This One is For You, Whoever You Are.

I sit here writing at shortly after 5:00 am not because I am so motivated or self-disciplined. I have been awake on and off...mostly on...since two-something with body-possessing chills and a fever. It's not ideal the ideal set-up for a delightful romp around my blog with seven followers (I will count myself in that total, thank you very much). No, it's not the best timing for a musing or a puzzling. Nor is it the best timing for God to whisper in your ear, "Arise. Get out of bed. And write." Seriously, God? But, God and I had a good long discussion and barter session about it since somewhere in the "threes". This was what I needed to do and every "I will if..." that I could invent was answered. So, you, whoever "you" are, needed to hear this right now.

You see, I've been pondering hope a lot over the past few weeks. Do you ever feel like it just isn't there? For all your willpower and exertion, it just refuses to bubble up to the surface. You feel hopeLESS. hopeDEMOLISHED. hopeSHATTERED. You're exhausted and sick. Your house is being invaded by ants and moths. Your hot water heater decides to break, along with a couple nice electronics. Your loved one suffers with chronic disease. His contract for work is about to end. And even your answers to prayer seem to be simply a cat-and-mouse game with God. He answers every little detail of a specific request you have been praying for over a period of years and then seems to say, "Oops. Never mind."

Am I forgetting something? In reality, I have really been okay with all the life set-backs...up until the game of cat-and-mouse. I honestly feel like it is impossible for me to understand that one. It was not asked "amiss" and we have patiently waited a long time.

Yet, here we go back to that idea of self-discipline and motivation, something that I struggle horribly with in nearly every aspect of my life. Isn't that the crux of things? Let me explain. First of all, is hope a feeling? I mean, yes, we feel hopeful. But why? And if it's just a feeling, what about all the people who seemingly feel it when they have absolutely no reason in the world to? Those who are completely unflappable in the face of discouragement and disappointment far worse than what I am personally facing right now? Let's look at some verses and maybe we'll uncover this "secret":

Romans 8:24-25 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 12:12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

Romans 5:2-5 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So we see that hope may indeed be a feeling, but that feeling is within our reach and control, with God's abiding grace, of course. It starts with a choice. It starts with the self-discipline to quit wallowing and instead grab...scratching and clawing if need be...onto the truth of God's unfailing LOVE and the belief that He is doing a good work in us, whether we understand it or not. No one feels like rejoicing over any of life's tragedies, whether they be small or enormous. But if we know that in the end they will produce not only endurance and character, but ultimately a comforting hope that surpasses human comprehension, wouldn't it be wise to choose to rejoice? And maybe it will have to start with simple acceptance and a "thank you" that feels unnatural and even wrong at times.

So, do we believe that he loves us? Do we believe that all these bumps and even gorges in the road are put there by Him for our good? And if we say we believe it, do we have the hope to back it up...to prove what we claim?

Let's lift each other up in prayer that we will persevere in what we know so that we may experience a hope that baffles the world and can only be explained by God.

A Laundry Room Talk with God

I just had an interesting conversation with God in my laundry room. Why He cares to join me in my messy laundry room while I perform boring tasks, I don't know. But He does. And the conversation went something like this...

Me: "Lord, I need to find that white shirt to make sure there's no spot left on it before I dry it. Help me to find it."

I search through mounds of wet white laundry to no avail. Where is that shirt?

Me: "Okay, Lord, I know you're in control, but I just need to find that shirt. I don't want it to be permanently stained if I dry it."

I search a little harder.

Me: "I can't find it and I really need to! I know it isn't your fault Lord, and you are in control. But please help me to find it! I'm getting frustrated here."

God: "Maybe I don't want you to find it."

Me: That can't be God talking. God wouldn't say that.

I then search piece by piece, even pulling open the sheets to see if it is entangled in one.

Me: "Now this just doesn't make sense!"

God: "Maybe it's my will that you don't find it."

Me: "But that's just silly! Why would you want me to ruin a perfectly good shirt? What a waste! I know I put it in the washer and now it's vanished! This doesn't make any sense and I can't accept something that doesn't make sense as your will."

God: "Do you hear what you just said? Listen to yourself. Don't you trust me? You know that what I do doesn't always make sense to you."

Sigh.

"Okay. Fine. I don't understand it at all, but there's nothing I can do anyway. I give up. . . I trust you."

I throw the armloads of stubborn laundry into the dryer, close it, and stand up. . . only to discover the mysteriously missing shirt had fallen under me and was right there on the floor. At that moment, I hear the garbage truck outside and run to take my overflowing can out to the street. I would likely not have heard the truck, had I found that shirt earlier because I was headed for the shower right after that menial task.

And here's the (probably obvious) lesson: If we can't trust Him to help us with the little things in our days, like something as insignificant as laundry, will we trust Him when the big things come? Listen when God talks to you in the laundry room. He's saying something important right there through all the routine daily monotony, too.

A Loving Judge

I've been contemplating lately the idea of God's mercy versus his justice. We all fully embrace the concept of His mercy and love. We seem to have no philosophical issue with that. Yet, it seems as though His justice is forgotten and even defamed in our culture today. But why? None of us vacillate in demanding justice when it benefits us, when it rights those wrongs done to us. We are satisfied when the rapist is sent to jail. We are mollified when the child abuser is locked away to pay for his crimes. Would anyone argue that demanding retribution for such crimes against innocent victims is unloving or unkind?

But God? His name is treated as a curse; His holy nature and character brought to trial by those who despise Him; His children hated, tortured, and martyred. Does God deserve justice? Does the Perfect One who breathed the very life into us deserve recompense? Or do we think we are more important than God, holier than God? It is permissible for us to demand justice. We deserve it. But God is supposed to be all love to all people in all circumstances...and nothing more. He is expected to just overlook all the wrongs and offenses and turn a deaf ear to His children's cries and a blind eye to the evildoers who mock His holy name.

I don't want a one-dimensional God who is unable to impart justice when such justice is the only right course of action. I want the God who both embraces and condemns. This is the God who makes sense, the God of the Bible who loves enough to judge...and yet is always willing to extend mercy even to those who fall under His judgment. That is the God that I love.

The Profitability of Truth

I enjoy a good debate, not because I enjoy proving myself right, but because I love truth. I sometimes engage in debate to proclaim and champion the truth and other times to actually search for and find the truth of a matter. I don't always know for certain that I am right, but the process of proving or disproving something is a pursuit that can be very fulfilling when you are truly seeking truth...or seeking to proclaim it to others.

So, I am not intimidated by someone pointing out errors in my logic...or the fact that I'm a complete idiot on a topic! In fact, have you ever noticed that those whom the world labels as weak or foolish are usually representatives of the truth? So, call me foolish! Because truth is worth becoming foolish for. Truth is worth insult and intimidation. Truth is worth the struggle to set it free because in the end, it is The Truth that sets us free!

"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32

"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God." 1 Corinthians 1:27-29

The Spiritual Equality of Children

As parents, we often view ourselves on a different plane than our children. And in fact, we are in some ways. There is a degree of order to the family, an authority structure. The father is the head, the mother his support and second-in-command, and the children subordinate to those authorities. There must be mutual respect between family members along with a recognition of this structure.

However, we must recognize also that in some ways we are entirely equal. We have to remember that children have the same spiritual struggles that we do, just on a different scale. They, too, are humans created from the dust of the ground. Where we may struggle with envy of someone else's house, car, etc., they struggle with coveting their friend's toys or bike. These are the same struggles, at their heart, yet we tend to either minimize those struggles in our children and treat them as though they are lesser evils, or chastise and punish them out of an arrogant, domineering spirit instead of with a humble, relating heart.

Those who minimize their children's sin may think that there is some difference between covetousness in the heart of an adult and covetousness in the heart of a child. But in reality, these minor sins of childhood represent major heart issues that if left unchallenged, will someday become even more obvious, perhaps even criminal. Is there a murderer in the world who was not first a child filled with hate for others? Is there a bank robber anywhere that was not first a little one stealing gum or candy from the store? These are major sins, also, because they magnify what is in the heart. "For out of it are the issues of life" (Prov. 4:23).

Those who magnify their children's sin tend to be prideful of their spirituality and family position. They forget that they, too, struggle; that they, too, have hearts that are just as sinful. They are so focused on their children's sinfulness that they forget to look inward.

Both these attitudes -- minimizing and magnifying -- emerge when we forget that we are spiritual equals. We must remember that while we may be father and mother physically, we are spiritually brothers and sisters in Christ! We must come alongside our children in humility and help them in those same struggles that we ourselves may bear, recognizing the fact that all sin represents a heart that is out of order. And yet, we must also not take advantage of our God-ordained authority by acting in a spiritually superior manner. We need to get the "mote" out of our own eye first!

Sin is sin. We are all guilty before God and this should give us both the freedom and humility to gently lead our children "in paths of righteousness for his name's sake," just as our Heavenly Father leads us (Ps. 23:3).

Blessed. So Blessed.

I am blessed. Sometimes struggling, but always blessed. I pulled out a box of old photographs tonight...the kind of box that sits under a bed, abandoned, until a "nesting" mood strikes and this box is rediscovered...and all of its brother and sister boxes, as well. The ones that eluded unpacking since moving in five, no six, years ago.

Yes, that box. The box with the pictures that make my heart sigh. My heart did a lot of sighing tonight. Remembrance, reliving, regret. Isn't it funny what a picture pulls out of the deepest core of someone? And I lost myself there on the floor, feeling those strange feelings. Those feelings the pictures yanked from within me, stretched and snapped out like a rubber band. Do you ever want to be the person in the pictures again? Do you want to relive every moment, full of promise and hope, pain and aching? A second chance to do it right? Or just to relive the very right way you did it first?

I do.

And then I think how blessed I am...from those pictures to here. From that girl to this one. I am blessed. A husband, a family (growing), a home, a church family...I am surrounded by love. And The Greatest Love. Love that will not give me "lesser things" because I am not yet who I need to be. I am thankful for the greatest things that seem the opposite of blessings. Those ironic blessings that hurt and sting. They are from God's hand, too.

I thank God for the blessings through the tears. All the blessings that bubble up and overflow, drowning out the sorrow. Jon, my dear husband, may be sick and struggling. We may not have what I think the "perfect" life should look like, but here are the blessings through the raindrops:

• He has a good job in which he excels, even on the hardest days with the fewest hours of sleep.
• He has never had to go on disability.
• He is able to work from home when he needs to.
• He is able to be flexible in the hours that he works.
• Reading stories of others with Lyme Disease, I know it could be so much worse.
• My children have a father who loves them.
• I have a husband who loves me, even when I am at my worst.
• He is still able to support us such that I am able to be home with our children every day.
• We have everything we need and even more.
• We have grown...I have grown. That is what really matters.
• God has never given us more than we could handle.

Thank you, God. Thank you, Friends, for praying us over the bumps. I feel those prayers lift us up.

We are blessed. So blessed.

Struggling

I am struggling. Today I am struggling. Usually, it is okay. I can usually muster up enough hope, enough self-encouragement, enough strength that living with a husband with a chronic illness is fine. I can usually see the glass as half full. But today, I want to throw the glass across the room in defiance of the very question. I am tired of the glass and whatever is in it. I am just so tired of this struggle and tired of hanging onto this hope that, like some carrot on the end of a string, constantly teases and always alludes our grasp.

To give background for those who don't know, my husband has Lyme disease and has struggled with various related health issues for the majority of our marriage. And today, I am sick of it. I wish I could fully trust in God. I wish that the words, "God has a plan and we are thankful for this sickness," would always be right there on my tongue. But they are not. I am thankful for the days that they are. And deep down, I know that He does have a plan and that this patchwork-life will be beautiful in the end, but for today, I struggle with the emotions of trying to reconcile God's hidden plan with the reality of the fully-exposed ugliness of sickness. Today, it is hard to see through the ugliness.

I look at pictures of when we dated and I long to go back and cherish those times of innocent, naive hopefulness and promise. I long to relive the false "knowledge" of a perfect life...the life where my husband comes home from work, sits down to dinner...the same dinner we are all eating...and enjoys conversation with his family. I long for surprise dates and romance. I long for simple evenings of peaceful reading together and sharing thoughts and dreams. I long for weekends that include the husband/father of this family. I long for a man who has the strength to do all the things he wants to do, for a man who does not struggle just to make it through one day.

And then in all this longing, I feel the guilt of self-indulgence, the guilt of a self-focus that forgets that I am not the one suffering. And that our "suffering" is so minimal compared to what others go through. I forget about all the promises that God has kept through the struggle...that He will never leave us or forsake us. I forget about how blessed we are that Jon has never had to go on disability or missed long periods of work. I forget how blessed we are that no matter how exhausted and incoherent he is, he can always work on a computer in genius ways that astound those who work with him. I forget that he is a shining light of God's grace and provision, not just to us, but to those who most need to see that light. I forget that God shows himself faithful, even when Jon cannot do everything he would like to as a husband and father. God picks up the slack.

I know all these things. But, friends, I still struggle with the days of longing that make my heart feel empty and pained. And today is one of the hurting days that my heart could use more hope, more faith. Because, quite frankly, as much as this trial makes us long for heaven, I just want us all to experience "normal," just a taste of it, for at least a little period of our lives together here on this earth.