Sunday dress. She had to FIGHT! It was harsh. It was violent! She must have been bruised in the process. Surely she has some battle scars.

Let me just be honest, because if I am not, I really shouldn’t be doing a blog like this… Lately I have been saddened over the state of my heart. And please don’t believe that is easier for me somehow, to be more vulnerable, than it is for you. This is hard to say. My heart breaks over my condition. I just have a deep struggle with sin that becomes more and more apparent to me the more I understand the truth of grace.

In many ways I am her. Except the end of my video would show me fighting the same fight over and over again. I forget so easily. Everything I have learned, as powerful as it is… I forget. I get comfortable and I forget. I stop fighting and find myself eat up with sin, wandering off again... being beaten and I realize I am not fighting. No, it is Jesus that I love! "Wake up oh sleeper!" FIGHT!!!!!! The coolest thing is, He never stops fighting for me, even as I wander off.

Here is a little bit of one of John Piper's Desiring God blog. It is a real source of encouragement for me as I find myself uglier and uglier...:

Never Let the Gospel Get Smaller from Desiring God Blog

(Author: John Piper)
Here is a simple exhortation that I have been trying to implement in our family:
Seek to see and feel the gospel as bigger as years go by rather than smaller.
Our temptation is to think that the gospel is for beginners and then we go on to greater things. But the real challenge is to see the gospel as the greatest thing—and getting greater all the time.

The Gospel gets bigger when, in your heart and grace gets bigger:

• Christ gets greater
• his death gets more wonderful
• his resurrection gets more astonishing
• the work of the Spirit gets mightier
• the power of the gospel gets more pervasive
• its global extent gets wider
• your own sin gets uglier
• the devil gets more evil
• the gospel's roots in eternity go deeper
• its connections with everything in the Bible and in the world get stronger
• and the magnitude of its celebration in eternity gets louder

So keep this in mind: Never let the gospel get smaller in your heart.

Give Me Your Eyes...

For a few days now, I have been replaying this song and video, over and over. It is embedded in my heart. I have this huge burden that is just brewing inside of me, but is really hard to express. I feel the words of this song so deeply, "Give me your eyes for just one second, give me your eyes so I can see, everything that I keep missing, give me Your love for humanity..." and it just resonates inside my spirit.

I often find myself lost in my thoughts whenever I am in public. Places like Walmart, the mall, church, the movie theater, restaurants, they always evoke my antenna's, as I like to call them. I look around and quietly think about who I am seeing and what I am seeing. I take rapid mental notes about how they are postured, their facial expressions, their clothes, the color of their clothes. Who they are with, how close they are physically to any other person. Whether they are touching someone. How they are touching someone. The way they are moving, slow... fast, carefree...purposeful. How they are fitting into the overall dynamics of the place we are in. What kinds of emotions they are emitting. But above all, I watch their eyes, the windows to their soul. My intuition soaks in the details around me. My emotional antennas go up. I sense how they are feeling and it begins... I ache for them, rejoice with them, feel with them. All this is going on no matter what is is also happening around me. It is my secondary nature. Many times I have wanted to just leap outside of myself because of how noisy it gets inside my head. I am emotionally overstimulated.

So the words, "give me your eyes for just one second" I think, whoa!... I am already overwhelmed by the little bit of intuition and empathy that God has blessed me with. What if He did give me His eyes, for just one second...!?! What if I could for just a moment have the same love for humanity that God has? What if I didn't miss anything, saw everything, knew everything. What if I could see through people's souls, see the colors of their heart, for one sceond. If I could see what happened to them last night, yesterday, or when they were five. See their love, their sorrow, their sin. Know them so well, that I could perfectly anticipate their needs, even if they could not. Know what makes them happy, what their dreams are, what they would wish for if they could... How would I handle that?

Even, if I could do that for just one person for one second, I don't think I would be able to survive it. I believe every emotion I have would collide in overwhelming confusion. But if I could survive, how would it change me? What would it do to me, if I could have His eyes. Would I feel hopeless, because I could not handle the depths of another's real burdens. Would I feel such great sadness over the sin in the world, that I would just give up? Would I ever leave my house again? Would I become a missionary?

The next verse, "Give me your arms for the brokenhearted, for the ones that are far beyond my reach, give me a heart for the ones forgotten, give me your eyes so I can see." This is where I live. This is my heart. In many ways my life has been hard, good but hard. I have had a lot of struggles and pain in my own life. Not as much as some others, of course, but enough. It is the pain that I have experienced that gives me empathy or my "eyes". Rejection, grief, sorrow, trauma, subtle depression, I can see it all around me. I know I have just a tiny bit of empathy compared to God. I certainly don't have God's eyes. But what would happen if I just prayed that prayer everyday, "Give me your eyes, Lord, Give me your arms". What would it do if everyone in my church did the same thing. What if every Christian? What would it do for our homes? For our community, for our world???? Oh it would be amazing!

I love the quote from a book called "Love Walked Among Us". The author, Paul Miller states it this way, "We instinctively know that love leads to committment, so we look away when we see the beggar. We might have to pay if we look too closely and care too deeply."I fear that most of us do not want to pray this prayer. It requires too much from us. If we could see, what would it cost us? Could we see and not do? The burden is so great. But I am going to keep praying it. I want you to pray it too. I want you to have eyes, because I don't want to go alone. I will go alone, but this is a burden I want to share.

Please watch both of the videos and then tell me what you see...

Time After Time...

Recently, I have had the chance to reconnect with a few friends from deep in my past. It has really been incredible to see how life has played out for all of us. At the moment, I am thirty-four and a half years old. I have moved thirty-three different times in my life. Not all of them were big dramatic moves, but there is one move that changed the entire path of my life. One that cut off an entire history I had built up, and when it was time to move, all of it was left behind. The people, the friends, the shared memories... all gone. I was 15 and that may sound just too young for it to even matter, but it has still been something I look back on with sadness.

Up until the sixth grade, I had moved nearly every year of my life. I went to a different school every single year, lived in a different house, apartment, trailer, etc., ... I came in out of of the lives of other kids like the next season of a TV show. I never had any consistent place, life or friends to call my own. When other people ask me where I am from, or where I grew up, I always stagger and hesitate. I was like a gypsy child, roaming the small towns of Alabama, and then the general outskirts of Dallas, TX. The only person that connected the dots was my sister, who also was being dragged along. I eventually got used to moving and learned how to read the ads in the paper just so I could have some input. Why? Everyone always asks why... I used to think it was just the way it was. Apparently, my dad was a rent-skipper. I didn't know it at the time, but we were so poor, that once we couldn't pay the rent we would either get evicted, or jump off the train just before we were thrown off... There were lots of reasons why we were poor; young parents, low income, bad habits, addictions, etc... We were the kind of family that churches brought Christmas presents to. I just found that out this year.

So, we moved into one, "spot" when I was in the sixth grade. I say spot, because we still moved around, even though we stayed in the same school zone. I had the privilege of starting junior high with actual friends I had made the year before at O'Henry Elementary School. This school was home of the sweet Ms. Johannes, my teacher, who was the first woman I ever knew with fake nails. Also the home of the loveable, Mr. Fagg, the fresh new Science teacher who was brave enough to choose the elementary teaching field in spite of such a terrible namesake. OHES was where I had my first counseling practice every day at recess. I think I have written before about it, but during recess kids would line up at the see-saws and ask me for advice about various things. It was cute. I had some great friends, Sara L. and Dina H. became my very best-est friends in the whole world. I have been in contact with them over Facebook, which is unbelievably cool to me. I also recently have been in touch with my old Liberty Jr. High friend Doug, who was an unfortunate witness to me being sloshed the one and only time I have been in my life, at the only drunken warehouse party I ever went to. He was also waiting for me the only night I ever snuck out of my house. He was either my guardian angel or a very bad influence... What can I say, I was thirteen. I was easily influenced and "Appetite For Destruction" by GNR had just been released. I was feeling rebellious.

Well, I was in the middle of my ninth grade year, which in TX was still junior high. We were moving back to Alabama and changing schools in the middle of the year. I was being plucked from this place I had invested nearly four years of my life in. This was four times longer than any other place I had ever been, four times longer than I had invested in any friendships. It was so traumatic. I was deeply angry. It set me on a path of seething anger that took me years to work through. So we left, we moved. My path completely changed. An old life, I had to leave behind. A few letters came, but then it was over. Life was forever changed.

There are so many other important experiences and people that crossed my path in those early days. I have learned a lot from all of it. It has made me a well rounded person. An extrovert by nature, all of those "opportunities" to meet new people helped me hone in on my people skills and I really am comfortable in new situations. Because of this I have a deep need for real connection with people. When I get to know them, I want to invest, to anchor myself into their lives... to really know them. My heart was trained early in life that things you care about can disappear quickly, so don't waste time, don't waste words. Just use what time you have and let your lives be open.

Facebook has been a tremendous leveler in my life. It is like I had 33 unique worlds and all of them collided. My life does not seem so random anymore. All of these different people are the dots that I have not been able to connect. The dots are on Facebook! Wow, it really is amazing. It shows me again, that even though I did not see Him, that God was there. He was the constant in my life before I even knew Him. He knew where I was at all times, to Him I was never anonymous. That time after time, place after place, person after person, He was there. The God of my life is the God over all of the history in my life, and the God of all history. He has used the hurts of my past, the challenges to really communicate to me that I am His, that I always was. That all of my life has had a great purpose, a specific plan. He is where I am headed, and He is where I have been. It makes sense of what used to seem so senseless. He is working "all things together for the good". Nothing in my life has been secret from Him, nothing has been unknown or forgotten. All of it matters, all of it is meaningful... all of it is useful. What a sense of clarity... what assurance of the things to come.

The Art of Me...

I am sitting on my couch and it's 1:00 in the morning again. I am listening to Shawn MacDonald's, song "Beautiful"; it is number five on my play list. I feel so moved by this song and I have been thinking about the words. You may not know that I live in a less populated area than most. I have the privilege looking up into the night sky without a lot of distraction from street lights. I also regularly work late, after 10 or so. When I come out of the building, I am greeted by an enormous open sky. On cold nights the air snaps me to attention, and when there are no clouds, the sky is crystal clear. I mean it is amazing, the stars really just dance up there. I always, always, always look up at it and thank God for the gift of seeing His stars, His moon, His creation. I just immediately feel connected to Him, and grateful. Then I hear this song... "What am I, that I might be called your child? What am I that you might know me, my King" Then he goes on to sing about the creation, the sun, the colors and how they are painted all over the sky. It's true, "the same hands that created all of this, created you and I"... I think, wow!, He created me, He knows me...He loves me. I think about how amazing it would be to be there at that moment in time when he decided to create all of this and at the moment when he decided to create me. Then to watch as he carefully decided on exactly what genes I would have, exactly what my face would look like, what my voice would sound like, that I would never reach five foot three, that I would cry at every Hallmark card commercial. To see when He formed my soul, my inmost parts, when he carefully and wonderfully made me...would result in deep and humble appreciation for His work. It is incredible to think of the God who created the Heavens and the earth, took time to carefully plan every part of my being. My life, he planned. My breath he breathed into me.

I don't think I fully appreciated how well God created us, until I became pregnant with my oldest. Everyday, I wondered, what she would look like, what she would be like... You want to know something sad and wonderful? This is sort of a side bar... When I was young, something happened to my family, and through a series of events all my baby pictures were destroyed. I don't know what I looked like as a child until I was about three years old. That always made me sad. When I was pregnant I selfishly prayed that God would give me a baby that looked like me so that I would know what I looked like as a baby. I had Noelle, (mini-me) and it has been like staring in the mirror since she was born. She also acts and thinks just like me, and happens to also want to be a counselor and work at a bed and breakfast.... Anyway, God knew that always made me sad, because it is just that, He KNOWS me. He knows us. We are known to Him, By Him. We don't have to introduce ourselves when we pray. He knows what we looked like as kids. He made us look that way.

I guess I concentrate a bit too much on the flaws that I have. If I got up everyday and said "thank you God for creating me, my soul, my spirit, my heart, my personality, my goals, my desires", even down to my love for Him, how different would my attitude be about life? If for just a moment I could see myself as an amazing creation like the stars and the sky, would I live differently out of nothing more than an appreciation for the art that He made of me? This is not a self-absorbed, love-thyself entry. Some people feel anonymous in this world. They feel alone and unknown. We are not alone or unknown, the proof is in the mirror. Just think of the impact it would have on us if we truly got excited about how God made us. If we stopped condemning ourselves for our flaws, would we even think of those traits as flaws then? I don't want anyone to respond to this entry negatively. I have a brother who is Autistic, and there are some things I don't understand of course, nor am I meant to... I just know that each of us is truly beautiful to God. He thinks we are beautiful. He finds pleasure in His creation, just as we find pleasure in looking at His fine artwork, He also delights in looking at us. We are His "pieces" and all of creation is the gallery. I am going to try to be more grateful for the thing he has made me, for the art of my soul and spirit. I am going to thank God for the incredible details of my life, for knowing me, and making a way for me to know Him.

And No, I will not post any Stuart Smalley videos, even though I want to.... SO BAD!