FIRE

I woke up to fire this morning...drove home from the movie (I saw the Avengers: Age of Ultron--congratulate me later) and still saw fire...

It's a strange thing to look out your window in the morning at a just before dawn sky and see billowing black clouds with a tinge of red beneath. Your initial thought is, "Is that real?" The next one is, "What do I need to do? How do I keep safe?"

Fire does something to people--makes them feel unsafe, throws them off kilter, makes them examine their lives and the workings therein in a little bit different light. It shows what we believe is essential and forces us to reexamine fear as it tries to rise up. It's a good way to jog you out of a deep sleep.

And it's what almost every church I have been present in in the last ten years is asking for.

And I can see why. I have learned this side of suffering and pain not to take the elements of life for granted the way I used to. The simple sensation of being happy and well accepted has become much more for me--I have known the other side of both and so somehow what used to be commonplace experiences have become much more, almost exultations. When your life is put under fire and all that is not worthy gets burned away--you find out really quickly what you believe and why you stand for it. There is a purifying that happens in going through the fire that no other experience on Earth can replicate. What survives the flames has been so radically altered from what entered the flames as to become almost unrecognizable.

It's so unruly. I think in college when we (at times) had nightly prayer meetings and let God do as He pleased and sought only to be used by Him--the fire was there...the unruly motion of His Spirit wreaking havoc on hearts in the best way possible, bringing healing and life back, leading us to pray. I had never prayed before for a nation or really in front of a crowd but one night I felt so compelled to pray for Israel, so they let me go up and share what was on my heart. Then I was all set to sit down (I'd done my spiel) and they said, "Pray." Simple word, transforming effect--that prayer felt like electricity coursing through my body, like nothing I could ever describe as God set me alight to cry out for one of the many nations He dearly loves.

Fire will change you--but always for the better. And it can't be contained. Perhaps this is why the Holy Spirits manifestation was seen as tongues of flame--what better way to represent the holy freedom of God?

Fire takes fuel--the reason the one across the street did so well (it started at 3:30 am this morning and is still running strong here at 11:00 pm) is that it had an excellent heat source: wooden power poles. PG&E stores them right over there and man, did they light up well together! Ahhh....

What is our fuel? What is the stuff in your heart that the Lord may have to burn and purge? Will you survive if He does come? Or even better yet, how will you react when He touches down? Will you try to get rid of Him or worse yet, contain Him? Or will you let Him burn through your life, even if you won't be able to recognize your life after His fire has had its way through your heart?

It's a painful experience, letting the fire fall. But the purity, stripping away of needless things, being in His Presence and power--these are all worth the price.

Will you join me in the fire today? It's a beautiful display...

Jesus With Skin On--No, it's not creepy!!! Hey, come back here and read this...

The Lord keeps speaking to me about being Jesus with skin on.

How that keeps us humble: we know it’s not our own work.

How it keeps us dependent: we’ve faced our weaknesses and insecurities and still we rush in to do His work, knowing that despite our frailty (which we know so well) He will use us, He will honor His Word and come through.

How it keeps us close, we let Him do the work, we just listen and move as He gently guides.

Sometimes I’m the worst skin to be in: I get afraid and back out right before a conversation goes to that life giving topic of the Son of Man, I walk away when someone asks me to stay (this happened just last weekend), I give up. God asks me to move forward just a little more, get a little closer to other people, let myself love and be loved in return.

I shy away.

But He won’t give up—on me or any one of us who He calls forth and makes into His life-giving people (which is all of us!). We will be Him with skin on: flawed, imperfect but still His. Still being molded, changed with the great destiny, the biggest picture rising forth in front of Him keeping Him hot on our heels and us on His. The day is coming when we will be truly shone forth as all that we are, all that He has been perfecting since He began this crazy beautiful journey in His name! And the praise He will receive on that day! (And all the days in between, as we journey home.) He knows He’s worth it.

And we’re worth it. As I was driving home praying through a word I received this weekend, God showed me a picture and spoke to me, proclaiming into me all that I am not now—but I can see it peeking through. I will be—one day and now as I move forward in hope, trusting Him to do the work—one who enters fully in everywhere she goes, so content in Him and His promises that I can be fully satisfied and safe in Him and draw others close in every nation through that life changing love poured forth.

It’s what He sees for all of us, wherever He hand plants each of us. We are all the beauty of His heart, the flower garden in His care, the magnificient masterpiece being perfected into His image.

Let Him do His work in you today, no matter what you know about you—He knows better.

We will all be Jesus with skin on—Halllelujah!

'Tis A Gift to Be Loved

I think I finally realized something: I get to be happy.

I’ve lived for so long in this, “This is the way it is. You just endure and hope it’s over soon” mindset even while people around me were saying, “It’s not always like this. There are hard times, but there are good times too.” I’ve been in the hard so long—the emotional grind, the uphill battle, fighting to see even hope—that imagining that the things I imagine and dream about could come to be seems like a complete fantasy, one I haven’t even allowed myself to indulge in—I can’t. If I did, for one moment, I wouldn’t be able to enter in, to go back into the fray that is my daily life.

So I push and I fight and I’m exhausted but sustained—by a good God, whose powerful, good, life-giving Presence continues to pour into me and gets me through the torture that life can seem. He’s my safe place (refuge as Psalms 91 says) and with Him I am complete—no matter the storm around me.

And He’s taught me to abide, and He’s taught me to cry out for Him and He’s taught me to love even when there isn’t anything visible to human eyes worth loving. He’s taught me to believe beyond what I can see, live heaven-minded and trust Him. And I have lived—conquered—even found freedom in the middle of mine and my family’s struggle.

He is truth and hope and love and He has been enough for us in the middle of it all.

And I haven’t done it perfectly—I have way too many things to regret—but He’s teaching me even there to let the past be the past and move forward in hope—or as one of my favorite Chris Tomlin songs says: LET THE FUTURE BEGIN!

I was at his concert two nights ago and just got taught again how good He is. We worship because He shows up, inhabits the praise that we send forth and changes our hearts as we interact with Him. I love this personal, loving, close God…I went to this concert out of obedience (it was a school night!) and I could just feel God pulling off layers—getting at my heart and the battering it has received lately and just washing, cleansing, strengthening in the most powerful way. He has good ahead of me—so close, I can almost taste it! as they say—and even in the middle of that crowded arena He was speaking close to my heart again, making that hope rise, changing and preparing me for the future. I walked out with my heart feeling a little bit different…

I heard a sermon recently that talked about how life is a process of giving the Lord little bits of our heart at a time. This is true: that it is a process on one hand—your whole heart does not automatically become His (I’m sure there are exceptions) but on the other hand it shows such faithfulness and patience on His part—to keep pursuing our hearts, even in the places where we don’t necessarily want to be fully His, it shows off His love. That He would keep coming after us, being patience with us, letting us have a part and a say in the relationship and not pressing us beyond what we are able to give. It’s a beautiful piece of God.

I was a little more His after that night at the concert: a little (no, actually a whole ton) more able to believe that He has good for me (exceedingly more than I’m imagining! As the Kristene Mueller song I’m listening to right now says—God timing!). That what I have been dreaming of could become a beautiful, hopeful reality that I get to just bless Him with—honoring Him because He’s the only One capable of pulling it off and loving Him even more for being able to dream and see come to fruition the joy of His heart.

Realizing that He desires that I be happy and fulfilled more than I ever will is an incredible (almost unnerving for me) declaration. But it’s true. He wants kids after His heart who will dream with Him to see the world changed and He will be the force behind the movement as we launch forth in hope: His sailboats.

I’m ready for anything and the next step and the launching…

Always, desperately, hopefully, carefully, wonderfully His.

Jump Into Your Dreams--He Will Catch You!

This is the beautiful part of the story--when you come out into everything that has been being prepared for you for years and it all starts to make sense.

[For those of you reading and wondering what the heck is wrong with me: haha, my life is a mess and I'm just sifting it out here on this blog. I honestly have been fighting at the edge of despair lately--but haven't dropped off yet. He's still holding me, sustaining me even when everything in me fights to say this is not possible--you know, a hopeful, good God whose Daddy's heart is for me and is good...but--and here's the crazy part--He sees where I am and He's using all the brokenness and all the things I don't know how to let go of and winding it up all in His perfect time into something good. So if you want hope--read on.]

I've been writing a book for over a year now--called the Book of Hope. That may surprise you, knowing my story for the past year (full time school teacher? one and a half hours given to a commute every day? family fritzing out? any of this ringing a bell?) so okay--maybe I haven't been working at it every day for an hour for the past few months--haha. But today I went back to write--and boy, I wish I would do that all the time!

It's funny to read over something I wrote and forgot about (fairly frequent past-time, writing and promptly forgetting) but man!--this book is well named! If nothing else, it has brought me such hope and brought me back to the process God has for all of us and all He is going to do in our lives--and it's freakin' incredible!

I've been wondering and fretting over being in this moment where I know I need to shoot forward into all He has for me and yet--I have no clear direction and no true calling on my heart at this moment. No voice saying, "Go to India for two years"--all I have is a desire (which is completely freaking me out because I thought it was all so dead) and I feel like that's not enough to go on, but it's totally unearthing me and making it really uncomfortable right now to live out my current life.

I think most of all it makes me afraid--what if I make a wrong move and throw everything off kilter and never recover from it all? But then I read this again:

"'But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can't abandon the work because you're chained to the bloody thing, it's absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you've brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess - but it's agony, agony, agony - while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world - and that's the creative process which so few people understand. It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, and indescribable sort of ... well, it's love, isn't it? There's no other word for it ... And don't throw Mozart at me ... I know he claimed his creative process was no more than a form of automatic writing, but the truth was he sweated and slaved and died young giving birth to all that music. He poured himself out and suffered. That's the way it is. That's creation ... You can't create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog. You can't create without pain. It's all part of the process. It's in the nature of things. So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears - everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.'" 

(Rob Bell, Drops Like Stars)

and suddenly it made sense again.

I could lose my life completely at this point [like try something crazy and end up not making it (in my eyes)] but it just won't matter--He'll catch me and see me and make something beautiful out of it. I can't make a completely wrong move--He can use anything I do with my life and make something beautiful out of it. He's the One who loves and guides and is completely in charge-not me! This is not the time for fear and second guessing (I hate when I am stuck in that place!) but hope and moving forward.

God keep changing my heart--You are good--and You will lead with hope and certainty--so I can be FREE!

The Song I'm Learning to Sing:I Give In

God Treats Me Like a Princess

     "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise it, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."

--C.S. Lewis, from the Hope chapter in Mere Christianity

Friday before Easter (or "Easters" as its regarded in Nacho Libre...I prefer neither!) and I'm sitting at a Starbucks, just having to get stuff off my chest before...I don't even know what before?

--a conversation about a place I may or may not go

--deciding I will leave this country--which I'd love to do but have tried before and feel really unsure of--because it kind of left me in a mess when it never worked out

--trying to hope again--for a lot of things--but feeling SO unsure

--trying to figure out my life--which is impossible and completely exhausting

--hanging out with fam for the weekend

--sorting out that we are not getting the puppy I thought we were :( (no goldenpoo's on my birthday!)

--figuring out that life is not what it seems, nor is it what I envision--and that's okay and I can let it go...even when I feel like holding on is the ONLY safe option

--wrestling with being so different from people's perceptions and what they want from me [no, my profile pictures are not always super happy ones because I happen to think those are false misrepresentations and I prefer the artsy (slightly suffering) look because it reflects more fully my experience and reminds me that I am still alive, even after all I've been through...so let me post it and quite saying how sad I look--that's freaking life!] haha, slightly opinionated here

--teaching a SHARK unit (the boys in my class are going to DIE!) I'm so excited--I put it all together yesterday and we are going to have FUN!

and then there's the Cinderella movie...

haha, most random blogpost ever--but this is exactly the mess that I feel my life is in and instead of moping I'm writing--so chill out and hang with me--we're going somewhere.

     I reached this point yesterday where I just felt like such a mess, crying as I drove away from my friends house, and just feeling tired and purposeless. It's all just feelings, I know--nothing based in reality, my life is good--but there's this piece of me that is really unsure in this time and just searching--almost frantically. And I have no answers, so this piece of me keeps getting more and more undone. It was the worst last night--but that's often when you are truy able to deal with whatever is going on inside you, when it comes to a head, IF (and people miss this and cope out--you know how) you keep pushing through. So I did...kept asking, hanging out, calling out to God--and He brought me back to that movie, one scene in particular. I have watched this movie three times now (3! I never do that!) and the scene is the one where her dress is being transformed. She's spinning around and around as her rags are transformed from tatters to glorious ballgown and hope comes to rest on her (in the form of butterflies) and the adventure--everything she'd ever dreamed about and was never sure could come through--suddenly becomes possible. And it's literally more than she ever could have dreamed.

     And she didn't get there in that instant. That instant was the moment when it all became transformed and she was shown for  who she really was. But the true transformation--the good heart that the life of the Father in her finally brought out--had happened in all the moments before this one: every moment she chose to say 'yes' and served those who despised her or didn't even acknowledge her at all...all those hours when she did the menial tasks when she'd much before anything else...being submissive when it seemed humanly impossible to do so, choosing kindness and forgiveness and letting all the ugly, bad things done to her not make her bitter but more able to love, filled to a fuller capacity.

     It was the journey of a thousand yes's, a thousand times of letting the world work her over and expose not the ugliness inflicted upon her but the true beauty of her heart--refined. Tossed through the fire and not overcome but made more beautiful and of more worth. All that tried to destroy her only showed her off as more of the beauty she had become.

    And then she got the dress. And then she was shown off for all that she had become. And then she moved forward into her destiny.

    And I'm right in the middle of that--not sure at all what is to come but knowing it will be glorious--for He is good, and He is at work in me.

God treats me like a Princess.