Healing is in Your Hands

Video share time! I can't get enough of this song right now. God's love is entire and infinite and I just can't wrap my head around it. Am I supposed to? Or do I just need to accept it?

Ragamuffin

I began reading The Ragamuffin Gospel today and I could tell by its foreword that I was going to like it:

"This book is not for the super-spiritual.
It is not for muscular Christians who have made John Wayne and not Jesus their hero. 
It is not for academicians who would imprison Jesus in the ivory tower of exegesis.
It is not for noisy, feel-good folks who manipulate Christianity into a naked appeal of emotion. 
It is not for hooded mystics who want magic in their religion. 
It is not for Alleluia Christians who live only on the mountaintop and have never visited the valley of desolation. 
It is not for the fearless and tearless. 
It is not for red-hot zealots who boast with the rich young ruler of the gospels: 'All these commandments I have kept from my youth.'
It is not for the complacent, hoisting over their shoulder a tote-bag of honors, diplomas, and good works actually believing they have it made. 
It is not for legalists who would rather surrender control of their souls to rules than run the risk of living in union with Jesus. 
If anyone is still reading along, The Ragamuffin Gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat-up and burnt-out. 
It is for the sorely burdened who are still shifting the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. 
It is for the wobbly and weak-kneed who know they don't have it altogether and are too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. 
It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker. 
It is for the poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents. 
It is for the earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay. 
It is for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God. 
It is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags. 
The Ragamuffin Gospel is a book I wrote for myself and anyone who has grown weary and discouraged along the way."

It really caught me on the line, "It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker." I had to go back and re-read that several times.

At first I wondered, "What does he mean? Cheese? Cracker? Huh?"

And then I think I got it, at least in a way that is applicable to me........at that moment.

If the cracker is me, or my mind/intellect/general grasp on things.........and God is my cheese, "The Big Cheese" so to speak.........

Then I really understood what Brennan Manning was saying.

I try to keep my knowledge and how I understand things steady in order to keep my God-cheese in place, which gives me a phantom feeling as though I actually have a grasp on the world around me. If I shift my cracker too much one way or another, my God-cheese slides right off. And the truth is that cheese just will NOT stay in place! What I know of God is not steady or static. It is ever-changing and evolving and deepening as I learn more and more about Him. Just when I think I've got it figured out - bringing the cheese-covered cracker to my mouth to digest - something happens that throws me off kilter and the cheese. slides. off.

My God-cheese will not be contained. It is uncontainable.

As I have been reading and praying today, I have been asking God to speak to me. And the only thing He has revealed so far is that I am not even close to figuring Him out. He is beyond my knowing.

The question left to ask myself is, does that comfort me or totally freak me out?

However I respond to that is how I respond to God. Either I trust in His infinite goodness and rest in the not knowing...or I scramble around restlessly trying to keep my cheese on the stinking cracker.

Today I say, "Slide off cheese! It keeps me on my toes and I need that."

Wait

What do you do when you get discouraged?

There is a menagerie of ways that I deal with it. Sometimes I pray and read my Bible. Sometimes I dissect it with those I am close with. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I shut myself away and wallow in it.


I have been discouraged this week. I have found myself grappling with an all too familiar problem that I thought was behind me. This week, instead of "taking it like a man", or you know, an adult, I have indulged my human nature and have wallowed. Blame it on laziness or apathy or all out self-pity, I wallowed. I'm a good wallower. My family used to call it pouting. I was the queen of pouting - in order to get my way, nurse my hurt feelings, or to just try to be seen and heard when I wanted to be seen and heard. 


I have spent a lot of energy in my adult life trying to reverse that stigma. I don't want to be a wallowing pouter. Or pouting wallower.  


In my best efforts to seek encouragement this week I have been scouting others' blogs, searching for anything that would edify me and knock me off my perpetual track of wallowing. And I have found a wealth of anecdotes and vessels of wisdom that have uplifted me...momentarily. I truly believe that God can use blogs and the musings of others to help encourage us. It is a relief to know of someone who has had similar experiences, doubts, thoughts. However, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was piggy-backing on the rewarded insights of someone else's battle. 


There is definitely something that can be learned from the struggles of others, but there is always going to be a piece that is lost in translation. When God reveals something to a person, it speaks directly to that moment in time and is precisely what needed to be heard. You can know when it is whispered by God when a peace descends wholly on what was once troubling. To share that revelation with others is what God desires us to do because it gives Him glory. But if we begin to depend upon the revelations of others and cut them up and piece them back together to match what we are going through, we risk losing some of the original intent. When I seek what God reveals to others instead of God Himself, I cripple myself by accepting leftovers when God desires to offer me a first class meal.


Encouragement and words from others are intended to supplement, not replace, what we hear from God.


So I tell myself to get over my laziness and seek God for myself. I give Him again His proper place at the center of my heart and mind and ask Him what He wants to speak to me today. And then I wait.


I wait because I believe He will speak. I wait because it might not come right away or in the way that I expect it to. I wait because I know it will be exactly what I need - tailored specifically for me and my situation.


I often seek God and ask Him to reveal His ways to me, whether it be His plan for my day or the reasoning for something going on in my life. However, I falter when I "ADHD it" and bee-bop along with my plans, forgetting that I am to be on the lookout for His response.


I acknowledge my discouragement and allow myself to feel its impact; I recognize my wallowing and then choose to denounce it; I ask God to speak and then I wait upon His sovereign timing and believe that He will.


"Living in true beauty can require much waiting, much time, much tenacity of spirit. We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged. The waiting does not diminish us. As a pregnant woman is enlarged in her waiting, so are our hearts. God does not always rescue us out of a painful season. you know that He does not always give to us what we so desperately want when we want it. He is after something much more valuable than our happiness. Much more substantive than our health. He is restoring and growing in us an eternal weight of glory. And sometimes...it hurts" (Stasi Eldredge, "Captivating")

"God, the Master, The Holy of Israel has this solemn counsel:

Your salvation requires you to turn back to me

and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.

Your strength will come from settling down

in complete dependence on me -

The very thing you've been unwilling to do.

But God's not finished. He's waiting around to be gracious to you.

He's gathering strength to show mercy to you.

God takes the time to do everything right - everything.

Those who wait around for Him are the lucky ones (Isaiah 30:15, 18 MSG)

Waiting, especially in discouragement, isn't easy. But it's worth it.

"But those who wait on God will receive fresh strength" (Isaiah 40:31 MSG)

  

Dirty Dipper Thoughts

In my life thus far, nothing has opened my eyes to the crazy large love of God like being a parent has. Each day when I look at my son and feel my heart overflow with love for him, God in turn whispers His love for me, "I love you both even more than what you feel right now, more than you can imagine." For someone who hasn't always readily accepted the love of God, it can be a little overwhelming!

A couple of days ago, Finn was being a little bit of a fussy-butts. He had been crying for awhile when I laid him down on the changing table to change a dirty dipper (yes, dipper). I looked at him and longed to soothe him, longed to help him understand that it would be okay. Whatever was bothering him was temporary and he would feel so much better if he just relaxed! And that led me to think about how God must say that to me all the time. He looks at me with my tears and fears (Tears for Fears - yeah!) and tries to console me. The problem is that I, like Finn, often cannot hear Him through my crying. I, like Finn, get caught up in the bellowing. And I just feel like if I could shut my tears off and listen more closely to what God is saying, I would hear "It's going to be all right! I see the end of this dilemma and it isn't as terrible as you think. I am here right beside you. I can't make you stop crying, all I can do is tell you that I am here with you and it will all be all right." Why do I think God is saying that? Because that's what I desire to communicate to Finn. "Son, it's going to be all right! I am right here and I will see you through your crying. Cry all you need to, get it out of your system, and know that everything is fine!" Unfortunately, Finn is too immature to understand me yet. All he can comprehend at this point is a soothing voice and touch - but not the words that I speak. Sometimes I can be a fussy-butts with God. But I am realizing that the more I turn myself to hear Him speak, the quicker I am comforted. The more I know Him and grow in the knowledge of Him, the more I can comprehend the exact words He says to me.

A few days ago I was changing Finn's dipper on the changing table (we do a lot of bonding at the changing table) and he began crying. I found myself saying to him, "Why are you crying? You don't want to stay in your dirty dipper, do you?" And again my thoughts paralleled the moment to my relationship with God. How often do I cry out when God begins to change me? Being changed isn't necessarily a romp-roaring good time, after all. But would I rather stay in my dirty dipper, the mess I made for myself? Or would I rather let myself be lifted onto God's theoretical changing table, let Him clean me up, and be as good as new? Granted, I will probably mess myself again in another hour or so....but God is right there to lift me back up to His changing table if I let Him. The less I fuss, the quicker the change will be.

Worst Case Scenario

I can be a bit dramatic. The way that this quality in me sometimes exerts itself is when I jump to worst case scenario thinking. Hence, a lot of the issues I have had in my life dealing with anxiety. I don't think that worst case scenario thinking is wrong, necessarily. Like all things, when surrendered I believe that God can turn it around for good. But surrendering it is the key thing here. God can reveal a lot when our worst case scenarios belong to Him.

Throughout my life, the thing that I have probably been the most anxious about for the largest part of my life would be financial stability. Blame it on my circumstances growing up or whatever, I have an issue with money. I feel most secure when I am working full time and know that my income coming in is more than sufficient to meet the pile of bills on my table. In other words, I feel most secure in my financial situation when I am in complete control. I don't worry when there is nothing to worry about - pretty big of me, eh?

Once we had Finn, Matt and I both felt led that I should stay home - most of the time - with Finn. There were many reasons for this that I won't get into right now....but I am so thankful every day that I get to spend the day with Finn. I am living my dream.

Dreams can come at a cost, however, and in this instance my dream came at the cost of my peace of mind, financially speaking. I knew that staying home is what God wanted me to do, so why was I struggling with anxiety? What was I missing? All of a sudden I wasn't in control of my financial stability anymore and it was causing me to fret the days away - days I should have been basking in my ever-changing son.

One day as I was praying about this, I remembered something that I had done in the past to help with anxiety: writing down exactly what I was anxious about, including what would be the worst case scenario and what would be the best case scenario. I learned in my counseling classes that writing things like that down help to get the circling thoughts out of the mind and can bring mental relief.

So I went in search of those papers. I found 3 of them from about a year ago tucked inside last year's planner. I read over them....each written in intricate detail about the things that were troubling me at the time. And you know what I discovered? For one of them my prayers had been answered - the best case scenario had occurred. For one of them, my prayers had not been answered - well, not exactly anyway. God had exceeded my prayers and had given me more than I had thought to ask for. And the last one - well, that one God just decided to go ahead and get rid of for me. That dilemma completely ceased to exist.

How amazing!! What a testament to God's faithfulness! I still get excited as I think about those answered prayers. More than anything, I am amazed at how easily I had forgotten those responses from God and had to see them written down in order to remember. How tragic.

After professing renewed hope, I decided to try the same exercise with my current concern. I wrote down the details of what was causing me anxiety. I wrote what the worst case scenario would be. I wrote what the best case scenario would be. And then I tucked it away with its predecessors and can honestly say that I haven't felt anxious since.

And you know what? I have every reason to believe that as I keep seeking God and His will for my life, that this time next year I will be able to pull out that sheet of paper and give thanks for the answered prayer upon it.

"Its impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6, Message)

Retrospect

I was looking at Finn the other day, trying to figure out who he looks like. I wanted to find Matt's and my baby pictures to compare and contrast, but the only baby pictures of Matt that we have in our house are on our wedding picture video - you know, those cheesy ones where you try to compile your whole photographed life in 7 minutes set to music. Anyway, I had fun watching and re-watching it...but I still can't tell who Finn looks like! I guess he just looks like Finn :). Here is the video...in all its glory...I had to upload it onto our Mac and put different songs to it (I was constrained to ones that were on our Mac I-tunes), but it is still pretty enjoyable!

Grace

The other night Matt and I were laying on the floor with Finn and doing devotions together. We have this thing where one of us will read from the Bible and the other will pray. I think we both prefer the reading out loud part, so it is the best way to keep it fair :). It was my turn to read and as I did, Finn was talking and jabbering on like crazy. When I stopped to laugh at him, he would just smile away. Then I would begin reading again and his jabbering continued. It was then Matt's turn to pray and as soon as he started talking, Finn joined right in and cooed in time with his daddy. It was adorable and one of those moments when I was able to just pause and think, "Wow, life is good".

Life is good because of God's blessings, plain and simple. I am blown away sometimes at his graciousness to me and the many ways that He shows me He loves me.

When I was pregnant with Finn, I had a list of things that I prayed for every day. Obviously I prayed for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. But there were a couple things I prayed for that were a little less generic.

For most of my last trimester, I dealt with some early signs of preeclampsia. I had high blood pressure (sometimes ridiculously so) and lots and lots of swelling (ugggggghhh). I knew how dangerous preeclampsia could be, so from the moment those symptoms popped up, I prayed that I would not be diagnosed with it. Even though there were a couple of scares with my high blood pressure, each time the doctor assured me that I did not have preeclampsia. This continued until the day that Finn was born. While we were still in the hospital after his birth, the on call doctor came in to check on me and she informed me that it was a wonderful thing that my water had broken when it did because my test results taken that night showed positive for the beginning stages of preeclampsia. Basically, if my water hadn't broken when it did, my pregnancy and delivery could have become much more complicated and dangerous. I believe fully that this was an answer to prayer.

The second thing that I prayed for was a little more personal. I really wanted the experience of going into labor on my own. I knew a lot of friends and family that had to be induced for various reasons and I simply had a strong desire to go into labor on my own. The excitement of labor just starting out of nowhere was too much for this drama queen to want to pass up :). Ironically, it was the day that we made the appointment for our induction that my water broke. My doctor thought that I was crazy for not scheduling the induction sooner because my swelling was so out of control, but I clung to hope that Finners would come on his own. And come he did, later that night!

I guess I shared all this just as a personal testament to God's goodness. I am well aware that He did not have to answer these meager requests but He did because, for whatever reason, He loves me and thereby He loves to bless me. Isaiah 30:18 says that "God longs to be gracious to you". He delights in showing His love - to all of us, in ways that we don't even see all the time.

Now that Finn is here (in my arms drifting off to sleep as I type!) I am reminded of God's love and graciousness much more often. And I look forward to Finn interrupting a thousand more family devotions with his cooing, laughing, talking, questions, input, and all-around sweetness!