at the intersection of need and grace

Ok, so I’m not in that much pain.  Not nearly as much as some of the people I’ve been reading about lately.  Compared to them, this ordeal is nothing.  Less than nothing.

But I’ve been thinking about grace, and how hard it is for me to receive it, and give it.  

Having a broken foot and hobbling around on crutches has made me freshly aware of how needy I am, and somehow, having my neediness out in front of me, for me and all the world to see, has finally freed me to ask for and receive grace humbly.

Why is that?

Is it because there is no possible way to hide this need?  I don’t have the option of covering it up, or wearing a mask?  It’s on my foot, for goodness’ sake - everyone can see why I can’t walk properly, it’s encased in white and hard as rock.  I’m free to not give excuses.  I’m free to not have to feel guilty about this one.

Is it because everyone agrees that this is a need?  An injury is an injury.  People have them every day, live with them for years sometimes, they’re painful, and people with injuries need help. Period.  So it’s “ok” for me to ask for help - everyone understands.

What about when I’m lonely? Why do I feel the need to cover that need up?

Or when I’m caught in the comparison trap and feeling less than, or not enough?  

What about feeling hurt and bruised by words someone said, or didn’t say, or won’t say?  

Why can’t I let those injuries hang out there too, for all the world to see?  Why do I let them fester somewhere deep inside of me, eating away at my ability to ask for and receive grace?

The fact that the physical can be seen while the spiritual is invisible means (in my illogical subconscious mind) if my injury can be seen, that makes it justifiable.  Understandable.  Excusable.  Since there was nothing I could do about this, it’s ok to not be perfect, to not have my act together.  It’s out of my hands.

But sin-struggles, however, or character flaws, or abscesses of the soul - those are different.  Illogically, I feel I should somehow have control over those things, or should be able to deal with on my own, or that no one else struggles with them, so I’ll just keep them to myself.  I tell myself (subconsciously) those internal pains are my responsibility to deal with.  They’re embarrassing signs of weakness and imperfection, and I hate them.  

The trouble is, heart-wounds hurt just as much - sometimes more - as a broken foot.  And when they’re not dealt with, they fester, and they start to suck me dry on the inside.  When I can’t receive grace for those parts of me that are hurting or wounded - like not being a perfect mom, a perfect wife, a perfect home-educator, a perfect friend, a perfect artist, a perfect listener, etc, etc - then I can’t give grace either.

When I can’t give or receive grace, I live in a chronically discontent state, critical, impatient, resentful and unsatisfied.  And because as the homemaker my mood sets the tone for our whole home, my family has to live in a poisonous environment that is the exact opposite of my actual vision for our home: a place of welcome, belonging, peace, purpose, forgiveness, contentment, creativity, beauty, and joy.  

I sabotage my own dreams with my inability to receive grace for my internal wounds.  When I can’t receive grace, I can’t give it either.  So no-one gets the grace or the help or the healing they need, not me, or anyone else around me.  

What a miserable way to live.

I want to change this.

Maybe that’s why God broke my foot.  Maybe this silly rolled ankle and subsequent 8 hot, Saturday hours in a taxi crossing a sprawling city to pursue x-rays, a cast, and crutches at three different locations is all meant to teach me something.

Maybe God wants me to notice something about my attitude now, when I’m forced to humble myself and ask for help - nicely, so as not to alienate the people who will have to continue to help me for the next 28 days.  Maybe He wants me to let go of some of the small things I chronically keep up with (and make others keep up with):

-clean kitchen surfaces

-a clutter-free floor

-random mugs left lying around collected and brought to the sink

-beds made

-dirty clothes off the floor and into the basket

There’s nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves, but when I make them into idols and elevate them to a far higher level of importance than they deserve, and make others in my family serve my own drive for perfection even when it makes them miserable… Then something’s out of whack.  

Grace is missing.  

Maybe God broke my foot to show me that at the intersection of need and grace when I have no choice, I am actually capable of giving and receiving grace, for myself and for others.

And maybe knowing this important truth about myself will enable this "grace thing” to stick long past my 30 obligatory days of crutches and dependence.  

Doesn’t it take about that long to start building a habit?  

how to ensure your words endure {June lessons in listening}

{My one word for 2014 is "listen"... Each month I'm posting the lessons I'm learning - find the rest of my posts on listening here!}

As a writer and an artist, I want to be heard.  I long for none of my words to fall to the ground.  

But as a human, I know that’s impossible.  The limitations of my sin nature, my personality, my background and my experiences ensure that at least some, possibly all, of my own words will eventually disappear. 

I’m still mulling over Mark Buchanan’s thoughtful and refreshing book The Rest of God.  He describes his life as an author, pastor, and speaker, and admits his own similar desire for his words to endure.  

“Either God, God alone, keeps our words from falling and scatters them wide,” observes Buchanan, “or else there is nothing in them worth keeping and scattering in the first place.  Our concern, our responsibility, is simply to hear and heed God…”

John’s gospel begins, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory…full of grace and truth” (emphasis mine).

The only Person whose words are sure to endure is the Living Word Himself.  So, it follows that the only way for me to ensure what I say endures is to make my words the words of God.   

“Our speaking comes out of our listening,” Buchanan continues.  “What we say comes out of what we hear. We have to be people who listen, day and night, to God.  Our utterances ought to be as Jesus’s were: an echoing of the Father, an imitation of him….”

That’s a tall order.  When I read those words for the first time, my heart sank.  Given that I am not Jesus, that feels pretty much impossible!

But the word “echo” stood out to me: I might not be Jesus, but I can surely echo Him.  I can repeat back - pass on - the words I hear from Him in my own heart, the words I read from Him in the Bible, the things He shows me through experience and circumstance.  And if hearing God happens best when I am still, then the practices of Sabbath and listening are essentially connected. 

God is always speaking.

The Psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God… Day to day pours out speech… Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

God is always speaking, but we’re not always listening.  

“There are so many voices,” says Buchanan.  “And there is such little time to listen, to truly listen: to winnow and test it all, to heed and reflect and respond...

“Sabbath is when we stop.  We slow down.  We play, we rest, we dream, we wonder.  We cease from that which is necessary and turn to that which gives life.  And in the hush that descends, we listen.”

The times when I can hear most clearly are times of stillness and quietness: in other words, when I’m cultivating a Sabbath heart. 

“God isn’t more likely to speak on your Sabbath than on any other day,” says Buchanan, “but you are more likely to listen.”

On the day the apostle John saw the Voice and the vision which became the book of Revelation, there are two key contextual details which Buchanan highlights: 

“One, he was in exile on Patmos.  He was, in other words, under an enforced silence and aloneness, a season of inactivity.  Two, it was Sunday, the Lord’s Day.  It was his Sabbath.  These conditions - the silence, the aloneness, the stillness, the Sabbath - might be beside the point.  Then again, they might just be the point.  It’s possible that they are mentioned because they form the necessary backdrop for true listening.”

~Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God, ch 12 "Listen: Stopping to Hear God"

It is only when we’ve first heard from God ourselves that we have something worth hearing to offer to our listeners.  

In one of Ann Voskamp’s recent posts, she urges her readers to take time every day.  She says, 

“Daily disciplines are doors to full freedom.

“Everyday take time. Everyday take time to feel the sun and the wind and the rain and feel that you are loved — and then let your life overflow with that love so that a thousand others feel that love. 

“Everyday take time to live loved — and live so others feel loved. 

“Everyday take time. Time is there for the taking. For the unwrapping.”

This daily unwrapping of the gift of time, the gift of Sabbath rest, frees us to truly listen, first to God and then to others.  

Ann continues, “Give someone the gift of listening… linger and look into their eyes and really listen and this is free and nobody can buy it and what is better than paying attention to someone with all of you fully present?”

Give yourself permission to receive God’s gift of Sabbath rest - not just the 24 hours once a week when you stop and play and revive your soul - but every day.  

photo credit: I. Winsley

Take time every day to rest, to still your soul and listen.  

In learning to be still enough to hear God, we will learn how to be still enough to listen, truly listen, to others.

photo credits: I. Winsley

of flashbacks, faith, and Steven Curtis Chapman... {a birthday letter to my 22-year-old self}

Dear self,

I remember you, ten years ago.  You were terrified.

You graduated a week after turning 21, and a year later you were finishing your first ten months overseas.  

You’d weathered your first Christmas away from your family, which was emotional and hard even though you were with a group of wonderful people.  You were reaching the end of a year teaching music and English at a posh private school in Beijing, China...  

Sammy, the squirrel

(a very special friend)

The crazies Sammy helped me entertain - I mean, teach!

And, miraculously, you were in the final stages of your first-ever recording project.  You had been writing songs out of the delirious highs and devastating lows of that year, and your English-teaching teammates had asked you to make a record.  

So you did.  (Well, really, God did.)  It was actually nearing completion, in an awe-inspiring way.  You got goose-bumps every time you thought about it.

And - biggest of all, you had just signed up to move clear across that huge country, to a remote city on the edge of the desert, purported to be full of wildly artistic people.  You were going to see if that was the place God was calling you to make a life.

You had never been more scared in all your life.

It felt like standing on the edge of a huge precipice looking down into a bank of fog, and God saying, “Jump.”

Other days it felt like standing at the bottom of a huge cliff staring upwards, with no sign of any kind of path.  Just sheer cliff.  And God was saying, “Climb.”

What?!?!  you kept thinking.  Climb that?  Climb into a folk Muslim culture as a single woman, with hardly any background knowledge and only a puny two-week language learning course?  

Climb into another four-year commitment (two years of language followed by two years of teaching English) the same length as college?  Four years - you couldn’t even imagine your life one year from then, much less four!

God, you have got to be kidding.  

But there was that unmistakable Voice.  Gentle.  Relentless.

Come.

Climb.

Jump.

A vivid memory from a few weeks before your 22nd birthday.  Easter weekend, big international church, Steven Curtis Chapman on the stage.  Heart beating wildly in your chest, applause, screams, a room full of 2,000 Christian Contemporary Music fans (ok, so maybe they weren't all CCM fans, but still...) - this looked to be the most amazing Easter service ever.  

And you weren’t even enjoying it.  You were almost completely shut down by your fear.

(yes, that's really him!)

Until halfway through the service, when Steven strummed his guitar quietly and started singing these words.

“Be still and know…

…that He is God.”

You couldn’t believe your ears.  It was like Jesus had taken the mic and was singing you a solo.  

“Be still, O restless soul of mine,

Bow before the Prince of Peace,

Let the noise and clamor cease…”

The room quieted, and so did the beating of your heart.  Everyone sat down.  Steven began the second verse.

“Be still and know that He is God,

Be still and know that he is faithful

Consider all that He has done, 

stand in awe and be amazed, 

know that He will never change.”

Scenes from the last 22 years of your life flashed through your mind as you sat in that red plush auditorium seat.  

College.  

These last ten astonishing months in China.  

The miracle of making my first album this spring.  

The album was fresh in your mind, a veritable stone of remembrance.  A symbol of God’s faithfulness. 

Suddenly you realized, in a rush: He will not leave me alone.  He who has called me is faithful.  Peace washed over you.  He knows my name.  He hasn’t forgotten about me.

A guitar.  A voice.  Simple words.  And a single throbbing invitation in your heart.  

Be still.  Trust Me.

“Be still and know… He is our Father.

Come rest your head upon His breast,

Listen to the rhythm of His unfailing heart of love

beating for His little ones, 

calling each of us to come…”

Come.  The title of your album.  The word God had been repeating in your heart over the past four hectic months of recording your songs.  Steven was singing it, there on the stage, in front of two thousand people.  It resounded in your heart.  Come.  Rest in me.  Trust me.  

The stomach-gnawing terror was melting away.  I won’t be going alone.  He is with me.  

Little did you know - you would take to that fiery, artistic, hospitable group of people like a duck to water, or that making your home among them would become the greatest thrill of your life.

Little did you know that one year later, on your very next birthday, you would be saying “Yes” to the question every girl dreams about; that the man of your dreams would be down on one knee, looking up at you with the bluest eyes you’d ever seen, as he opened the lid of a tiny leather box to reveal his grandmother’s antique engagement ring…

Little did you know you would pledge yourself to your new husband, your new people group and your new organization all in one massive decision, and that despite the hugeness of it all, peace would flood your heart.  

the very place where he got down on one knee...

his grandmother's ring, who gave her life in and for China...

None of that was visible to you then, age 22, at the top of the cliff, staring down into a bank of fog, hearing: Jump.  

All you knew was: He is with me.  

You gritted your teeth, took a deep breath, and stepped off that horribly high cliff into thin air, trusting that something - Someone - would rise to meet you and bear your weight.

And He did.  Oh, He did.  

Here you are, ten years later: married, with three beautiful children, saying hello to your 32-year-old self in yet another foreign land you never dreamed of living in...

...but still with the same God.  

Still held by the same Hands.  

Kept.  

Sustained.  

More than anything, surprised!  

And yet, when you think about your God, it’s not really surprising at all.   

So, um… self?

Know that the Lord, He is God.  

Whatever mountain looms in front of you, whatever cliff seems impossibly high, just remember: He makes steps materialize out of thin air.  He makes impossible things possible.  He reveals a path where there is no way forward.  

Whatever’s in front of you today, move into it by faith.  

Be still and know that He is God.

for days when you need a little hope... {guest post for Velvet Ashes}

Photo credit: William Broughton, age 6

Have you walked through a season - maybe right now - where you feel like your creativity is bottled up inside of you, waiting for a chance to come out?  Since I’m in the throes of early motherhood, that’s me, most of the time!  But every once in a while, despite my crazy, interruption-filled days and miles-long to-do list, something creative leaks out and finds room to breathe.  And that feels hopeful to me.

I write songs for all sorts of reasons: to tuck Scripture inside my heart.  To express myself to Jesus.  To capture a quote I love.  To revitalize an old hymn text.  

Mostly, I write music because it gives me hope.  

There’s definitely something creative in spreading peanut butter on apple slices for my kids (in between writing these sentences).  But then there’s the specific “art you were made to live”, which Emily Freeman describes in her hope-filled book A Million Little Ways.  Something deep inside me starts to wither if I don’t intentionally exercise my creativity beyond cooking meals, playing with my kids, and trying to keep my house relatively dirt-free and attractive.  

When I feel a song rising in me, it gives me hope that my creativity is still alive despite the fog of fatigue and swirl of mundane tasks.  So I pay attention, and try to write in the little cracks of time I can find.  It isn’t perfect, or as much as I’d like, but it keeps hope alive.  

For me, music is a bridge between the seasons of my life. 

Rewind ten years to my first stint overseas, fresh out of college....

I'm over at Velvet Ashes today, sharing my story of creativity and hope... come read more and be encouraged! 

on writing and other peculiar habits...

{Linking up again this weekend with the ladies over at the Velvet Ashes Grove, writing about... well, writing!}

Picture a little girl perching on a wooden stool at a low table, head bent over a small piece of paper on her placemat.  She grips a purple marker tightly in her chubby fist, poking the tip of her tongue out in concentration.  Finally, she heaves a sigh of satisfaction.  

“Look, Mommy!” she jumps up and runs to the kitchen table, waving her scrap of paper. “I filled it all up!”

Her mom takes the scrap of paper and looks at it.  From top to bottom, every inch of white is completely covered with wobbly rows of tiny little scribbles.

“See, Mommy?” the little girl says proudly.  “I’m writing!”    

One guess who the little girl is.  

Yep.

My Mom still has the paper.  

My own little writer...

I remember sitting next to my Mom at the kitchen table, resting my chin on the tablecloth, watching her left hand move gracefully across the paper forming magical connected letters called “cursive”.  I would watch for a while, then I’d get a bit of paper from the basket by the phone and sit down at my little table to practice.  

I filled up reams of paper scraps with my “writing”.  I loved the feel of the marker or pencil or pen in my hand, the sliding, curvy motion as the tip curled across the paper, the look of the ink as it unwound itself in knots and loops and dips and dots.  I loved the tidy straight rows of inked shapes, one row under another, marching down the page.  It didn’t matter to me one bit they weren’t real words.  

I was writing.  

I remember sitting bored at my desk in front of my homeschool Saxon Math book (it was a good book - I just detested math), gazing across our postage stamp lawn at the huge scarlet-leafed maple tree.  Guiltily latching my bedroom door, I would slide Saxon aside and write a poem instead.  

In Jr. High, a friend and I wrote almost a whole novel together.  It was to be the first of a trilogy; we unashamedly plagiarized J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  The heroine was a combination of the two of us, and the hero was modeled after a boy we both liked in youth group.  To our credit, we did create a completely original race of beings called “the Gargoilim”, but our “Nolbids” (Hobbits) and Elves were pretty much all J.R.R..  

I wasn’t good at making the plot exciting, so my friend would write the gist in outline form and pass the floppy disk to me on Sundays, and I would embellish to my heart’s content all week.  I was really good at embellishing.  Then she would take the finished pages back and draw beautiful, detailed illustrations with colored pencils.  We were completely absorbed in our project, and completely happy.  We wrote for the fun of writing and created for the joy of creating.

In the years since then, I have journaled.  And journaled.  And journaled.  Boxes of journals crammed with my handwriting are living in storage all around the world - my parents’ house in Sonoma, my mother-in-law’s shed in New Zealand, my desk drawers here in Central Asia.  Every era of my life is chronicled.  In detail.  If one of my great-grandchildren decides to write my biography, they’ll be in researcher’s heaven.    

Obviously, I can’t stop writing even if I wanted to.  In an earlier post I said if I was ever kept in solitary confinement, I’d write with my fingernails on my jail cell wall.  

It’s an addiction.

It was a couple years after college that I started asking myself, why?  Why do I feel this irresistible compulsion to move pen across paper, even if no one ever reads it?  

I remember sitting in an upstairs room in a little guest house during my first year overseas on a holiday with three girls from my English-teaching team.  We were enjoying the quaint touristy Asian town, and I was trying to process something - I can’t remember what.  (I was always processing something.)  That afternoon each of my roommates was occupied, and no one was really in the mood to listen to me think out loud, so I sat there on the bed and tried to do it by myself.  

I decided to think an entire train of thought in my mind beginning to end, without saying anything out loud or writing anything down.    

I couldn’t do it.  

I nearly drove myself crazy!  

I actually got scared.  What kind of person was I who couldn’t hold a coherent string of thoughts inside my head - was my brain a sieve?  Why was it evidently essential for me to use some external crutch - a pen, someone’s ear - to reach a mental conclusion?

Since those days, I’ve become intimately acquainted with the term “external processor”, and this perpetual urge I have to put words on paper or debrief with a friend in order to reach a conclusion has been partially explained.  (Whew!)

But aside from using words for compulsive external processing, I’ve had a life-long love affair with words themselves.  I always read them voraciously, thrilled to their savor and their power, and avidly put pen to paper to form them myself.

A peek at my ever-messy kitchen desk, where I do most of my writing -
complete with candy wrappers, old rubber band and TP...

“I write.”  That’s easy to say.  That can mean journals nobody sees.

“I’m a writer.”  Whew.  That’s a lot harder.  Somehow saying “I’m a writer” seems to ask a lot more of me and feels more intimidating than saying “I write”.

I’m still in the process of realizing and embracing the fact that the second statement is actually the same as the first.  If I write, I'm a writer.

I haven’t published one single article, anywhere, even online.  I haven’t even guest-posted for anyone.  Ever.  

So how can I call myself “a writer”, you ask?  

Because I write.  Every day.  Because I can’t not write.  It’s just something I have to do.  

"I’m a writer."  It’s starting to feel really good to say that out loud.

So… here comes the crunch, the part of this post where I get really honest:

Recently I’ve been feeling differently about this writing thing of mine… I want to Make Something with all this writing.  

I started my blog when my first son was born, mostly for my Mom (and other dedicated, wonderfully loyal friends) to read stories and see pictures of our kids and our overseas life.  But gradually, over my six-year blog life thus far, I’ve started to think almost as much about writing books as I do about reading them.

I do not have a big announcement to make (as in, watch out, world - here comes the next NY TImes best-selling author!).

But I do have Heather Seller’s inspiring book Chapter after Chapter: Discover the dedication and focus you need to write the book of your dreams living on my nightstand.  

I do not know what the future holds.

But I do dream of {gulp!} writing a book of my own someday… (I’m saying it out loud.  On the internet.  There’s no going back.)

I want to Make Something with all this writing, something more concise, profound and useful than stacks of journals hidden away in boxes.  

But since I’m not to the book-writing stage - yet - for right now, the Something I’m Making with words today is... (drumroll please) 

...this post.  For you. :)

And here’s what I want you to hear today:

Whatever “weird” (in the most flattering sense, of course) or insatiable habits you may have, pay attention to them.  Why do you feel the need to do them?  What is in you that isn’t in anyone else?

What is it that only you can do?  

Kenneth Atchity in his book Write Time (recommended by the ever-wise Heather Sellers) advises, 

“Stop doing things no one needs to do.  

Stop doing things someone else will do if you stop doing them.  

Stop doing things that aren’t the kind only you can do.  

Start doing the things you want to do, the things only YOU can do.”

Get the picture? 

Maybe the reason I can’t stop writing is because I need to keep writing.  Maybe there’s something God’s put in me to say, and all this writing is practice for letting it out one day.  

Maybe the thing we can’t stop doing is what we’re made to do, and we could stop putting it under lock and key and saying we don’t have time, and just let it out to breathe a little.  

Emily P. Freeman, in her lovely and inspiring book A Million Little Ways: Uncovering the Art You Were Made To Live, says, “Being an artist has something to do with being brave enough to move toward what makes you come alive.”

She goes on to say, “God is on the move.  But he is not invisible.  As long as there are people on earth, the world will have glimpses of God.  He chooses us to move through.  He chooses your personality, your spunk, your passion, your strengths, and your weaknesses to work in and through and with.  Christ still moves around in the world through the filter of your you-ness.”

My me-ness definitely includes writing.  Writing helps me process life.  I think better when I write.  I love better, calm down, and see clearer when I write.  

I can’t not write.

What is it you can’t stop doing?  

Maybe that’s the thing you were meant to do - the art you were made to live.

Be brave.  Write.  Create.  Be you.