One Thousand Blessings

I'm reading a book called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. In it she talks about how she learned "eucharisteo" - grace, joy and thanksgiving.  She took a dare to list 1,000 things she loved and it changed her.  It taught her gratitude.  It taught her to see God in the little things all around us.  So, now I'm taking the dare.  Can I list one thousand blessings that I see from God?

Here it goes:

1. Little boy cheeks kissed by the sun during a day by the lake
2. Beach sand shimmering like gold, full of mica
3. My daughter engrossed in a book that I also loved as a child
4. My son being snuggly
5. Grandfather and grandson building a dam in a creek
6. My 10 year old daughter's observation that  "Malificent had a tragic backstory"


Would anyone like to join me in finding one thousand blessings in the world around us?

Life Decisions

Ok. I know I've been gone a long time. I apologize. Life has been busy and exhausting and once I got out of the routine of writing I couldn't seem to get myself back into it. So, here I am, trying to get back in the habit of writing.

Recently I was out to eat with a friend and we were talking about the dreams we had for ourselves and how life has changed those dreams or squashed them. I told her that I've been strongly tempted lately to give up on my dream in favor or pursuing a career that has much better prospects for improving the financial situation for my family. The talents that I see in myself don't seem to easily translate into stable income, unless I happen to become famous, which we all know is not likely to occur. So, with that in mind, I've been thinking about going back to school to do something that can get me a well paying job. I don't really know what that would be. Maybe programming or web design or something in the medical field. She said, "Yeah, you could do that, but don't you think you would be miserable?"

I asked my husband what he thought, and he said, "You have only one life. You should do what's in your heart."

In theory, I agree with them. In real life, I don't think it's as simple as that. I wonder if it would be better to spend my life doing "what's in my heart" and quite possibly staying in poverty and never finding much success or spend my life in a career that maybe I don't love but gives my family a better quality of life.

Some people would say, "Do both." Well, at this point in time, I don't feel like I can. I can't work full time at my job, go to school, be mommy and wife and also find time, energy and inspiration to write. For some reason, right now I feel pressure to make a decision and choose one or the other.

Of course, I suppose that it is possible that I could write my book, get it published and end up making a good living with it, but that's not something I can bank on. Everyone knows someone who is a writer (if they aren't one themselves) and very few people can live on what they make as such. Maybe it's just my pessimistic nature, (I prefer to call it realistic, not pessimistic) but it doesn't seem like a great gamble to make.

What do you think?

Summer-itis

I have summer-itis.  Is it even called that anymore?  I don’t know.  That’s what we called it when I was in high school, anway.  I have an acute case of “school-is-almost-over-and-I-can’t-wait!”  The crazy thing about it is that I’m not the one who is in school.  It’s my kids!  I’m so tired of homework, papers to sign, activities to keep track of, school mornings, lunches, and herding everyone out the door.  We have a week of school left and I am so ready to be done.

My daughter has one project left, and it is insane!  She’s supposed to build an electrical circuit that can turn on a light bulb.  Seriously?  She’s in the 4th grade.  I didn’t ever have to do this.  Not even in college. (Of course, I didn’t study electrical engineering, but that is beside the point.)  How is a 9 year old supposed to know how to do this?  The obvious answer is; they’re not. Mom and Dad are supposed to do it… I mean help them do it.

I am feeling so overwhelmed by this project that I nearly had an emotional breakdown about it the other night.  I had to go for a walk and pray some peace into my soul.

Also, I’m at the point that I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me if she gets it done or not.  I don’t care if she gets a zero on her last project of the year.  I just don’t want to deal with it.  But…I know that I should care.  It should matter to me and I should be excited about helping her with it.  I feel a lot of pressure for her project to be amazing because I know that there are kids in her class who have engineers for parents and the bar will be set pretty high.

Honestly, I think the problem is that the project is making me feel stupid.  I don’t have the slightest idea how to begin.  I’ve had to google it and even then, anything but the most basic of instructions looks like a foreign language to me.  So, it’s easier for me to mentally check out of this thing than to do the work it will take to learn enough about electrical circuits to help my 9 year old daughter build one for a school project.  It’s just hard for me to accept that I am already at the point of not understanding my children’s homework.  I didn’t think this would happen until high school.  Lord help me when we get to there!

Of course, the situation isn’t helped by the fact that, as a grown-up with a full-time job in the corporate world, there will be no summer vacation for me.  I tend to forget that though, in the race to the end of the school year. But then, one day I realize, yes, summer is coming, but the care-free days of playing in the pool, reading fun books and hanging out with friends every day are gone.  I have responsibilities that don’t go away just because summer is here.  And then, I get a bit depressed.  Yeah, there are weekends and I’ll probably take a few days off here and there, but it’s not the same. Maybe someday I will have summers like that again.   I think that's something I'm going to have to pray about.

Ode to my Grandmother

This past weekend was my grandmother’s 80^th birthday. Needless to say, there was a big shindig at her house to celebrate. My mom called me the night before and asked if I could “write a poem or something to read for Grandma at the party tomorrow”. Um, OK.

So, I came up with kind of a silly little poem. Some of my family members asked if I could type it up, so here it is, my impromptu ode to my grandmother:


There was an old lady who lived in a shoe. 
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do…

Wait, that was a different lady. Let me start again.

There was a young lady who lived in a pink house, and a blue house and a green house and a brown house, too.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
Those children would grown and finally leave through the front door
Just to be replaced by two or three or four, maybe more.
Over the years, she cared for so many:
Nieces, nephews, in-laws and grandchildren aplenty.

Her home came to be known all across the land
As a place where wonderful food could be had.
“Beerocks, veninakas, cinnamon rolls and bread!
Cookies, cobblers and more!” everyone said.
Everything fresh and hot, made from scratch.
Laverne at the last cookie? Time to whip up a batch!
“How does she do it?” people asked with such awe.
“Her house is so clean! There’s no dirt at all!”

But bigger than that, more important by far,
Is the part of her life that makes her a star.
This lady serves Jesus like no one I’ve known.
She serves him by serving others; sometimes all alone.
She prays for her family and friends through their trails
Even while through her own tears she smiles.

So now she’s turned 80 and still going strong.
(I think she still be here when MY grandchildren come along.)
There’s still lots to do before her time is done.
Her family still needs her, each and every one.
She taught us that family means people who care.
She holds us all together with her love and food and prayer.

I love you, Grandma. Happy Birthday!

Unexpected Solutions

After such an extended absence, I feel like I have some explaining to do. For anyone who was left hanging by my last post and has been wondering what happened, I apologize. The simple answer is that things got really, really crazy and I didn’t have the time or energy to write about it all.

So, if you will recall, September 11^th was the last day we could be in our apartment, due to the 60 day notice that our landlords gave us. As of the end of July, we hadn’t been able to find any place that had the three bedrooms we needed and was in our price range. Anything big enough was way out of our price range. Anything in our price range was two bedrooms or less, and I didn’t think that any landlords would be willing to rent such a place to a family of five. I started feeling desperate.

My husband and I had been praying and really seeking God to find his will for us in the situation and we were looking for any open door. We prayed about moving away, but we both felt strongly that it was not time for us to leave the Bay Area. Things were going well for us at our church, in our ministries and at our children’s school. We believed we were somehow supposed to stay, we just didn’t know where.

Because of the way my payday fell in the month of August, I had to wait until the 4^th to pay the rent. This is technically late, but we have always had a 5 day grace period, so I didn’t think much about it. On the 2^nd, we received a 3-Day Notice to Pay or Quit from the landlords. Again, I wasn’t too worried about it, because I knew I would have it on the 4^th. On the 3^rd, my husband and I struck up a conversation with our neighbor. He had heard about the 3-day notice and, since his mother owns several rental properties and has dealt with many evictions over the years, he shared his knowledge with us. He said that by law, the landlord could refuse to accept our rent, and if they did that, we would be bound by the 3-day notice and would have to be out of our place in 3 working days instead of the 35 days we had remaining on our 60 day Notice.

I started to really panic. I went upstairs and started doing research on the internet. I found really conflicting information about what the law was and lots of renter horror stories. My brain went into overdrive trying to come to grips with the possibility that we might have to be out in 2 days. The logical part of my mind believed that because it was a “Pay or Quit” notice, not a “3-day Notice to Vacate” that we should be fine, but I couldn’t be sure. The emotional side of me began to fall apart. I didn’t feel like I could handle anything else. As it was, I went through each day barely holding myself together. I was hanging onto the promise that God would take care of us by my finger nails. The fear that our time had run out a month earlier than expected pushed me over the edge.

Since the kids were safely in bed, I went to my room and completely broke down. I found myself on my knees at the side of my bed sobbing. I tried to plan where we would go and what we would do, but I couldn’t think straight. The darkness of the night felt like it was pressing in on me as my fear became overwhelming and blocked out every other thought. I had trusted God, tried to serve Him when and wherever I believed he wanted me to, and now, when things were already a huge mess, they were about to get so much worse. I couldn’t understand why we were being abandoned this way.

Eventually, I started to realize that this onslaught of emotion that I couldn’t get a handle on could be the result of a spiritual attack. I had a mental image of demons all around me pressing in on me and taking advantage of my mental and emotional exhaustion to capitalize on this moment of weakness. The only words I could form were, “God, help me!” I said it again and again.

A little while later, a song came to mind. It was an old one that I grew up singing in church but hadn’t heard in years, called “In the Name of Jesus”. If you don’t know it, here are the lyrics:

In the name of Jesus

In the name of Jesus

We have the victory

In the name of Jesus

In the name of Jesus

Demons will have to flee

When we stand on the name of Jesus

Tell me who can stand before?

In the mighty name of Jesus

We have the victory

It’s a simple little song, but I grabbed onto it with everything I had left. I climbed up onto my bed and laid there singing that song, softly, over and over. Slowly, I felt peace begin to grow in my heart. The emotional darkness began to lift and I began to relax. Whatever happened the next day, whether the landlord took the rent or not, I started to believe that it would be ok. God had always taken care of us before, we wouldn’t leave us now. I went to sleep that night still concerned, but no longer terrified of what would happen the next day.

In the morning, I saw the landlord and she greeted me, just as happy and cheerful as can be, as if she had not just given us a 60-day notice followed by a 3-day notice. I asked if she had gotten the rent we left for her and she said, “Oh, yes I did. Thank you!”, sounding as if she was not at all concerned about it. I didn’t know whether to be relieved that it was all fine, incredulous that she was so flippant about the whole situation and seemingly unaware (or uncaring) of the really difficult and stressful situation she had put us in, or angry that I had spent the evening before being so tormented by possibility of something that wasn’t an issue at all. Really, I felt all three of those.

Since we were now assured of a place to live for the month of August, I got back to the discouraging work of apartment hunting. We put in an application at a “low income” housing community and were told that there would be a 4 month wait, at least. We checking into several other such places, but they all wanted application fees and credit check fees. We could have spent hundreds of dollars just applying at apartment complexes, let alone the 1^st month’s rent, deposit, etc. We just didn’t have the money to do it and time was running out. We kept packing and praying and looking. Our friends were also looking and praying.

On August 18^th, the moms group I belong to met and I shared with them my fear and worry about the situation. That night, my good friend shared with me that her husband had helped another family that we know from church to move some of their big furniture. They were moving in with the wife’s father since her mom had passed away a few years werlier and dad was all alone in their big house. It came out, while they were moving sofas, that they were interested in renting out their condo, but didn’t really know where to start.

I dared to hope that this could be the answer we were looking for. Since we were on friendly terms with them, I sent the wife an email. I found out from her that it was a two bedroom condo, which was smaller than what we wanted, but they knew about out family situation and didn’t have a problem with all 5 of us living there. Except for the number of bedrooms, the place had everything else we needed (and some things we didn’t need, but wanted). The price was right, too. About one week later, we met to sign the papers. It all fell into place so beautifully that I had a hard time not thinking that it was too good to be true.

The day the place was ready for us to move in was the very day we had to be out of the old place. Moving day was one of the most difficult and exhausting days of my life, but we made it. We had several friends and neighbors show up to help us and we really couldn’t have done it without them. They were my heroes that day. Not only did they work really hard, they encouraged us when it looked hopeless and we didn’t think we would get it done in one day. I am so thankful for them!

Living in our new place has been a big adjustment. We’re quite a bit farther from work, church and school than we used to be. We spend a lot more time driving and a lot more money on gas. We live in peace, though. We rent from people that care about us and will fix things when they need to be fixed. My kids can go outside to play in the front yard. I don’t have to yell at them any more for jumping in the house because there are no downstairs neighbors to worry about disturbing. It’s a better, quieter neighborhood. And, we can see the stars at night! (Maybe that sounds strange, but we really couldn’t see them where we lived before.)

So, God came through. In spite of my fear and doubt and worry, he took care of it in a way that I never could have planned or expected. He took a terrible situation and used it to get us into a much better one. It was scary and difficult and horrible, but I’m so glad it happened and that we are on the other side of it now.

Have you been through something that looked hopeless but God showed up with an amazing solution? I’d love to hear your story!

60 Days

I know I have been absent from my blog lately and I apologize. My life went crazy a few weeks ago. Not just a little crazy. A lot crazy. I’ve been reluctant to write because I’m struggling and I don’t want my posts to always be about struggling and pain. Also, I just didn’t have any words. I would sit at the computer and stare at the screen thinking, “I should write about what’s going on,” but no words would come.

On July 10^th, we got notice from our landlords that we have to leave in 60 days. They’ve been trying to get us to leave for quite some time. They just finally decided to stop trying to make us want to leave and just kick us out. With a 60 day notice there doesn’t have to be any particular reason and there is no real recourse. We just have to leave.

Initially, I handled the news well. I was even feeling a little excited because I’ve been wanting to move out of this place for so long. It’s too small for us, it’s old and it is falling apart. This is the time for God to step in and provide a new, better place to live. He has to, right?

Now I’m 21 days into the search for a new place, though, and the excitement has given way to fear. We live in the Bay Area of California and the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. The truth is, we don’t have enough income to meet the expense of renting even a 3 bedroom apartment here.

For the past few years, I’ve been praying for a house with a yard for my kids to play in and enough bedrooms that my daughter (who will be starting puberty soon) will not have to share with her brother and her grandmother anymore. I haven’t been asking for a mansion, just a modest three or four bedroom house with a little backyard and room for the kids to play and grow. I’d been trying to dream big and believe that God wants to bless me and give me good gifts. Now, though, I’m wondering if I was wrong to believe that God would do such a thing for me. Now, I’m wondering if I should stop expecting for the best from him and start looking for anything from him.

I want to believe that God is going to use this to bring us a wonderful blessing, but the money just isn’t there to afford a monthly payment for what we need. The way things have been going, I’m afraid that we are going to end up in a smaller place or in a bad neighborhood, or worse yet, living in a cheap motel.

I know that “All things work together…” blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t help me right now. At this moment, I need tangible answers to prayer. I need to see that God has something in the works to take care of this problem because it really is starting to look like he has left us hanging out here all on our own to figure this out.

I’m not supposed to be afraid though. “Faith and fear can’t take up the same space.” I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I know it’s true, but right now fear has chased my faith away, because I don’t really know that God is going to come through with a great place for us to live. I know we will be taken care of and that all our needs will be met, but I don’t know that God isn’t going to let things get worse before they get better.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but I haven’t figured it out yet, so it keeps coming up. I’ve been taught that in order for God to answer our prayers we have to believe and not doubt.

“Believe. Don’t doubt.”

“God answers our prayers when we believe.”

If God is a god who is going to not answer my prayers or bless my life because I am struggling and I’m scared and confused and angry and feeling desperate, then maybe I don’t want him. I don’t know that I want to serve a god who is limited by my faith at any given moment, because, to be honest, I’m a basket case. My emotions and faith fluctuate all the time. From day to day, from hour to hour, the way I am feeling and how much I am trusting God varies enormously. So, is God up there constantly monitoring the level of my faith in order to see if he can work in my life? Is he going to say, “Oh, you were almost there. I could have answered your prayer, but you had a bad day today and stopped believing that I was going to come through, so we have to start all over again. Better luck next time.”

That doesn’t seem like the character of the loving God that would send his son to die for the sins of people who hadn’t even been born yet so that they could one day be with him. I just can’t believe that it really works that way. I just wish that I could figure out which way it does work.

　

This situation has revealed to me how many wonderful friends we have and how many people are supporting us and praying for us. It’s really been an amazing blessing. What has been really hard for me, though, is how often I have had to talk about money. As in how much we have (or don’t have). I really don’t like letting people in on what really is going on in our bank account. It’s not a pretty picture and it’s one I’d rather that my friends don’t see. However, I have to tell them what we can afford to pay every month if they are going to be any help in finding something for us.

Every time I do, though, I feel ashamed. Every time I say it out loud, I feel that I am admitting to my failure to provide well for my family, because it reveals once again how hopeless and impossible the situation looks. I know that the amount of money that I have bears no relation to my worth as a person, but it is really hard not to connect the two in this culture, in this time in history. I should not be in this situation. I should be able to do better. Admitting that I can’t is embarrassing and humiliating.

People are worried about us and I don’t want them to be. I don’t want the people I care about to feel sorry for me. I see it in their eye and hear it in their voice, though. They try to encourage me and tell me that everything is going to work out, and I agree with them. I tell them that I know that God is going to take care of us and we’ll find something, and sometimes I believe that, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I say the bold faith-filled statements because I’m trying to make them feel better. I don’t want them to know how scared I really am. I want my friends to think that I am strong and I don't want them to know that sometimes I’m barely holding it together.

So, there it is. That’s what’s been going on and why I haven’t written, for anyone who noticed. Please don’t feel sorry for us. Just pray for us. Please pray that God will provide a good place for us to live. Pray that I can have the faith to trust him in the midst of the turmoil. Pray that we can see clearly where he has an open door for us and that we have the strength to walk through to wherever he’s trying to lead us.

In spite of it all. . . In spite of all the doubt and the fear and the insecurity, I want to go where he’s leading. I want to stay in his will because I believe that is the safest place for us to be.

A Wedding, A Show and A Prayer

For anyone who has been waiting for my posts the last few weeks, I apologize. We’ve had a very busy last two weeks. My cousin got married on June 23^rd, so we took a mini family vacation to L.A. to attend the wedding. It was an AMAZING event! I hope Alex and Sammie don’t mind if I post a few pictures. 

All the little details and final touches made it so memorable. We had a great time!

My family.  Just so you know we were actually there. ^_^

I know it’s nothing like what his parents feel about it, but it’s a very strange thing to watch a young man that you carried around when he was a newborn, played with when he was a toddler and teased when he was a teenager, stand in front of all his family and friends and commit his life in marriage to a beautiful young woman. He’s become a grown man, tall and handsome. I’m happy for him and sad at the same time.

I watched my own little guy running around with his cousins and dancing like crazy on the dance floor and thought about how one day, before I know it, I’ll be watching him make the same commitment to a young lady that he loves. I hope and pray that he turns out as well as Alex did.


We came back from the wedding just in time to get into the final rehearsals for the Celebrate America show that our church does every year for the 4^th of July. It’s a huge patriotic event and concert that we do that the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View every year. My husband is in the choir, my kids are in the kids choir, and I had volunteered to help with the kids, so we had a lot of practices to do and were out late every night from Wednesday to Saturday June 30^th, the day of the show.

That day, just before the show started, there was a very difficult situation that happened backstage, which ended with me feeling deeply hurt and rejected and my daughter not performing in the show. I’m not going to get into the specifics of it here, because I’m in the process of trying to work it out with the others involved. However, the resulting emotional fallout for me has lasted for days. It left me questioning myself, my value and my judgment. It actually kept me up for several nights because I couldn’t stop the rerunning the event in my mind and planning what I should say to whom in order to deal with it.

Needless to say, it’s been a long few weeks.

The other day while I was working, I had Air1 radio playing. The song Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray came on and the words kind of popped out at me. I’ve heard this song many times, but maybe I wasn’t really listening before. It was the words from the chorus that caught my attention:

Tell me, once again
Who I am to You, who I am to You
Tell me, lest I forgetete
Who I am to You, that I belong to You
To You

I think that lately I have forgotten who I am. In all the chaos of living every day in a life filled with difficulty, struggle, disappointment and insecurity I’ve lost sight of who I am in Christ.

Intellectually, I know that I am a daughter of the King and, as the Bible says, joint heirs with Christ. The problem is that I don’t know that I’ve ever really internalized that. I don’t know how to live in this fallen world and yet keep in mind that my destiny lies beyond it. Sometimes I manage to hold onto the idea that I am a Child of the Most High God for a little while, but then life comes along and shatters that perception with the reality of here and now. My life certainly doesn’t look like that of royalty. It doesn’t look like I am highly favored and blessed. So, how do I maintain the knowledge that I am who the Bible says I am when my circumstances look more like those of a pauper?

Maybe I just need to hear it again from God. That’s probably something I should start praying about.

Heavenly Father, I know that the Bible is supposed to be enough for me to know that you love me. I also know that the very fact that you sent your son to die in my place is also all the evidence I should need. I’m just so weak. My heart is fragile and I get discouraged so easily. This world seems determined to beat me down these days and it’s so easy for me to forget and feel unloved and forgotten by you. I get distracted by how hard life is and forget that this is only the dress rehearsal for eternity.

So, please forgive my weakness. And, please tell me again who I am to, that I belong to you. Please tell me again that I’m the one you love. And help me not to forget.

Amen

Discouragement

I don’t feel very blessed these days. I feel beat up. The last few weeks have been rough. There hasn’t been anything tragic, just one discouraging situation after another. I’ve been struggling with daily headaches for almost two weeks now. That alone is enough to wear a person down, but there have been several other things, too.

- We were given a bed that was supposed to be great for my back but actually made things worse.

- My good friend at work was laid off a couple of weeks ago. Then her sister had a stroke last Wednesday.

- I discovered the other day that my son probably needs glasses.

- I was approached about a job on Tuesday that sounded like it would be a wonderful opportunity for me.  I worked hard on getting my resume and cover letter updated, sent it in on Thursday and found out yesterday that they have already filled the position.

- Our landlord has been hassling us about getting our van fixed, but we have to save up enough money to get the work done on it so it will pass smog. Today they had it towed because they don’t want to look at it anymore.

I know that the Bible says that God wants to give good gifts to his children (Matthew 7:11), and that he has plans to prosper us (Jeremiah 29:11). I also know that he will give me what I ask for if I pray believing (Mark 11:24, Matthew 21:22), and that wants us to live abundant lives (John 10:10). I know that because that’s what I’ve been hearing from pastors and teachers like Joel Osteen and Bruce Wilkinson. I just want to know what I am supposed to do to receive those blessings, because I don’t see many of them coming my way. I see problems and trouble.

I feel cursed rather than blessed.

I’m not supposed to say that, though. I’m only supposed to speak words of faith. I’m supposed to keep my eyes on my blessings and keep hoping. Keep believing. Always keep believing. Because that is what we have to do, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. “Never mind how it looks. Keep your eyes on Jesus.”

I have some Bible verses taped to my computer monitor at work. Here are the words that I put there shortly after I was hired to remind myself:

He will keep in perfect peace all who trust in him, all whose thoughts are fixed on him!” Isaiah 26:3

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20

So let us come boldly to the throne of you gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:16

Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him. Hebrews 10:22

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

I don’t expect my life to be perfect. I’ve been taught, though, that I can expect God to be my healer. I’ve been taught that I can expect God to lavish his love on me. I’ve been taught that if I follow his commands, I will receive the blessings he has promised his children. I don’t know how many sermons I’ve sat through that told me that if I give my tithe, God will “throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” (Malachi 3:10)

I’ve spent my life trying my best to follow his commands. I’ve always tried to make the best decisions in the circumstances that I found myself in. I didn’t always succeed, but I tried.

I just would like something to go right, for once. I’d like to see those floodgates opening up. I’d like to see some healing come my way.

Over the past few years I’ve been trying to look for the opportunities that come my way and go for them, because I don’t want to miss out on a potential blessing that God is sending me. Sometimes, though, when I have reached for that opportunity and it has once again been snatched away just out of my reach, or what looks like a blessing turns out to not be one at all, I start to wonder why I try. I wonder why I keep putting myself in the position of being disappointed, again.

This is when I start hearing the voice of discouragement. It’s when I start thinking, “It’s easier to stop hoping and just accept that this is the way things are and you can’t expect better.” I start hearing, “Look how your Loving God is treating you. It‘s like he‘s looking for ways to make things harder instead of ways to bless you. He keeps teasing you with possibilities for things to get better so you‘ll get your hopes up and then lets it all fall apart. He doesn’t want the best for you. He just wants to see how long you can take the torture before you give up.”

I don’t really believe these things. It’s just the crazy stuff that goes through my head. I know it’s not true, but I’m just so tired of everything being hard. I’m just ready to see some of those blessings that I’ve been promised. I’m ready for some of that rest he promised, too.

(My husband would probably want me to let you know that there is a certain amount of PMS which is adding fuel to this diatribe. I always tell him that PMS isn’t the cause of my frustration or anger, it just makes me less able to tolerate the things that already drive me crazy.)

I know that I should start “counting my blessings” and looking for all the ways that God has provided. I also know that I will probably feel better in a few days. But, for anyone who has felt like they are living on the receiving end of the jokes of some Cosmic Prankster, I feel your pain. If you’ve figured out how to get out of that place, please let me in on your secret. (^_^)

Hiding Behind "Fine"

“What looks like strength on the outside is actually a cavernous well of neediness on the inside.” - Emily Freeman - Grace for the Good Girl

The more I think about that, the more I realize how right she is. The times in my life when I have been the “strongest” were the times when I really was a big mess, but wouldn’t let anyone see that. I had to hold it all together when I really wanted to fall apart. I needed someone to lean on, but either there was no one around, or I was too ashamed of my neediness to reach out.

I took pride in my strength. I had been through a lot and I had not crumbled. I was strong. I could handle whatever came my way. Getting mad about it doesn’t change anything. Crying about it doesn’t do any good, so just take it, deal with it, move on and try not to think about it.

I did get mad, though. I did a lot of raging at God when no one was listening. I did cry, too. At night, in my pillow when no one would see my weakness. Then, I would get upset because no one reached out to me. No one was there to help me go through my pain. No one knew how much I was hurting and how scared I was.

The problem was, I had told everyone that I was fine. I was handling it. I was strong. I taught everyone that I didn’t need help. I didn’t need anyone. I was fine by myself.

But I wasn’t.

Every time I told someone I was fine, I wanted them to look into my eyes and see the truth. I wanted someone to see what I couldn’t show them. I needed somebody to hear the words I couldn’t bring myself to say.

Most of the time, though, they didn’t. I don’t know if that is because I was such a great actress, or because they were oblivious to the signs or if maybe they did know but didn’t know what to do to help. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, because the effect was the same. I was alone dealing with the mess that was my life along with my pain and my shame.

These days, I’m trying not to hide behind my “strength”.   I have people close enough to me that I can call when I’m not doing well and talk to them about it. I spent quite a few years behind the mask of my strength, though, so taking it off is still hard. I feel vulnerable and exposed, but that’s better than being closed off and isolated.

Maybe because I lived behind that mask for so long, I seem to be able to sense when other people are doing that, too. Especially when I know that something difficult is going on, I try to be the one to look into their eyes and see the pain that they are trying to hide. I try to be the one who says, “I know you are ‘fine’, but how are you really?” They might not tell me, but I hope that they will know, in that moment, that someone sees and cares. And maybe, they will also know that God knows and he cares, too.

　

You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 58: 8

　

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7

　

Written on My Heart

Today my friend and I were emailing back and forth, discussing the struggles we have in forming deep meaningful relationships. I wrote this to her:

“Sometimes I still am a bit surprised that you (or anyone for that matter) would really want to be my friend and I wonder if you are just putting up with me out of the goodness of your heart. I tell myself that it isn’t true, but it creeps up on me now and then. It is so ingrained in me to believe it, that often the best I can do is act like it’s not true, even though, deep down, I really suspect that it is.”

After I sent that to her, I got to thinking about why that would be. Why do I have that basic belief about myself? Then God reminded me of something that I wrote just last week as part of a new writing project…

When I was a little girl, Wonder Woman was my hero. She was beautiful and strong and she always captured the bad guys. I remember playing in the back yard of my friend Leah’s house when I was seven years old. We ran all over her yard pretending to be superheroes. I did my slow-motion Wonder Woman spin to change from my unassuming alter-ego, Linda Carter, to the fearless crime fighter in a red, white and blue leotard with bullet proof wrist bands and the Lasso of Truth. Leah was Supergirl. We chased bad guys over the top of the play structure, down the slide and around to the front of the house where we captured them and saved the world from their evil plots. It was great fun.

Leah was my best friend. Her family lived around the corner from mine in those days. We played together almost every day. My first sleepover was at her house. I didn’t sleep much that night. The sounds were different. The bed felt different. The moonlight shined into her bedroom differently than it did in mine. I was kind of scared, but I was with my best friend, so I didn’t want to go home.

One day Leah told me that she was having a slumber party at her house. She said she could only invite her five best friends and those were her friends from school, so I wouldn’t be able to come. You see, Leah went to private school and I went to public school, so we had different school friends. She went on to explain that she was sorry, but I was her sixth best friend after Jennifer, Leslie, Allison, Rochelle, and Melissa. That was the day that I realized that Leah only played with me because I lived around the corner from her. She played with me when there wasn’t anyone else for her to play with. That was the day I understood that although I loved Leah and she was my best friend, Leah didn’t really love me. I was only her sixth best friend.

I had a moment of clarity when I realized that this event is the basis for my belief that others wouldn’t really want to be friends with me. I have carried the baggage of this my entire life and I didn’t realize it. A seven year old little girl wrote on my heart that I wasn’t worthy to be her friend and therefore I don’t really believe that I’m worthy of anyone else’s friendship.

I think that the saddest part of that memory is what happened after the slumber party. I stayed away from Leah for a couple of weeks, but then I got lonely. I desperately wanted someone to play with, so I went back to Leah’s house to see if she would play with me. In those two weeks, she didn’t come looking for me even once. She didn’t ask me where I had been. I don’t think she even noticed. I knew that going back meant that I was settling for being her 6^th best friend, but I did it anyway.

Now, I can look back on my relationship with Leah with my grown up eyes and see that she was not a good friend to me. I see the ways she talked down to me and showed off all the things she had that I didn’t have. She was bossy and snobbish and she had a mean streak. I don’t think that she meant to hurt me that day, but she did mean to make clear to me that I was not as important to her as her other friends. I just think she was too self-absorbed to realize how much that would hurt.

So now that I know where that belief came from, I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Or about it, because that picture of myself as the sad little girl who isn’t quite good enough to be included is still there. Maybe knowing will enable me to counter those feelings when they come up. Maybe I need to take it to Jesus and ask him to erase those words from my heart and write his truth there, instead.

Here is what I found in the Bible about the truth of who I am to God:

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs —heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8:16-17

According to this, if I am a child of God, then I am God’s heir. Actually a co-heir with Christ. That blows my mind!  God values me enough to make me first, his child, and second, an inheritor along with Christ. If Christ is the Son of God and the Prince of Peace, and I have been adopted into the family, then doesn't that make me royalty?

Now that is something I want written on my heart.

Being Vulnerable

Last Saturday I met with some of the ladies I know from church. We shared coffee and tea and dessert and talked about our babies and friendship. At the urging of my friend (and co-leader of the group) I read the blog post I wrote a few weeks ago about my Fear of Friendship.

It didn’t occur to me that it would be hard to read my own words in front of other people, but when the time came and I spoke the words I had penned regarding my own journey toward meaningful relationships, I became very self-conscious. Talking about my failures at past attempts at friendship and my preference for isolation rather than risking rejection in front of several women I admire and whose opinion I value was difficult, to say the least.

When I finished, I sat there with all those eyes on me and felt that I had laid myself bare before them. I didn’t look up for a little while, because I was a kind of afraid of what I would see on their faces. An interesting thing happened, though. As the conversation got going, one by one, each lady talked about her own challenges in making and keeping friends.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was safe with these ladies. They have the same struggles that I do. They have been hurt, too.  They have the same longing to be truly known and loved, faults, craziness and all.
There was a moment when we all looked at each other in a kind of surprise when we realized that every one of us felt the same way. We were all looking for safe friendship. I think it was a moment of unexpected connection. I hope it was the beginning of some wonderful, deep relationships.

We know that God did not intend us to live in isolation. Some of the first words that he said after creating Adam in the Garden of Eve were, “It is not good for man to be alone”. We also know that his plan for the church was to enable us to lived in community with our fellow believers in Christ. So, how is it that we can go to church every week, shake hands with our “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, even attend church social events and then go home feeling so alone? Is it that attending a large church give the illusion of community while still being in the midst of anonymity? 

Is it our technology based, fast paced culture that has us spending all our evenings in front of our tv’s and computers instead of visiting with our friends and actually talking to each other? 

Is it that we are so media and news saturated that we are afraid to get to know people for fear that they could be a mass murderer in disguise? 

It’s probably all of those things, plus a few I haven’t thought of. I do know, however, that we have to find a way to connect with each other on a meaningful level if we are going to have fulfilling lives. I’m starting to learn that what I have to do to get to that place of meaningful relationship is to allow myself to be vulnerable. I have to trust people to know me and not hurt me. As scary as it is, I have to be willing to be seen as I really am in order to be truly known. I’ve also been learning that when I take the step of trusting, others feel a little more comfortable to trust, too.  And that's when true relationship develops.

Putting Jesus in a Box

I was just sitting here reading my Grace for the Good Girl book when I had an epiphany. I have decided that there are things that are worthy of God’s involvement and things that are not. 

The passage that brought this to light is about Mary and Martha and how Martha so busy doing all the things that needed to be done that she missed Jesus. The Savior of all mankind was in her living room and she was all wrapped up in making sure everyone got fed and was comfortable in her home.

This is how it reads in the New International Version of the Bible:

³⁸ As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-41

Here is how Emily Freeman says it: “Martha put natural limitations on a supernatural God. There were people in her home who were hungry and needed to eat. It wouldn’t be right to let them starve. Perhaps she placed her interpretation of what the people needed above the Lord’s. In her eyes, they needed food. Her knowledge of what happens when people get hungry outweighed her ability to imagine the impossible. She potentially missed out on watching a miracle because she was depending on herself to feed the people.”

Martha put Jesus in a box. She decided that if his visit to her home was going to be successful, she would have to make sure that it went well. She thought that Jesus was too important to concern himself with the mundane things, like seeing to the physical needs of the people, so she jumped in and tried to handle it all herself.

But, we know from The Feeding of the Five Thousand (Luke 9:10-17) and The Feeding of the Four Thousand (Mark 8:1-10) that Jesus was aware of the physical needs of his people and knew how to handle them.

Martha got so overwhelmed with all that needed to be done that she complained to Jesus and asked him to make her sister, Mary, get up and help her. She realized there was more to be done than she could do herself, but even at that point, she didn’t ask Jesus what she should do or ask for his help. She told him what the solution was. She said, “Make my sister help me!”

I wonder how the scene would have changed if she had said, “Jesus, all these people are hungry, what should we do?” Maybe everyone would have gotten up and worked together to make a meal. Maybe Jesus himself would have gone to the kitchen and created dinner for them, crafting a parable in the process. We will never know because Martha didn’t ask that question.

In my last post I admitted to my less-than-stellar housekeeping skills and how that has affected my comfort about inviting people to my home. What God just showed me this evening is that somewhere along the way I decided that it is all up to me to keep my home clean and organized, and God has nothing do do with it. It’s up to me to get it done, therefore my inability to do it to my own satisfaction has become a source of great shame in my life. I’ve gotten frustrated that other people (my family) haven’t helped enough, and I’ve complained about the situation. I’ve developed chores schedules and calendars for when things should be done. I’ve set up a reward system to encourage (bribe) my kids to do more chores. None of these things worked. Not once, though, have I asked God to help me with it. It never even occurred to me.

I’ve gotten better at relying on God in the crisis times. I’m learning to rely on him to meet our financial needs, because I know for sure that I can’t do that on my own. I take my concerns about parenting my children to him. The every day tasks, though, why would I rely on God for those? I can handle it. I’m supposed to be able to handle it!

Obviously I can’t, though. If I could, my living room floor would not be the hazardous obstacle course of toys, backpacks, last night’s pajamas, soccer balls and hula hoops that it is every day.

So, I think I am going to try a new tactic. I’m going to ask God to help me get my home cleaned up and organized. I’m going to take the problem to Jesus, and instead of telling him what the answer should be, I’ll see what kind of solution he can provide me.

What do you think? Do you think that God cares about things like daily chores? Do you have certain things in your life that you have designated as “my job” and others that are “God’s job”? Are there things in your life that you should ask him to help you with that you have considered to be too small or mundane for him to care about or have a solution for?

Hiding

I recently picked up a book called “Grace for the Good Girl - letting go of the try-hard life.” I saw the author, Emily Freeman, on a Canadian talk show My New Day. I watched the video on you tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05_f6TcaItM

Even the title of the book sort of calls to me, because I am a good girl. I have always been the good girl. In my family when I was growing up, I was the responsible one who didn’t get in much trouble. At school, I was the smart one who got good grades and didn’t cause problems. (Often I was referred to as the “Teacher’s Pet”, which I hated because I knew it was a derogatory term, but I didn’t really understand what the problem was with that. The teachers always liked me. Isn’t that a good thing?) In high school, my “good girl” status went up a few notches because of the standards I held myself to in terms of boys. I intended to wait for sex until marriage, and that definitely made me a “good girl”, in my own eyes as well as the eyes of others.

Looking back on it, I can see that my good girl reputation and standards in this area was mostly due to fear. I was terribly afraid of getting pregnant and what my dad would do if I did. I felt desperate for male attention and romance, but I was too much of a good girl to go for just anyone. I mean, what would people think if I had a boyfriend who was a loser? I was much too smart for that! I couldn’t have anyone talking about how stupid I had been for ruining my life because of some boy that I had “fallen in love” with.

Any boy that I would allow myself to be in a relationship with had to share my faith, too. That’s the rule. You don’t have sex before you are married and you don’t date anyone who isn’t also a Christian. Now, part of this was just good judgment. My parents and Sunday School Teachers and Youth Group Leaders had taught me these things. I had also seen the results of not following these rules played out in the lives of kids at school, as well as at church. The problem came when my ability to follow the rules and make good decisions became a source of pride in my life. I judged myself to be better than those kids who didn’t “keep themselves pure”. I looked down on those girls who had the reputation of giving the boys what they wanted. In my mind, I didn’t do that because I was better than that.

In reality, I didn’t do that because I was scared . . . and because no one asked me to. I don’t really know what would have happened if the opportunity had presented itself. The day I realized that was a sobering day for me. It was quite a shock to face the fact that the great reputation I had, a good part of the way I defined myself, my great self-control, could have disappeared very quickly if a guy I really, really liked had paid attention to me and tried to take advantage of my affection. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t better than anyone else. I was just protected. It had nothing at all to do with me and everything to do with God.

So, when you use something like your good reputation to define yourself, what happens when your life doesn’t live up to the standards that you, and everyone else, has for you. Well, if you are me, you work really hard to hide those parts of your life. You pretend like they don’t exist and make sure that no one gets close enough to see otherwise.

If you are me, and your life as a wife and mother doesn’t look like you think it should look, if it doesn’t look the way you think other people think it look, you make sure everyone is dressed their best for church on Sunday morning so that you can show up as the beautiful little coordinated family and people will think that you have it all together. You never mention the fights that you had with your children over the clothes that they are wearing. You don’t acknowledge the fact that you made your daughter cry because she wanted to wear the yellow dress, but you had decided that everyone should be wearing shades of blue today.

If you are me, you never invite people over to your house, because if they were to pass the threshold of your home they would not be able to ignore the fact that you are not a very good housekeeper and are not particularly gifted at organization. They would see all the old furniture and know that this mom has not accomplished what she should have in her life, because if she had, there would be designer furnishings and tasteful art on the walls and beautiful arrangements of family portraits in the hallway instead of this sad situation of clutter, hand-me-down sofas and piles of never-ending laundry.

These are things that must be hidden at all costs. No one must ever know, because if they did, the reputation would be ruined. People would think that I can’t hold it all together. They would think that, like my home, I must be a mess.

But the truth is. . . I AM a mess. I’m NOT holding it all together. The more I try to control everything that happens in my life, the more out of control it gets. And . . . I’m tired of hiding. I’m tired of being lonely because I’m afraid that people will reject me when they see that I’m not perfect.

So, at Emily Freeman’s urging, it’s official. I will no longer be hiding behind my good reputation. After all, if the truth is that my life is messy, but I pretend like it isn’t, then really, I’m living a lie. And I think that is also called "living in denial".

　

What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself. Ephesians 4:25 (The Message)

The Mommy She Needs

I’m exhausted. It’s not just that I’ve had three really long days in a row, although that doesn’t help. I think the biggest reason is that I sat in a meeting with my daughter’s 3^rd grade teacher, her Occupational Therapist, her Speech Therapist, the Resource Specialist and the school Principal for almost 2 hours this afternoon. All these people gathered together for her Annual IEP Meeting.

For anyone who doesn’t know, an IEP is an Individualized Education Program. It’s a specialized education plan for students with special needs. My daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of high functioning Autism. She is highly intelligent when it comes to reading and spelling (scoring in the 96^th and 99^th percentiles of children her age, respectively) and math, but she struggles to understand social communication and has a hard time learning social skills (which is why she has speech therapy). She also has challenges with both her fine and gross motor skills as well as her balance (which is why she has occupational therapy).

So, in an IEP Meeting, as a parent of a child with special needs, you sit and listen to the professionals discuss all the areas in which your child is deficient and needs help to learn to do the things that other children do naturally. Now, I am really glad that the school has given us access to these wonderful people who work hard to help kids who are struggling. I know that they care about my daughter and want the best for her. They even took the time to tell us what a delightful and creative child she is and to discuss her strengths and the ways she excels academically. I am so thankful that they can see not just the unusual behaviors, but the causes of them and that they have ways to help her in the areas she struggles.

It is really hard for me, though, to hear a big long list of things my daughter doesn’t do as well as she should. It breaks my heart that she doesn’t have friends because she doesn’t know to play with them the way typical children play. She has her own way of playing and she doesn’t know how to adapt that to include other children. Sometimes when I see her on the playground with the other children, I can see that her body just doesn’t seem to work they way it should. She can’t keep up with the running, jumping and climbing that the others do. She tries for a while, but then they outpace her and so she wanders off to find something else to do.

Over this past year she has begun to notice that she is different than her peers. This is a good developmental milestone for her, because it means that she is becoming more aware of other people instead of being so entirely wrapped up in her own mind, as she was before. There is a part of me, though, that preferred it when she didn’t see the differences. She was happier. She didn’t talk about the things she can’t do, like climbing the monkey bars, jumping rope or playing sports. She didn’t tell me that it was all her fault that her class lost the baseball game. She didn’t feel sad because no one wanted to play with her. She was happy by herself.

My husband doesn’t like me to talk about this stuff. He gets frustrated that I focus so much on her weaknesses instead of her strengths. The problem is that I don’t know how to help her with her weaknesses without focusing on them. Of course, I encourage her in her areas talent. She writes great, creative stories. Her artwork is coming along nicely. She sings well and loves to perform. Those things come naturally to her. I need to try to help her in the other areas, though. I have to help her learn how to stay focused, understand non-verbal communication, not interrupt people, stay on topic in a conversation, sustain appropriate eye contact, etc. I have to find a way to teach her things that people normally learn without being taught.

I know that these are things that the therapists can help her with, but I’m her mom, and there is a part of me that believes that it’s my responsibility to teach this stuff to her. I mean, it’s my job to teach her self-care skills, manners, values, how to get along with others, etc, how then can I turn over the teaching of social communication and skills to other people? It kind of feels like a cop-out. But, the problem is, I don’t know how to help her. I’ve been trying to teach these things to her since I noticed that she wasn’t picking them up, but she hasn’t been able to learn them from me.

Sometimes people tell me that God gave her to me to raise because he knew that I would be the best person to be her mommy. I don’t feel like I am the best person who could be her mommy. I feel woefully inadequate to give her all the things that she needs. I don’t have the skills needed to help her learn how to make her body move the way she wants it to. I don’t know how to pinpoint the elements of social interactions that she is missing so that she can then be taught how to do them. I don’t know if I am explaining this well, but what I mean is that while I can see that there is something strange about the way she communicates (or doesn’t), it’s hard for me to put my finger on what the difference is, in order to correct it. So, I have to rely on other people to figure these things out and help her with them. People who have these skills. People who are not her mommy, because her mommy isn’t enough.

Now, logically, I know that I’m being too hard on myself and that God gives us these other people to help us when we don’t know how to help ourselves, because we can‘t know everything. But, as I have said before, my emotions are rarely logical. I just know that my daughter is in for a long road, it is not going to be easy, and I can’t change it for her. I can’t wave a magic wand and make the Asperger’s Syndrome go away. I can’t wish on a star and *poof* she knows how to make friends.

I can only pray that God keeps her in his hands and helps her grow into the woman he designed her to be. Oh, and that he makes me into mommy my daughter needs.

Waves

Overwhelmed
Waves wash over me
One after another
Sand shifting beneath my feet
I stumble backwards
Regain my balance
Start forward again
Another wave
The tide gains strength
The waves grow higher
But I’m getting stronger, too
Learning what to expect
Brace myself for impact
When to stand firm
When to relax
Let myself be carried
By the currents of the sea
To places I don’t know
Unfamiliar lands
That I’d never have a chance to see
If I fought each wave
Trying to stay
Where maybe I’m not meant to be

Scheduling Friendship

In my quest to develop grown-up friendships, I’ve been surprised at how hard it can be to get to know people. My own emotional issues aside, making friends as an adult married woman with children is not like it was when I was younger. In high school and college, I could call someone I wanted to get to know better and say, “Hey do you want go mall or see a movie or something?” and we could make plans for later that day, or at the most, the weekend. Now, if I try to do that, the conversation goes something like this:

Me: ”Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. We should get together. Do you want to do something?”

Friend: “Well, Johnny has soccer tonight and a game on Saturday morning. Jane has ballet tomorrow night and girl scouts on Thursday. Friday is date night with hubby. Saturday night I have a work dinner I have to be at. Hmm. Next week isn’t much better. I, think I can schedule something for next month, if you want, though.”

Me: “Uh…Ok. Let’s do that. Let me know when you can squeeze me in.”

I then hang up feeling dejected, because really, I just wanted to spend some time with a friend chatting and laughing, right now. Not next weekend or next month.

I tried that a few times before I realized that during this season of my life, spontaneous friend dates aren’t going to happen very often. I can’t really get too mad about it, because my schedule is just as busy. The problem is that, generally speaking, when I am free, they are busy and when they are free, I’m busy. Eventually I had to accept the fact that I was going to have schedule time to make friends.

Maybe it’s strange, but this was a really hard thing for me wrap my mind around. I’m not a “schedule” person. I’m not a planner, either, unless I have to be. I have a friend, though, who is a planner, and she was the first one to say, “Let’s put something on the calendar, because otherwise I will never have time for it.”

The first time I heard her say that, it rubbed me the wrong way, because I believed that building a relationship should just happen naturally. Being put into her schedule felt sort of confining to me. Kind of like, “OK, I have a hour block from 2:00 to 3:00 on Sunday, so let’s have a meeting and get to know each other. Bring your bullet point notes of all the important events in your life so we don’t miss anything or get off topic. Be prompt, because I have a 3:15 appointment with my hairstylist and I can’t be late.”

Now, she didn’t say any of this, or imply it even. It’s what I read into her suggestion. What I later came to understand, though, is that in our frantic, 21^st century lives, our schedules will fill up whether we want them to or not. Either we have to take control of them and put the things that are important to us on the calendar, or other people and things will find a way to fill all our time slots. When I realized that she was putting time with me on her calendar because she valued it and wanted to make sure it would happen, it changed my entire perspective.

This also made me realize that I had to begin to be deliberate about developing my relationships. I couldn’t just expect them to happen. I had to put effort into them. I had to put some planning into them. I had to make it a priority and maybe sacrifice something for it. I had to give up an occasional evening of my favorite t.v. shows because that is when my friend had some free time. I had to give up my preconceived notions about what my friendships would look like.

So, now I put my friends in my schedule, and they put me in their schedule. It has to be a mutual scheduling effort. Otherwise, it will never happen.

I hope that someday life will slow down in such a way that my friends and I will have the freedom to take a spontaneous trip to the beach just because we feel like drinking a cup of coffee and watching the sun set over the ocean. For now, though, I’m honored when a lady that I admire values me enough to schedule me into her day.


Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice.
  Proverbs 27:9

The Fear of Friendship

“If you don’t have three to five good friends in your life, I mean women you are really talking to, that needs to be your number one priority right now.”

Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.

I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.

When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.

Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.

I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.

After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.

I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.

After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.

The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.

That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.

When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.

Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.

We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.

I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.

I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.

So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?


Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
     Ecclesiastes 4:10

In the Presence of The King

This evening I was thinking about what it will be like when I get to Heaven and walk into the throne room of the King of Creation.

In The Presence of the King

Coming into the presence of the King
Overwhelmed by the light of his grace
I fall to my knees and cry out with the angels
"Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"

Lifted up and drawn closer to him
I find myself before the throne.
Unable to look upon his face,
I fall once again, this time at his feet

Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree

The tears begin to flow as I see there before me
The wounds from the nail
That pinned him to the cross
So very long ago.

Like the woman of old, I wash his feet with my tears
I cry out to him for forgiveness
For the darkness inside me
For my fear and my pride
Because it was for me that he died.

Suddenly I see all of my sin
Suddenly I see how broken I am
Suddenly I see what he gave for me
When he let them nail him to the tree

Strong hands lifting me up
To stand before the Lord
“Beloved, Look at me.”
“Lord, I can’t.”
“Child, I love you.”
“I’m so unworthy.”
“Daughter, you are mine.”

Slowly I lift my eyes,
His fingers stroke my cheek
Wiping away the tears
His face is radiant, His love alive
“Don’t you know how long I’ve waited?”

Wrapped in his arms,
all my pain fades away
My heart is clean,
my mind is whole
Finally, I am in the place
I was always meant to be.

Who I Am Designed To Be

This past weekend I attended the Bethel Church women’s conference, Women of Impact. It was great fun and I loved spending my Friday night and Saturday with some of my most favorite ladies. That kind of thing doesn’t happen nearly enough.

One of the workshops I attended was “Impacting your Future” which was taught by Pastor Shekina Gottlieb, one of the pastors on staff at our church. She spoke about becoming the “Me I’m Meant To Be” rather than the “Me I Want To Be”, or the “Me I Pretend To Be”, or the “Me I Think I Should Be”, or the “Me Other People Want Me To Be”, or especially the “Me That Fails To Be”.

It made me think, how long did I spend being the “me I thought I should be” or the “me I was pretending to be“? I know that the “me I wanted to be” was impossible, so for quite a while, I was just the “me that was failing to be“.

This quote put a whole new perspective on the subject for me.

"When you fail to become the person God designed you to be, all the rest of us miss out of the gift you were made to give." Shekina Gottlieb

Realizing this, that my failure to become who God designed me to be means that everyone else misses out on something that only I can give them, forced me to take another look at myself. If I don’t become the woman that God meant for me to be, my kids miss out on the mom they were meant to have. It means that my husband doesn’t get the wife he was supposed to have. My friends don’t get the relationship with me that they should have had. By neglecting myself, my dreams, talents and gifts, I do my loved ones a disservice.

So, really, it’s not all about me. Crazy thought, huh?

My unwillingness to do what God has put in my heart to do, because I am scared or feel unworthy or whatever, affects more than my life. It affects all the lives I am supposed to touch.

On one hand, that puts a huge sense of responsibility on my shoulders. I know that I am not yet who God meant for me to be, so how many relationships have I already missed the opportunity on because I spent so much time being the “Me that Failed to Be.”

On the other hand, this also frees me from the idea that pursuing my dreams and developing my gifts and talents makes me self centered. It’s not selfish. God made me with a specific purpose in mind, as he did every other person on the planet. I believe that he puts the seeds of that purpose in each individual in the form of our dreams. He means for us to follow them.

Imagine if Shakespeare had decided that writing wasn’t a job that could pay the bills and that he should be a stone mason instead. What if Leonardo DaVinci had given in to feelings of inadequacy and stopped painting and sculpting and imagining and dreaming. Or if Mother Teresa had listened to all those around her who told her that it was crazy to try to go to the other side of the world to work with the poorest of the poor in India.

Now, I know that we aren’t all meant to do things like this that make us famous or successful by the world’s standards, but that doesn’t mean that our impact on the world won’t be great.

There is a woman at our church that recently retired from the position of Nursery Director after more than 30 years of service. For the past 30 years, Miss Jennifer has cared for the babies of all the people that came to the church so that they could sit in the service and listen to the pastor and hear the Word of God. Her presence allowed those pastors with young children to minister to hurting people. She changed diapers, rocked infants to sleep, comforted scared toddlers and encouraged exhausted new mommies for 30 years. Outside of our church, very few people know her name, but I believe that her service has made her famous in heaven.

Billy Graham obviously was very successful in his evangelism ministry and crusades around the world. He’s a very effective speaker and many people have come to know the Lord as a result of his sermons, but he didn’t put on his crusades alone. Thousands of people were involved in putting the crusades together. Before Mr. Graham even came into town, many people had spend hundreds of hours in prayer for the event. People had to invite their friends. So many people worked behind the scenes using their gifts to organize, plan and make the crusades happen. There were hundreds of people who were there to pray for all those who answered the call to follow the Lord. Billy Graham couldn’t pray for each one himself. He needed all those mature believers there, ready to work one on one with people, praying for their needs and ministering in ways that he couldn’t from up on the stage.

I bring up these examples because I think that it is really easy for us to get caught up in the idea that to do something great for God we have to be one of the famous people. We have to be like Michael W. Smith, Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen. We don’t. We have to be what God designed us each individually to be. We just have to be willing to do those things that he tells us to do.

So, what if, in your heart of hearts, you think that maybe you are supposed to be like the famous people? What then? I think you have to evaluate why you believe that. What are your motivations? Do you want that because being famous means you are important; because that’s the ruler you are using to measure your success? Or, do you believe that is God wants that for you, in spite of how you feel about it?

Recently, my husband met with the Senior Pastor at our church and was discussing the call that he feels God has on his life. He had the following conversation with the pastor:

“I just want to make sure that this is from God and is not something that I’m making up myself.”

The pastor looked him in the eye, “Does it scare you?”

“Absolutely,” Robert responded.

“Then it’s from God,” Pastor said.

So, if you believe that God has huge things for you to do, does it scare you? Do you feel inadequate to the task before you? If so, I believe that it is from God. I believe that he calls us to things that are bigger than what we feel we can do on our own because he wants us to rely on him completely. He wants us to know that what we are doing is not in our own power to accomplish. It‘s how he brings the attention and the glory back to himself.

　

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
   Ephesians 2:10

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
   Ephesians 4:16

More Dreams

Since I wrote my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dreams we have and the dreams God gives us. As I said before, my dream of singing started when I was a little girl and then over the years it became something that was just a part of who a was. Even during the years of my life when I wasn’t involved in anything that allowed me to perform, I still considered myself a singer. People who met me during that time probably wondered if I really could sing, because as much as I said I was a singer, they never heard me actually do it.

It was in the years that I wasn’t singing that I started writing. Now, looking back, I think that the writing started as a sort of secondary, more attainable dream. I had convinced myself that being successful as singer was impossible, but maybe I could write a book and make something of myself that way.

So, I started writing a novel. It started really well, but after a while, when my ideas slowed down, and I began experiencing some writer’s block, discouragement set in. I started doubting my ability. I started doubting my ideas. I started doubting my worth.   The thought process went like this...

“Why do you think you have anything to say that anyone would want to listen to?”

“Who do you think you are to suppose you could be an author? Really? You must be out of your mind?”
(Anyone see a theme here?)

“Look at all those books on the shelves of the bookstores. For every one of those authors, there are hundreds of people who have written books and can’t get them published. What makes you think you’re good enough when so many others aren’t?”

“Other people are content to have their stable office jobs. Why can’t you be happy to be a receptionist?”

For the record, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a receptionist. A good receptionist is a wonderful asset to a company. I, however, was a terrible receptionist. I just don’t have the personality for it. I was too introverted, too serious, and to be honest, I didn’t handle being interrupted very well. Not a good trait for someone who spends their whole day being interrupted by silly things like important phone calls and people coming in the front door needing directions to appointments, interviews or training sessions.

Anyway, there I was, talking myself out of dream number two. My mom was encouraging me to keep writing, because, stupidly, during a time when I was feeling good about the way my story was coming out, I had printed it out and given it to her to read, and she thought it was pretty good. (Well, she said it was “Great”, but she’s my mom, so she has to think it’s great. I think it’s in the contract or something.) Soon my grandmother was bugging me about it too, because my mom had passed it on to her. (Yes, I said “bugging me”, because that’s how I felt about it at the time. I love you, Grandma!) I think Grandma then sent it to every other member of my family because then I had random aunts or uncles asking me when the next chapter was going to be done.

So, the cat was out of the bag, and now I felt pressure to keep going, but I was stuck. I had a serious case of writer’s block and an inferiority complex at the same time. I didn’t know what to do to fix it, so, I gave up, which only added fuel to the inferiority fire.

Not long after that, I got pregnant and, as any new mom knows, becoming a mommy is all consuming, so I had a convenient excuse for several years. I didn’t have time to write, I had the baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and another baby to take care of. And then I had a toddler and a baby and a job. So it became easier and easier to rationalize why I wasn’t even trying to write anymore. Really, I was just afraid to try.

God only let me do that for a certain amount of time, though. I’ve noticed that when a person isn’t doing what God designed them to do, there’s a deep discontentment in their soul. For a long time, I didn’t know what was wrong, I just knew I wasn’t happy.

One day, while browsing the Christian section at the bookstore, I came across a little book called “The Dream Giver”, by Bruce Wilkinson. It’s a parable about a man named Ordinary who lives in the land of Familiar with all the other Nobodies, when the Dream Giver gives him a big dream and he then tries to leave Familiar to become a Somebody. Wilkinson then explains the parable and relates it to how it could play out in our lives.

I highly recommend it. God used this book to remind me of my dreams and to tell me that even though I had written myself off, so to speak, he hadn’t.

About a month after I read that book, our pastor did a sermon series titled “Dream Big”. After 3 sermons on why we need to have big, “God-sized” dreams that we are following, I was beginning to get the message. Time to start doing what God wanted me to do, even though I was scared and didn’t think I was good enough.

I wonder how many people have written themselves off and decided that their dreams are unattainable, so they should just be content to get and keep “a good job”.

I wonder how many people are quietly dying inside because they have lowered their expectations of life to where they are because the thought of where they really want to be doing is too painful.

I wonder how many people have forgotten that they ever had dreams in the first place.

Thinking about it makes me sad. But the thing that gives me hope, is that as long as you are still on the earth, God still has dreams for you. He still wants you to follow him to fulfill them. Maybe the dream from your youth really isn’t possible any more, but God has new dreams. He can give you new purpose. He wants his children to live abundant lives, not just a mediocre existence. Can you dare to believe that maybe that thing you have always wanted to do might just be what God has wanted for you all along?

So, now I have announced to the world that, not only do I want to sing, but I also want to be a writer. It’s crazy, I know. Neither one of those is a particularly easy field to break into, but God has put these things in my heart, and not doing them only makes for a miserable me. Therefore, I will write and I will sing, and I will watch to see how God uses them to take me into the future he has planned for me.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How amazing are your thoughts concerning me, God!
How vast is the sum of them!   Psalm 139:15-17

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.    Ephesians 3:20 (The Message)


Do you have dreams that are lying dormant in your mind and in your heart?  I pray that you can begin to let the God shine some sunlight on those seeds so that they can begin to grow into the abundance and purpose that he has you for.