Surrendering to Sabbath – Week 16

April 27, 2013 by 13 Comments

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This week has been a bit of a blur, the place between holding on to the frayed edges of what God did in community last week and remaining present to the needful of today, mindful of tomorrow’s kiss.

Winds of change blow through my screen porch. I watch her build it one tiny, crooked twig at a time. Clumps of moments swirled in a nest for holding dreams and future promise.

And now she waits. A faint heartbeat is her most intimate companion.

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Perhaps the birth of dreams requires stillness and rest, the sacred space between scurrying in preparation and expectancy. Capturing the fragile moment when the hard shell of fear and self-doubt cracks off to let the Light in, so we can fly free.

Sometimes birds choose their home where they can teach us the true meaning of Sabbath rest, beyond function and activity. I’m paying attention. Are you?

 

Some inspired reading this week:

Lyricism, Church Infighting and the Creed by Seth Haines

Speak Life by Dan King at BibleDude.net

The Crowd and Community by Alia Joy

With Eyes Wide Open by Kelli Woodford

Happy Sabbath Friends!

 

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On Chocolate Cake and Asking for the Dream

February 28, 2013 by 24 Comments

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“What about a cake,” I ask Murielle as we push the grocery cart down the baking aisle. “Do you want me to make that chocolate cake for your birthday?”

She smiles the way I remember her with wispy locks and a pacifier plugged in her mouth;  a father of the bride moment for me standing in front of the pudding in Wal-Mart. Except now she’s days away from seventeen. How did I get here, the mother of a teenager?

“Oh, I love that cake,” she admits. “Yes, I want you to make that cake.”

And maybe for some, this is just an ordinary answer by your child to a simple question. But for this mother, it’s a gift. She rarely expresses what she wants because she considers others more important than herself.

The next question from her mouth? “But you won’t have to make the cake until later in the week, right? Will you have time to make it?” It’s typical from her. Thoughtfulness from a teenager that makes my heart swoon and sometimes stomp my feet. It humbles me on most days.

But standing in the aisle discussing party food with my daughter, I see my young self in her countenance. I rarely asked for what I wanted for fear of imposing on others too.

I place a box of chocolate fudge pudding for the cake on top of the snacks we’ve picked out for the party. The bags of favorite candy she thinks her friends will enjoy; carefully calculating the cost with each one as she places them in the cart.

I didn’t give her a budget. Doing this for her is a joy.

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And I wonder how often I do this with my prayers.  Think I’m imposing with my requests, being presumptuous with the ask. When I have a Father who wants me to be specific and tell him what I want. What I need. What I long for in the secret places of the soul. What I’m dreaming of.

This is the Father heart of God. What makes His heart smile; the same way my daughter telling me what she wants brings me delight.

Last summer, after reading the Circle Maker, I began to change the way I pray. Just like Jesus asking the blind men at the gate, “What can I do for you,” I’m imagining my Heavenly Father taking that posture with me.

In August last year, I asked Jesus for a regular place to write in community for my birthday gift. On my birthday, He answered that prayer in a text; a message from an editor asking me about writing regularly for his column. Of course I said yes.  A few months later, when he stepped down to focus his attention elsewhere, I was asked to take his place.

Today, I’m dreaming God-sized, asking Him for things outside my grasp and abilities.  The answer may come over a bite of chocolate cake. If it does, I’ll let you know about it.

What about you, do you have a hard time being specific in prayer? What are you doing that you can’t do without an intervention from God?

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Linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose from the prompt: Food.

You can follow my Monday column, Living the Story, at BibleDude.net by signing up here to receive weekly stories written by myself, Kris, Kelli, and Cara.

 

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One Thing We Need to Reach Our Dreams

February 6, 2013 by 53 Comments

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“Hey, I was just listening to NPR and they were talking about the power of story,” H says excitedly when I answer the phone.

Cocooned in bed with my Kindle and a cup of tea steaming on the night stand, H is chasing pavement for five hours on his way to a conference where I’ll join him in a few days. He’s an hour into the trip when he calls.

“I was thinking about the stories you write, the name of your blog and how you are giving life to people through what you write, “ he encourages.

He often does this. Makes me hold my breath in awe over the way he believes in me. 

My man, who fields hundreds of emails a day, runs the day-to-day operations of a church planting movement, drives to a conference he is organizing with more on his mind than I can comprehend and  thinks about my writing. Because he loves me. And what matters to me, matters to him.

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People often ask me the same question when they hear stories about the hardships I faced growing up, “How did you turn out so well?”.

While my first answer is always that I found Christ at a young age and He redeems the hard places, I also say that I am fortunate to have significant people in my life who believe in me. People who show me, not just tell me they love me. Like my husband.

During childhood, my grandparents drove two hours each way on weekends to spend time with me. They stocked their refrigerator with my favorite food, ran after me on a bike until I could balance, held me on top of water until I floated on my own, taught me the Lord’s Prayer and introduced me to Jesus. As I grew older, they phoned me faithfully, every single weekend. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to.

My grandpa told me I was the best friend they ever had. The feeling was mutual.

After they passed away, God graciously sent more people who love me tirelessly. My best friend LuAnn, who is ceaseless in her encouragement, my mother-in-law who never expects me to be more than who I am, my aunt who believes in me even after we lived together during the teen years and my husband who never gives up pulling me into perspective on days of self-doubt.

And many of you crown me with your golden words that lift my eyes toward heaven.

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Today I’m thinking about how I want to be that person for you. Because if we have just one person who believes in us, more than we believe in ourselves, despite circumstance, we can achieve our dreams. We need people to call out those beautiful places buried beneath the elaborate walls we create that blind us from seeing the truth.

And if you don’t have someone in your life telling you how wonderful you are on days when you want to curl up in a dark room of self-doubt, I want to be that person. Not because I think I possess something you don’t. Because I know Jesus, how much He loves you, and the way reminding you of that truth will change you. 

So how can I help you realize your dreams? Let’s do this together.

Linking with Imperfect Prose with the one word prompt: Believe.

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Blindsided

February 1, 2013 by 40 Comments

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I lived the early years of my life wearing afraid like a worn out sweatshirt hanging off my shoulder. Afraid to come home after school, dreading the descent of the long gravel driveway to the front door of the house hidden in the woods for what I might find inside.

I slept with my head underneath the covers at night sweating off the fear of being alone. Grasped the frayed ends of afraid with one hand cupped to my pajama chest and let my fingers open on brave when I told the stranger that followed my mother home to leave my house.

I walked the hallways afraid I wouldn’t measure up, make the grade, be found out or realize my dreams.

Then I left that sweatshirt lying in a heap on the back side of the dilapidated barn door of my youth. Choosing courage over staying stuck.

I pushed out my chest and held up truth to pages of lies the generations before me believed. And followed my dreams.

Because Jesus didn’t come so we could be afraid. He came so we would have life.

I woke up this morning beside the man who loves me. Kissed the kids I bore. I sat in the stillness, closed my eyes and couldn’t remember the last time I uttered the word afraid.

I’ve been blindsided by redemption.

Joining Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday (because it seems like that’s all the time I have right now) for the one word prompt: Afraid.

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Trading Your Message and Platform For The God-Sized Dream

January 18, 2013 by 48 Comments

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“Darn it, I forgot my camera,” I said to my son. I didn’t think I would need it. It looked cloudy and overcast out my dining room window while I was getting ready to take him to school. When I pulled out of the neighborhood and saw the pink backdrop illuminating a field of naked trees I felt God say, “It’s okay, you need to listen; take in what I’m going to show you today without the distraction of your camera.”

Dressed for a morning walk on the beach, I drove with the windows down, pulled in to my regular sandy spot on the way home. I don’t mind the stench of fish anymore. It smells like life to me now; of celebrating His creation. But today, the smell hangs unusually heavy in the air.

When I cross the threshold from parking lot to beach, I interrupt a seagull family reunion on the shoreline. A woman wearing sunglasses and running shoes holding a camera in her hand walks up behind me. “I forgot my real camera,” I tell her, trying to capture the family photo with my phone.

“So this is where the fish are, huh,” she replies.

That’s when I realize it. These aren’t just a few fish strewn on the beach, and this is no family reunion. There are spoils of fish to feed thousands of hungry birds.

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I zigzag my way around the silver carcasses, avoiding their bulging eyes and scarred bodies lying like wounded soldiers in the sand. And suddenly I remember what I said yesterday in my blog post, what He told me a few days earlier:

“We’re not meant to catch every fish, or the eye of every reader, or the heart of every man. Just those he gives us. And that is enough.”

My hand gapes over my mouth and tears drip down my cheek. His message wasn’t finished. He was giving me more.

“There are more than just a few fish to catch Shelly.”

And as I continue down the beach, my eye hooks on a stubby stick pushed in the sand marking a message. Really?  Two love letters in the sand in one week?

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The longer I walk, the smell of life transforms to the putrid smell of death. What I saw still haunts me.

Scattered silver scales and sawed off fins stretched in obscene piles as far as my eye can see; armies of seagulls standing still, yards away from the fish. As if the riches of their morning breakfast transforms to a plate of grief.

“They represent forgotten souls strangled by evil’s bony fingers,” he whispers. “Gasping for breath because no one told them I could save them.”

“The smell is horrible,” a beach walker calls out to me holding her arms open, shoulders pulled up to her ears. “Why do you think this happened, why are there so many fish on the beach? I’ve never seen this happen before.”

I wanted to tell her it is a message from God; He’s trying to get our attention. The smell of our sin reeks. But instead of that I say, “Maybe God wants to feed the birds this way today.”

Am I like one of those seagulls, stuffed full with the riches of His goodness, standing on the sidelines of lost souls while they die without hope? Walking among scattered carnage keeping the message of Truth to myself.

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What do you do when you realize your dream isn’t as much about a book, or a platform, puny words knocked out in a blog post or being known? It’s bigger than that. It’s God-sized.

Because lasting fulfillment isn’t in dollars, approval from others, a golden ticket, and the way favor found you one day, or in the numbers you anxiously seek. It comes from the welcome of those waiting with arms outstretched at heaven’s gate. The ones He sends to you today, to reveal His Kingdom now.

Fulfillment is in the Message, not the method.

Fish need catching. Many will die, pushed up on the shore of life’s frailties before they hear the message of hope. Are you willing to tell them, to be the messenger?

I sat down on a jagged rock, looking into the sun rising slow and shimmering over the water, watching the waves break over the groin, and surrendered. Surrendered perfect prose, saying the right thing, a platform, a book with my name on the spine, friendships, and being known or unknown. To deliver the message. His message to the hopeless from the life He gave me.

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Are you ready to catch some fish with me?

 

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I’ve Got A Hunch

January 8, 2013 by 23 Comments

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Singing to the words on the overhead screen, Murielle leans over and whispers, “This song reminds me of our church in Phoenix.” That was over ten years ago.

She took me back to her six year old self in a whisper. Standing on risers, her arms folded underneath the oversized white robe, tinsel halo pushed on a crown of wispy curls as she sang We Three Kings of Orient Are among a throng of gap-toothed peers. I never thought I would be standing here now.

Almost a decade ago, we started our vacation on an island a thousand miles from home and bumped into a Bishop who my husband didn’t realize was trying to call him.  How his simple question – “Will you extend your vacation and visit a church a few hours away needing a pastor?” – led to a cross country move for our family. Like Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem, we ended up in a place we never expected.

When we stood up to sing Here I Am to Worship she leaned over again and whispered in my ear, “This one reminds me of Morehead City.” The coastal community we traded for the desert; the one we never expected to leave so soon.

Five years after that cross country move, on the same day we celebrated our first worship service in the new church built with people we’d grown to love, another Bishop asked the same question. A question we’d grown to expect from God. Would you consider?

And we moved again. We never expected to reside in the place where we’d vacationed for years; the same seaside town where we bumped into that first Bishop who asked us to consider extending vacation.

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It’s late afternoon when my family stands huddled together in a borrowed chapel among two hundred friends displaced by a church vote. My daughter’s whispers are the resting spots between notes of realization. That dreams are harnessed when we learn to see beyond circumstance.

H and I, we’ve been doing this since we said, “I do.” Moving to new places, doing things some people call crazy.

We’re like the Magi who left home on a hunch to follow the Light, risking without certainty about the future. Because each time we embrace discernment, behold the unexpected without clarity or predictability, a defining moment greets us at the door. And like those three kings, we see extraordinary things others miss.

As I walk into the New Year, I never expected to be part of planting a new church, to lead a bible study, mentor teens,  be a content editor for a website, write an e-book, field writing invitations or speak at a retreat.  But then again, I’ve never confused home with where I’ve been, it’s always about where I’m going.

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As Holley Gerth says, “God-sized dreams aren’t really about size at all–they’re about embracing and pursuing the desires God has placed within your heart that perfectly fit who you are.”

Are you in a place you never expected?

Perhaps it’s the open flap on the envelope of promise.

Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness. ~Isaiah 43:19

Linking with Holley as she kicks off Saying“Yes” to a God-sized Dream in 2013. 

 

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Harnessing Dreams and Giving Them Voice

September 19, 2012 by 40 Comments

Scrapbooks and photo albums cover an army of sweat pant legs folded on the floor of the retreat center. Laughter over big hair and shoulder pads the size of pillows turn heads to the corner of the room in unison. However, I notice that some aren’t laughing or holding a scrapbook.

It was an insensitive oversight on my part as the leader. How I asked a couple hundred women to bring their wedding albums to the retreat for a fun evening of looking back in time. I didn’t even think about it, until I noticed a few women huddled together without anything on their laps.

They just met, relieved to be sitting next to each other.  They didn’t bring albums because one was on her third marriage and the other got married on a New Year’s whim in Vegas.

I was giving away prizes for the funniest hairdo, most changed, married the longest and I alienated several in the room by the small lens of my own experience. And every retreat, small group and bible study I’ve led since, these women remind me to think inclusive.

Luckily, Kelly (left) and LuAnn (right) turned out to be my closest friends.

Because sometimes in the midst of your biggest blunders, God redeems it with a gift you weren’t expecting.

My friend LuAnn just moved to Phoenix, joined the Mom’s group I led and bravely decided to come to the annual women’s retreat alone. She didn’t know anyone yet. It turns out that what I assumed to be courageous, was actually an act of faith.

She and her husband were on the heels of surviving his affair. And I represented the very thing that shattered her marriage, a pastor’s wife. In my ignorance, I assigned her to a room with the wife of the senior pastor.

Or maybe it was providence?

The three of us, we’ve shared tears in the delivery room of grace, swimming lessons by the pool, family vacations, and laughter about stages that come with wrinkles. We’ve acquiesced over the loss of muscle tone, of loved ones and the loss of community between us, now separated by thousands of miles.

Whenever we open the gift of wrapping our arms around each other, it’s often in the context of a retreat. We return to a similar setting, the way God joined us together the first time, with one exception. LuAnn speaks from the platform on many of those occasions.

I’m hoping for a reunion here in April, where I’m honored to play a small part in the dream of another friend. Because we’ll be talking about harnessing dreams and giving them voice and I want to share that with you and my two friends. The friends who forgave my insensitivity and helped transform dreams into reality, just by loving me.

Have you ever been to a retreat? Do you have close friends that live far away? I always say two days away with girlfriends, accelerates friendship two years. I hope you’ll consider coming to Nebraska for Jumping Tandem: The Retreat. Deidra’s dreaming up an amazing weekend with you in mind . I’d love to meet you there.

Early registration begins October 1st and space is limited.

Linking with friends Jennifer and Emily (they’re speaking at the retreat), Duane (I write with him at BibleDude.net on Friday’s for Living the Story – check it out), WLWW and Walk with Him Wednesday.

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