Journey Out of Control

My life story is a little ridiculous. I remember when I was younger, I thought that my testimony was really boring: I grew up in church, met God and love Him. I was wrong: It wasn't boring, it was just still in process. Many of the little strange, syncopated bits didn't quite come to my full attention until my most recent history.

For example, family dynamics: I had no idea how ridiculously dysfunctional we were until I moved back this summer. There are only four of us left in the house but the off-balance dynamics of trying to control one another to get "love" are just accentuated among so few. It's bizarre--I always assumed we were a fairly healthy family...but that's because as a teenager, I did whatever "performance" was required of me to be accepted (get good grades, obey the rules, etc.) and laid low. My sister, on the other hand, does the opposite and gets the wrath--we're learning love through her, because we can't hide behind pleasing each other and pretending that that's love anymore--we're being called out!

Those skewed love earning behaviors didn't fly in college--or in my relationship with the Lord. I always assumed that the same dynamics (perform well, earn "love") would be at work in that relationship--but He assured me it wasn't so. He pinpointed my weak point and taught me that my grades wouldn't give me substance and worth in His eyes...This was really a fight for me to learn--I was so used to getting "glory" and respect from my teachers by being a good student that when I became a bad student and got bad grades (B's on worksheets, nothing extravagant!) I got really upset. My self confidence started to tank--because we were never made to live out of ourselves--we were made to find our worth in being one of God's own...I had so much to learn. And learn I did: I actually got a "C" (unheard of in my academics) as my final grade my senior year and I didn't freak when I found out--that was a victory for me! Bizarre, huh? That's just the beginning of my reprogramming :)

Boys--oh that brought out the controller in me at its worst. The one and only guy that I had a massive crush on in college was also the bane of my existence...yeah. I could not control and suppress how I felt when I was around him and I, needing control, couldn't stand that! Weird, right? (Haha, you've got your own! Laugh at mine, but also praise God that He is at work changing us into the image of His Son--I'm so grateful.) I can remember just ignoring him if I would run into him because I was relationally challenged! He probably thought I really really didn't like him, I acted so differently toward him than toward any other person. I was usually really spunky and joyful, but when he came around I shut down a little...so afraid. Still working through that one...

I'm so prone to control--trying to figure things out on my own and make it all work out perfectly--that God has had to put me in more than one extended periods of waiting. I actually have no idea in which area of my life I'm not waiting...

It's just my season--like Joseph in the pit and Sarah as she longed for a baby and Moses as he wandered through that desert...sometimes you're just waiting.

I've tried to pull out of the season several times. I have a general idea of what's ahead and where I should be--so why not send me to Haiti (the country I'll eventually love on in the future) and Mongolia (because I am going to be a teacher, so I could teach here to get started)? and nope! the reins get snatched right out of my hands over and over again as He smiles down at me and says, "You just don't get it yet, do you? Chill out kid."

And I chill out (sort of, haha).

I started writing this post after hearing the worshippers of Kansas City's IHOP sing:

Just when I think I've got it all figured out

You go and turn my world upside down

You go and turn it all around

You want me leaning on You

Those words exemplify perfectly the journey that the Lord has had me on--the Journey Out of Control and Into Love!

You shall love me

You shall love me

You shall love me

This is what the Lord is teaching me above all. My waiting has served to pour me into Hs arms--I have had so many painful seasons where I had nothing to offer Him (except maybe my shame) and hHe chose to come so close to the brokenhearted Robin in those times. He can't send us out until we've learned His love, no matter how painful that lesson may be. I have been badly beaten (heart wise) and the only balm was His precious anointing oil from Gilead...nothing else would have satisfied or served to renew. I kept casting myself upon Him, over and over again, and He kept drawing me close, undoing one bandage at a time until this heart was fully His. It will never be the same.

The pain is worth it. The suffering brings renenwal and eventually joy. The season will not last forever, one day the Son will have to come breaking through the clouds (as the sun is finally streaming through the clouds into my window as I write) and nothing can stop His light, love and hope from flodding into your life, not even yourself. I know that now...and it has given me desperately good hope. I am so thankful, thankful for the pain because it has allowed me to see His face and know His love as no earthly person could teach you--and that is worth it to me.

Whatever He brings me through from this moment forth--I will chose trust, not control. He has taught me that He can be trusted over and above all who live on this earth and that being known by Him is worth far more than any earthly crown. If that is all I gain in this life, the glory of His face and the knowledge of His love, then of all people, I will be most blessed.

Thank You Saviour.

Praise Him Through the Storm--I'll Say Yes!!!

"I take refuge in you, Lord"

This is definitely my verse today.

Haha, what do you do when everyone around you seems to be crumbling?

You have nowhere to look but up.

And boy am I glad!

I just had another of those emotionally exhausting moment with the fam (learning to pray my way through those--words just don't cut it sometimes) and then immediately tuned in to the International House of Prayer's Prayer Room (http://www.ihopkc.org/prayerroom/) and man--you can't even hold on to exhaustion or depression when you hear people really praising the Lord! So thankful that I could tune in--totally turned my night around. The situation with my fam has escalated and at first as I listened, I was like, "How can I say God is good?" as they repeated it over and over. Then I realized that it was just time for that sacrifice of praise. Fifteen minutes later, I was up out of my seat and dancing in my bedroom!

I think I'll choose praise every time I run into problems--who's with me?

Meeting Our King

I had a teacher once--when DVDs were a new thing--who believed that they would last hundreds of years.

He was wrong.

I just want to watch one scene from the last Lord of the Rings--I mean, I want to watch the whole movie if possible, but at the least the final, triumphant Return of the King.

Not to be my fate tonight...

But then again--who really wants to see the ending without the beginning and the middle and all thats in between?

It's a tricky thing, living.

Sometimes you think your best days are just around the corner and you want to live all the rest out on fast forward, to get to the ones you think you will really love, the triumphant, love wins, joy filled moments when heaven comes...

...but Jesus asks us to be in on the fight, dancing with Him through horrendous moments, knowing His closeness and nearness as the ones around us seem to be going through hell but He's there and we can let them know.

If I got to the end...and hadn't lived out all the parts in between...it wouldn't be much of an ending.

This is a call to live well your fight--for a King is coming--and we are asked to stay faithful, steadfast, trusting in His words and His love for us, even when the world is just war.

Because endurance only comes from having to endure something--and patient endurance only comes as we patiently endure the trials of this life. Joy follows pain--the first is deadened without the wreckage of the last...and though we would like to skip all the suspense and see our King return and heaven come immediately--the middle parts, all the living, is where we grow into the Queens and Princesses, Warriors and Gallant Men that we always were and will be.

This road is no easy straight path to glory--let me never over-simplify the journey--but the pain and joy have purpose. Each step, when consecrated to our King (and that is my word for this year, He keeps asking me to give this year back to Him, my hands off of everything and no more trying to figure it all out on my own) when I choose to live that kind of life, He has promised to turn it all to His glory.

Glory--He will work all things for my good--when I am consecrated to Him, existing for His purposes and listening for His words to me. Will you join me into this journey into the dark? He promises to be a light in dark places, the one guiding us home. He promises us rescue, He promises favor and He promises His Presence--will you take Him at His word and enter the dark, enter the world, shining out light?

He'll be waiting...

Pressing into the dark.

This is Why We Go...Isaiah 61

I know I should be asleep--so don't tell me about it!

But it's just a turn-Laura-Hackett-on-and-write-it-all-out kind of night...

When all the melancholy of the world and all the things you can't control and don't know about your future come creeping round and hug you tight--and you--sort of enjoy the feeling but wish you were past this point and that the "something more" had happened and you could move into that fairy tale part of your life where all the pieces fit together and you love your husband and know exactly where you'll be for the next twenty years and are perfectly happy and then realize that that's an illusion too.

That even when you're married...

And live in that nation where you have been dreaming you'll be placed...

And doing the "life's work" that you know will be yours...

...it still won't be enough.

You have to recognize your idols for what they are and sacrifice them before the only One worthy of the praise, worship and adoration that you tend to put toward all your ordinary dreams. You have to recognize this tendency to "idolize" the future and learn to live in your present, right now...

Right now...

Because Right Now is the place where you get to meet Jesus...

Remember His love...

And survive "all of this" by living in the complete dependence on Him that He deserves and created you for.

It's...interesting...that Laura Hackett is the one I put on today. She is not Jesus (of course) but she brings Jesus close, you know? And the day I looked up the Haiti footage, all of the wreckage and chaos after the 2010 earthquake, hers is the music that was playing in my ears. So as I read about piles of dead bodies and no real medical help and grief and trauma I heard her letting Jesus sing, "Let's survive this together" and "I'm living in the light of your smile...taking in the newness of life, the abundance...I have a living hope...".

I have a living hope.

What does that statement mean to you? Do you realize the enormity of that declaration! While I stared death in the face, I had life playing in my ears.

I hope my whole life will be summarized in that one statement--staring death in the face while life plays behind my eyes.

Because that is all we do in the world--declare life when none is to be seen...bring hope to the destitute...proclaim freedom to captives...bind up the brokenhearted...

Bind up the brokenhearted...

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, it's just all becoming clear to me. There is one chapter in the Bible which is indelibly, unutterably massaged into my soul. It has been pronounced and prayed, read and sang, cried out and proclaimed over my life more times than I can count. My ears perk up every time that they begin reading, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me..."

And I know its presumptous, becuase this was Jesus' Scripture when He came into His ministry--but I know it's also my own.

There comes a point when you hear a word spoken over your life--from many silly, crazy and reliable sources--enough that you finally get it. It's been on repeat so much that it is FINALLY the song of your soul. It's the life playing when death is all around--that is what Isaiah 61 has become to me.

When I think about my life, pondering calling and loneliness and isolation and hope and joy and pain and the other million fragments that make up a life--I remember that my life is hidden with Christ in God and that there are good works that the Lord had prepared way before I took my first breath--and even if not one person had ever spoken hope into my dream to see Haiti whole...

The Lord has given me Isaiah 61.

And asked me to join Him.

And if that was all--if I didn't have journals filled with prayers and prophecies and experiences about and in and in the midst of loving them--which has become my life...I would still go, just because I keep hearing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop hearing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop bringing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop living out Isaiah 61, wherever He deems fit to put me.

Just knowing that you're here with me now

It changes everything

Just knowing that you're here with me now

It changes everything, Lord

 

Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own

But you stopped that and claimed me as your own

Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own

But you stopped that

And called me Yours

And called me Yours

Just don't give up on me now cause I'm scared

 and I need you strong when I'm weak

Hold on and believe in me

When my heart just can't figure out what it wants 

please give me a reason to trust 

You'll still fight for me

from Laura Hackett's song, "Here With Me Now"

Letting Go Love

My life has been crazy for the last few months...

Have you ever noticed that you have to step back from a situation/problem to really realize how it has affected you and what it has done deep down in your soul? Yeah, that was this weekend for me.

I lost my faith these last few months. Faith in the little God who liked to sprinkle fairy dust through the air and trip alongside us singing...but that faith was replaced by a Faith in a God who knows us to the core of who we are and still desperately longs to let us be known and to know Him. He will stop at nothing to get at your heart (even deep pain) and exists solely in your life to breathe on your dreams and shape you into them--and that will take a lot of gasping, enormous breaths and groaning as we emerge through the storm (wind, rain and tears) with only the Promise that He will be there and we have nothing to fear.

And we have nothing to fear.

To be our best selves, our most complete selves, our true selves comes out of a deep, aching vulnerability. A facing of all your worst fears with the ability to move forward out of them unscathed. It's a completely bizarre and intensely rewarding process that God only blesses His warriors with. If you were made for the battle, you will go into training.

That's where I've been the past few months. Continuing to take orders and follow His commands in the middle of miserly, dire circumstances where hope should (and often was on the verge of) being snuffed out. But we kept pressing forward, He and I, every once in a while coming clear into the light, able to see each other's smiles and He'd laugh and say, "We're not through it yet."

At moments I hated the "We're not through it yet." It seemed a soggy waste to go on when there was no progress--but that wasn't the point. The point is never how many people you find to love and hug on you back--its to learn the letting go love, the love that Jesus showed us for the first time on the cross, where He gave everything He had in a loving, desperate act and then stepped back and let us figure it out. How would we react to this strange giving of all He had? Would we choose to believe that He had indeed opened a way for us to be a part of a mystical "here" and "not-yet-here" kingdom? Would we love Him back?

The choice is everything, but the choice is never forced. It is simply offered, to believe trust and fall into or to walk away from. I have seen many of both and in my loving, in my giving of my best over and over again for His glory I have seen some love me desperately back (you know who you are, the ones who give me long hugs and pray with me until we get kicked out of church and talk with me as I mourn what could have been) and there have been others who crushed me and my dreams and sang as they walked away. And I have continued to love both.

Because my example is Jesus. always will be (O Perfection!) and He reminds me that I love them because He first loved me. Joy will come as I keep looking to Him in hope, holding my empty hands out again to be filled with His love and then spread it everywhere He deigns it wonderful for me to be. They can do as they like, the love will never stop and thus the throwing out His love every place I encounter will, by the same token, never have its end.

And I am grateful.

These last few months have been wonderful scary and hopelessly dramatically full of His love. I love the work He is doing, despite the pain, and I will continue to follow His course as many days as I have breath.

Join me.

Scared Straight

I've been scared all my life.

I would hardly try anything new as a child--thank God learning to read was super easy for me or school would have been an awful chore. I never learned to ride a bike, would sit it out at a skating rink and only learned to swim because my parents forced me to.

A whole life...lived out of fear.

It's wild to get perspective on your life and realize what has been controlling you and even punishing you throughout all your years...wild to stand up and start to see the patterns and then realize, "I sure as heck don't want to live that way anymore!" I didn't learn to drive until I was eighteen and got my license at twenty-two (after graduating from college!). I drove away/neglected people I could have loved because fear dwelt so deep in me--it affected me in more ways than even I can pinpoint at this time.

But the glory on my life--and yours!--is that He sees very well the way that Satan has tried to steal from, kill in and destroy us--and His remedy is near.

Let me tell you a story.

Once there was a beautiful Princess who lived in a large tower. The tower kept her safe, locked away from the world, but it was also stifling. As the Princess looked out the window, she became increasingly more frightened by all she saw. Villagers grinning up at her looked like terrible monsters. Handsome young men were giants ready to attack. Small children seemed like little imps out to do her no good. Her fears continually overwhelmed her until she wouldn't even look up anymore from the dark corner she cowered in. It was all too much.

One day a handsome young Prince, her intended, rode up to the castle gates. He gazed up at the tower she was trapped in with a searching, unexplainable look--everyone wondered what he would do. The villagers all knew the Princess was hopelessly lost in her fears, they'd spoken about it many times, but the Prince wouldn't be content with this. He knew there was something more for her, for them together, and he was willing to do whatever it took to capture her gaze, earn her trust and teach her to love.

He rode over the drawbridge, up to the castle gates and passed through, fire in his eyes and love in his smile. His graceful mien was glorious to behold. He knew what he was about to do: he asked the Princess to dance.

She, with groping fingers, could barely dare to touch his hand, but she gave in. At first she couldn't even look into his eyes...the fear was too close. He asked for one dance each day and then went on his way. In time, his gracious devotion stole her heart. She ventured to gaze up at this man who would choose to love her, tentatively at first but then with greater and greater confidence. Soon, she was laughing, loving, enjoying the dance. Finally the wedding day came and a much changed Princess entered the room. Fear was no longer around her eyes, lingering at her fingertips--it had been chased away by pure love. She knew that she was the Beloved and that nothing could change that. The faithful devotion on the part of her Prince had reached in and healed the core of who she was. No matter what anyone else had spoken over her life or the lies which tried to surface--all passed away as she was swept up in the dance, looking into the eyes of her Prince. This confident hope could not be shaken--and it never was.

The Prince and Princess dwelt in her kingdom for many years until it was time for him to ascend his throne. Under his love, she became a gracious, lovely woman who saw many through their hurts and hang ups and always called them into the dance. Every ball was a sight to behold! Many joined in the dance as the Princess and her Prince waltzed through the room. Their pure joy at being together brought joy to those who witnessed it--it changed the entire kingdom. Then one day, the Princess became a Queen, ruling alongside her Beloved. Her dreams had more than come true.

This story is not only mine--it belongs to many others. Wherever your life has brought you, whatever stage you are at with your Prince--whether desperately afraid, tentatively peeking into His eyes or rejoicing in the dance, I pray you continue ever more earnestly to look into His eyes. Truth, strength, joy, love--there is enough for you. He has promised to see us through to the end and if you will let Him, you will dance together through this life.

Look into His eyes.

Abide.

I've been scared straight into His arms.