It's all gonna burn...

I had this very gut wrenching moment recently that I have been quietly analyzing and pondering ever since.

I found myself sitting in a Hillsong United conference sitting amidst my husband's "people." It was a bit of a fluke with a backyard bbq drawing that had even placed me in my seat among a large group of "worship people."

Friday night while we were settling into our seats and getting ready for the evening's events, I looked directly across the aisle to the exact same row in the next section over to see the seats filled with people from my old church, people who used to be "my people," people I really now in essence "used to know."

Many of them were people I was very invested in at one point, loved on, prayed for, invested in. And then I was sitting among a new crowd - all lovely people, every one of them, but no one that I really know well (well one girlfriend who I am working on getting to know well) but for the most part these are casual friends/ acquaintances, and of course my hubby. I was there because he was my connection and because God decided I should be through a modern day casting of lots.

Both sides of the aisle were worship people, but across the other way were grown people who used to be "my youth kids." People who long ago etched their names on my hearts. They were the people that made leaving our old church hard. But sadly the response to our departure was everything from sadness to suspicion, to anger and offense. And I never know exactly what any is thinking. And if you know me, you know I spend a lot of time trying to figure that out.

I was in many ways an outsider and an onlooker looking in as the Hillsong music began. And I found myself once again envying those up in front playing their instruments and singing their songs. Not for any of the reasons you might imagine, but because when I see people living in a world where their calling, their talent, their vocation and their God all collide in doing what you were made for, I'm envious and I wonder if they realized how beyond blessed they are, but that's a subject for another blog.

I was overwhelmed as I was hyper-aware of my surroundings and even more the people in them. First this amazing group I was with that I feel no real connection to, and I feel like I am making no contribution toward and then there across the aisle a group of people who I once felt completely connected to, where I felt like what i did and said mattered and made a difference in their lives, but not the reduction to polite interaction and strange "let's catch up sometime" conversations that are never really going to happen. I had to sit down and I put my head in my hands and tried to block it all out.

There alone in an auditorium full of people the words in my head rang out loud and clear. "IT'S ALL GONNA BURN."

Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15
It's all gonna burn...

That's my biggest fear - that nothing I do, have done or will ever do is going to matter, is going to make a difference.

I know... believe... think... hope that's not true, but at the end of the day... at the end of a lot of days, that's how I feel.

Relationships end, impacts fade, words are forgotten (especially the good and kind ones) and I'm just not sure what I do really matters.

Oddly enough I find a little freedom in that. Because what I realize is, it's just not about me.

I have to love when the opportunity to love is there not for me, not for some payoff, not even for the sake of the person I'm loving, but because of the Lord. The reality is it's all about Jesus - and anything that isn't about Him doesn't matter, and it is going to burn.

Anything that IS about Jesus is His to do with what He will anyway. And whether it succeeds or fails is all going to come down to what He does, and not what I do.

I'm not sloughing off my responsibility to do or to love or to serve - but it has to be about Jesus, and it has to be about His purpose behind it. And I've got to let go of me.

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galtians 2:20

Sense of Sadness

It's been around for days now. It's like a backdrop to life when it comes. It doesn't hinder moments of levity and life, a good giggle with a friend, or a smile at something one of my kids says that makes me proud.

Most of the time it's just inside me, heavy, weighting my heart down.

I'm coming to realize it's a part of my spiritual DNA - part of the prophetic/ discerning gift that many don't understand, or even believe exists.

I feel so very aware sometimes of the hurt in the world, inside church and out. I look around and always see the danger signs, the shortcomings, the injustice and hurt that fill the world.

I wish the role of intercessor was as ingrained in me as the awareness of the need, but alas, it is not. I want to do, to fix, to change - it's hard for me to keep silent. And it causes damage.

Sometimes the sadness is clear, and I know exactly what its source is, but more often, like this week, it's just there, in general and I end up making guesses about what it's about. I should never guess because when I do, I almost always make it about me. I feel disqualified, overlooked, I worry about my perceived injustice or rejection.

I spoke with a wise woman yesterday who is extremely discerning. She knows about and believes in all the gifts. The words "prophetic" and "discerning" don't intimidate her or baffle her.

"I've known people with those gifts," she said. "It takes its toll."

She used words like isolating and lonely - and she's right.

My heart grieves for the world around me. The lost, the hurting, the broken. Inside the church and out, they all exist. Often I am very aware that I am one of them.

Following Christ isn't all happiness and strength. On the contrary, suffering and weakness are a very real part of the walk with the Lord. How do I know? Because, His word tells us we are to REJOICE in our sufferings, and it is in our weakness that God's strength is made perfect.

But the sense of sadness never steals the joy - because joy is not emotional, it is deeper and it is abiding. Joy is in the very presence of God.

I am sad today - about a lot of things. But God is good and in Him both my joy and my hope can be found.

The battle in the second pew

I think if I was writing my autobiography that might be the title - if not of the book at least the chapter I'm walking out right now.

It's a hard confession to admit how quickly my mind can be drawn from where it ought to be on a Sunday morning down an unhealthy path of question and doubt, not only of others but of myself. A possibly misconstrued dismissal and my mind goes running down a whole list of possibilities that make my heart ache and it builds like a tide creating a fight or flight compulsion inside me that wants to flee or confront.

Sigh.

It's exhausting.

The battle to take thoughts captive (for me at least) is full time and difficult.

"... we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Paul admonishes in his second letter to the Corinthians. (10:5)

It's warfare he tells us, this battle of the mind. The dangerous weapons formed against us as Christians are unseen, not seen. No guns, knives and clubs to concern ourselves with, the weapons of the enemy are far more ominous, sneaking up on a relaxed mind.

The enemy comes at us instead with doubt, fear, disunity, accusation, self-centeredness and selfishness. Suspicion - oh that's one of his favorite ones to use against me. Gets me every time too, and leads me down a long road of unhealthy thoughts and emotions.

I wish it were so simple - I can picture just snatching the thought out of the air and dropping it into a "Jesus cage" if you will. "You naughty thought, how dare you!" And I clamp the cage shut and throw away the key - AS IF!

These thoughts may flit in like a butterfly, but they have the teeth of a venomous snake and even when you grab hold of it the risk is high it's going to turn around and bite you, or worse. Do you remember the scene from "The Jungle Book" where the snake Kaa began to mesmerize little Mowgli? The thought like the snake's eyes tries to pull you in and mesmerize you. You cannot focus on it too long or suddenly it's carrying you away into an entirely unhappy, unhealthy - even deadly, place.

Mowgli gets it right though, you have to evict the thought completely to gain control. You cannot play with it even a little.


But life isn't always like a cartoon. It takes much more than brute force (however much you can muster). It takes diligence, effort and a total avoidance of complacency. It's hard work. But I am believing it has to be worth it. Right? Otherwise the Bible wouldn't tell us that's what we need to do.

I think obedience to Christ means that the thought is taken out of our hands and placed completely in Christ's - who unlike us isn't susceptible to the snake of a thought that wants to embed itself in our brains, crushing hope and life out in its efforts. I think it means first of confessing that the thought is not honoring to the Lord - whatever spin that it may take to get there, that is the bottom line, whether accusation, doubt, disunity or just a plain old lie, the thought has set itself up against the knowledge of God and cannot be tolerated much less contemplated.

It's a long and involved job, but it's necessary to live a life full in Christ. So I've got to get those spiritual muscles working, and when those thoughts come for my mind, I just have to knock them right out of the tree - maybe someday they'll stop crawling back up after me in the end!

At the altar... (Adoption Part 3)

It was late, really late and everyone was asleep in the house but me. My husband had gone to bed, my children, Jacob age 9, Victoria who was almost 2, and Ethan who was 2 were all tucked safely in their beds. Or were they? Were they all safe? Were they even all my children? Those, strangely enough were very real questions to be asked about my Ethan.

He had been in our home since he was just a week old, in my arms from the time he was 12 hours old, and in my heart even longer than that. But suddenly we were faced with the very real threat that this adorable toe-headed little 2 1/2 year old might be taken from us. And as I sat out in my front yard on that cold, windy fall night, I was terrified.

Ethan's adoption story is the story you never tell to a family who is considering adoption. It's the kind of story that might send them running to the hills... almost. And on that night everything in life came into clear perspective - there were only two things that mattered to me, my family, and my God.

I literally sank to my knees in the middle of our front patio, olive seeds digging into my knees, and I wept. Prayer had been a constant as we had weathered every imaginable complication and delay
in our adoption process, and a whole lot of delays you never would have dreamed of. I was begging God to rescue us, to rescue Ethan from this threat. Biology aside, some stranger decided he wanted to take Ethan from our home and his power to do so was real, and the state of California was not on our side.

"He's our son," I prayed. "God, you gave him to us. You gave us his name." You see, Ethan's name had been a promise - it meant "Permanent." And that was all I had to stand on some days. With only the sound of the leaves rustling in the night, God's still small voice spoke to my heart. "It's the Lord's to give, and the Lord's to take away." That truth was like a punch in my gut - one of those truths you hope as a Christian you never have to be faced with. "But you gave him to us," I whispered back in the darkness. It was so quiet.

I don't know how long I knelt out there in my yard beneath the olive tree before I heard God speak again. This time He posed a simple question, "Do you trust Me?"

Did I?

Would I?

What if we lost Ethan? What if after being his family for two and a half years and completely falling in love with him, after he completely became an intricate part of what "family" meant to us- what if God took him away? Would we still believe? Would we still trust? Would we still worship? I pondered those questions.

Then suddenly I pushed myself up to my feet and hurried quietly into the house. Searching I found what I was looking for - a pen, a piece of paper and a match.

I scribbled his name across the paper: "Ethan Mitchell DePriest."

I walked quietly back out the house, down the driveway and to the curb at the street. I folded the paper in my hand.

"I will still believe. I will still trust. I will still worship You..." and wiping the tears from my eyes, I promised, "I will still love You Lord."

And there at the "altar" I lit the match and burned the paper in my hand. I dropped it into the gutter and watched as the tiny flame consumed it and then slowly burned out.

God had given us Ethan, and on that night, alone in the dark, I gave Ethan back, in faith and in trust. He wasn't really mine anyways.

I'm happy to say that the end of that story is a happy one, and here ten years later, Ethan is still ours, wholly and completely - but I didn't know that that night. I had no idea what the future might hold, I just let my confidence rest in the One who held the future. It was a profound moment of faith.

I've been thinking a lot about how much I have wavered from that faith lately, holding tightly to things far less critical than my son - things like a job, financial security, where my kids go to school, where we live. I mean, they aren't small things, but in perspective, they shrink in importance.

This past weekend I've been thinking a lot about that night at the "altar," and I feel like God is calling me back to that "place," and even more so to that profound moment of faith. And He is asking me again, "Do you trust Me?"

He's asking me to change my prayers, from things like "Provide," or "Protect the business... our finances... the kids' education." And instead He's asking me to simply pray "I trust You," and "Lead us where You will."

I have NEVER known what the future held - that is my reality (yours too by the way) but I have been foolish to lose focus on the fact that I have ALWAYS known Who holds the future. I am not so foolish to assume that this altar experience will necessarily resolve itself so miraculously as the last, but I do know that if God's hand is in it (and it is), then I am good.

It's not to say things won't be challenging or that hard times won't hurt, but it is to say that come what may - I will trust Him.

I will believe...

I will worship...

And I commit again, I will love Him still.

Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:25-26
I'm at the altar again... and there's no better place to be.

A short story

I remember when my mother's prayers changed.  We had been praying for a long time about the things that lurked outside our  doors.  Children or not, my mother never hid from us the realities that loomed. Business was bad, everything seemed to be in jeopardy all the time.  It was like at any moment my dad and she might be out of work, we might have to leave our school. There was no sure foundation.  And every day we prayed together as a family, "Please just keep the wolves away."

"Sustain us," she prayed.  She asked for provision, with doubt in her voice she wished aloud to God that prosperity might even return-- but in her voice was more question than confidence that God was even listening.  It was a prayer of fear.

I remember when her prayers shifted from fear to confidence.  What she was praying for was far less clear, but how she was praying was obvious. "God, do what You will," she said.  "Lead us where you would have us go." I wondered what that meant.  I could sense she wondered too, but it was obvious that she was suddenly less concerned with the what, or even the where or how - now all her focus seemed to be on the Who of her prayer.

Everything changed with my mother's prayers.  It was far from easy, but despite some really difficult days, it was better, not because our circumstances got any better, because they really didn't, but it was because suddenly God seemed to be in the midst of those circumstances no matter what they were.

The storms were hard - sometimes it was like standing in the edge of the sea and the waves kept crashing and knocking us down - hard, sometimes painfully so, but every time my mother would rise again.  She turned to us as well and told us "Stand up."  She was tired, we were tired, it hurt, we suffered loss, but it was like my mother would stand beside me with her her hand holding me up under the arm. As I leaned into her she would point out past the waves and say, "He's coming. Hold on - see the Light? God's working."

There were lots of days when I wished God would just have answered my mother's doubt filled prayers for provision and perhaps prosperity, surely it would have been easier. But now looking back all these years later, I know these prayers were better, because they didn't just change how things were, but they changed who we were. It changed Who God was to us, and for that I am forever grateful, because even now in my life when my mother has been gone for a very long time, I look out onto the horizon and tell my own children, and their children to look out past the storm, and with confidence I tell them, "He's coming. Hold on - see the Light? God's working."  And I know it's true, and my children will know it's true, and their children, and all the generations to come have the Hope of knowing it's not the what we place our confidence in in our prayers, but it's the Who.

This story is completely fiction... for now... in Jesus' name. 

Pudding and puffs

Yesterday we celebrated my wonderful husband's 44th birthday. As a treat for him I decided to make his mom's "famous" cream puffs. It's a favorite "taste memory" for him as a kid and it brings back fond memories for us both of his mom who has been gone too long.

The weekend plans went back and forth, first he and the kids were going to be gone till Sunday and I was going to make him before they got back, then Saturday night they decided to come home early because my middle child didn't want to miss church, so then I ran out of time and wasn't going to make them after all (he didn't know my plan, so no disappointment, right?) Then when the afternoon went awry and he found himself cleaning out the garage while my younger two children found themselves banished to their bedrooms and my oldest awaited his "other plans" for the evening, I decided to run to the store and grab the $21.63 worth of groceries after all.

As I stood in the store Sunday afternoon thinking about the (now) rush to throw them together I contemplated buying a box of instant pudding rather than making the "from scratch" version that made the memory special. I quickly ditched the thought and bought what I needed to stay true to the recipe instead.

Instant pudding is easy, add milk whisk and chill. Making the pudding from scratch is a much more involved process, timing is important, patience too - as I stood there stirring over the hot stove and the heating oven (for the "puff" portion of this little treat) I was very aware of how much easier the little box of Jell-O would have been. I looked back and forth at my recipe, I waited and watched for the liquid to reach the right level of thickness stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan where all the thick seemed to want to remain. On the stove, off the stove, add this, mix that, back on the stove - every step was critical.

I thought about how the Lord must be standing patiently over the "pot" that is my life. The patience he must have with me, adding this, separating that, stirring constantly, creating his masterpiece as well. Even the waiting that is required with the pudding is sometimes required in My Walk of Faith. As I poured my mixture into a bowl and laid the plastic wrap right on top of the warm mixture only to put it in the refrigerator just to sit. It sits and prepares - it seems like nothing id happening, but being in the right "environment" and letting it "chill" makes the pudding the pudding, and not just a lot of sweet and runny slop.

When I made the puffs, they were involved too - and I got impatient. First I couldn't find the right pan, and I used one that was too big. It didn't fit the need. Adding to my impatience the recipe calls for letting the dough to sit for ten minutes - just sit. Then for the next step you have to add four eggs, but you have to add one at a time, mixing each one through one at a time, working out the lumps and making the dough smooth. It wasn't working in the oversize pot. I ended up adding the last two eggs at the same trying to rush the process. I had a mix of runny lumps, and when I tried (in false faith) to scoop them out onto the pan to put in the oven, they just oozed into each other. As I stood there it was obvious I had gotten it wrong. All the ingredients were there, but they weren't put together the right way, I tried to do it my way instead of following the directions.

That too made me think a lot about the Lord and me. And how I make such a huge mistake sometimes to work my way around Him instead of just doing things exactly the way He said, and how I end up with the mess that isn't good for anything at all. I scooped the glob into the sink and ran it down the drain. The second time I I followed the recipe to a tee, and in the end, I got the results that were intended.

The fact of the matter is, in this "kitchen" called life - God is the Master Chef - and His is making a "delicious" creation in our lives - but in order to experience the fullness of that, we have to follow His recipe - and even when that means sitting in the "cooler" or waiting on the stove, or adding "what's next" slowly and methodically - it is for God's good purpose. He knows what He's doing, and nobody wants to have to run the first failure down the drain, but if we have to, I am thankful we can always come back to the recipe if we have to! Because the fact is, when we take a "bite" out of the completed product, it's totally worth it!