Broken

Before God could bring me to this place 

He has broken me a thousand times.

- Smith Wigglesworth

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.

Elisabeth Elliot

               When you sit quietly and listen to the world, you hear the grief of breaking hearts being borne in utter silence as a fake façade puts up a front and says,

                “No, I’m okay.”

                They lie. But they are so longing to be vulnerable, and so longing to know truth. 

                And yet they do not speak……until they want to. And when they speak, it rains. And when it rains, it pours. But sometimes rain is good because it causes me to stop cold in my own self-serving path and listen to a person tell me how painful was their break.

                Breaks are never clean. The heart is like a window-pane that shatters in a thousand tiny spider-webs when life hits it with a force.

                I think I have it hard sometimes with my own heart, you know. I sob a lot over Poor Old Me who thinks she’s just stepped across the line to the point of no return. And "poor old me" commiserates with "poor old me" a lot, not remembering that "poor old me" was purchased on the cross.

                I’m hit with utter mourning, realizing just how blind I often am. How blind and deaf do I have to be – how blind and deaf have I been – to fail to see or hear the corpse-like, crying, living dead the world around me is?

                They’re looking for an answer. They’re begging me to hear.

And where am I? Am I involved? In tune? Alert? Or am I with my own agendas, selfish purposes, and fears that keep me far away from hearing all the breaking hearts around me that are longing to finally speak. Finally cry. Finally bare their broken soul to someone – anyone – who is willing just to nod and hug and shout in quiet urgency:                                             

                “There is hope, God is alive, and healing happens even here!”

                When I sit quietly and listen, I hear my own heart beating, and I so long to hear the hearts of every person I hold arms-length, far, or dear, beating through the healing grace Christ has showered down on me.

                So many want to talk. Want to know. What to hear what is the answer for all the hope and all the seeds we try to sow. How much then do I hate them to know the answer and to hide?

                Hide away where I am safe, where I am happy, where the troubles of this world don’t touch or pull upon my heart.

                For how much, how utterly much, do we have to hate the world to know there is eternal life and not to tell the wandering soul?

                There is a way to heal all the spider-veiny breaks.

                So don’t lost heart, and don’t resign to the hiding of your faith. 

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” 1 Peter 3:15

Unchangeable

     Change.

     I don't like it. I rebel against it. I exert myself in trying to hinder the ultimate inevitable of life. There is nothing I can do, though, to stand against the oncoming rage that this river holds.

     And it's a river called change. And change makes me weep.

     That sounds dramatic, even for me. It sounds desperate. But it is, because I often am desperate. Because I lose sight of what change truly is. Of what change truly means. And all I can see is how change is affecting my plans and how those plans are going to come crashing around my head like an erupting Mt. St. Helen. But I so often fail to see change for what it truly is.

     They tell me change is normal. The media. The scientists. The brains of society. They say that my body is in a constant state of change. (I wonder, then, why I am not in a constant state of weep?) In order for our physical bodies to remain healthy and functioning, they must constantly be turning themselves over and creating newness.

     Donald Miller discusses this concept in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, as he quotes a friend:

     “People get stuck, thinking they are one kind of person, but they aren't. The human body essentially recreated itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were in February.”

     My body is adept at change, and yet still my mind doesn't like it. Or perhaps that isn't even possible, because my mind is just as adept. Every word I say, every person I meet, every book I read, changes my mind. I am as a machine that only gets smarter if you show me something new.

     We all are.

     And yet, even as my mind grows as I write this, I still claim to hate change. And I am tempted to say that hate comes from my heart. But how can my heart hate that which it knows strongest through Christ: change?

     I was changed by a God who I could not resist. I could not stand against His change in my life. Then why do I buck so fiercely against all other changes? What is within me that hates it, that despises it, that accepts it reluctantly if I come to accept it at all? 

     Something was very strongly impressed upon me this summer that I had thought little about before I mean, I'd thought about it some, but not much. Not really. And that altering truth was this:

     God is unchangeable.

     And not just that He doesn't want to. It's not just that people haven't tried.

     God cannot change. It is not in His nature. It is utterly impossible for God to change in any way whatsoever.

     I watch a movie. I see a new actor I had previously not seen. I change because something new has entered my mind that had not entered it before. I listen to a new song. I meet a new person. I breath a new breath.

     And yet God knows all. There is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) He is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

     I am the same NEVER. Nothing about me is ever the same as it was before. And yet I serve a God who knows no change. A God who is unchangeable. And that bring immeasurable hope, because my hope is founded in One who cannot possible change the reason that I hope in Him. Heartbreak, rejection, betrayal, fear, divorce, murder, dishonesty, sin. They are all a result of change.

     Of people changing. Of decisions changing. Of plans changing. Of hearts changing.

     But God exists outside of change. Change is not a part of Him.

     The author Sheldon Vanauken says this in his book, A Severe Mercy, in regards to another aspect of the earthly condition:

     C.S. Lewis, in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?' Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest?

     It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it – how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

     He is questioning why he hates time. Why he does not feel at home in it. Why it bothers him so. And he realizes it is because He serves and strives to be like a God who is outside of time. He realizes he was created for a timeless place to be a timeless person. And so he longs to be outside of time like his Father. 

     He longs to be timeless as God is timeless.

     And Vanauken's claims made me wonder if that is the very same reason I cannot grow accustomed to change. The same reason I hate it. Because I long to be like and be with an unchangeable God. Christ has changed me, yet still my heart long to be where I will never have to change again. Where it will not creep up on me like a foreboding shadow. Where what I love won't have to be traded away for something else.

     Where I will be perfect.

     In an eternity that does exist, and is most definitely our home.

    

Her Majesty the Queen

It is no surprise to those who know me that I love to write letters. I find it a calming pursuit that is much needed in the present culture where handwriting is quickly going down-hill. There is just a lovelier aspect in seeing something handwritten as opposed to seeing something typed and printed.

Last month a friend put the idea in my head of writing to the Queen of England, and the more I thought about it, the more this idea appealed to me. So I pulled out my best paper, carved a seal, (which you can see half of in the above photo,) and started writing. I expressed to the Queen how much I admired her. I congratulated her on her Diamond Jubilee. I told her that it is one of my dreams to visit England. Hours after hard thought and practice letters, and taking great pride in my work, I addressed it.

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

The day before sending it off. Forgive the dirty mirror.

Last week I headed off to 5 days at camp, figuring that if I did happen to get a reply to my letter, I was months away from receiving it. Once again, my dreams came true. Arriving home tired and sunburned, this is what I found on my bed stand:

(I edited my address from off the envelope.)

It is a pamphlet with beautiful pictures of the Queen and a note saying, "I send you my grateful thanks for the words of support which you have so kindly sent on the occasion of the Sixtieth Anniversary of my Accession to the Throne."

 Yes, she regarded me as fan mail. (Which I suppose I am.) But the important part is: I got a letter from England!

So this month, and possibly next month, have turned out alright.

The Nature in The City

 This is a rare post where I stop talking and let the pictures talk. I stalked four baby birds this evening, two Robins and two Blue Jays, while the parents squawked and put up gallant fight while I sat and focused my camera on their babies. Don't worry. No animals were hurt in the making of this blog post.

Also at the bottom are two other small friends I have found in past years. The first is a squirrel I named Fennel who was injured, and the second is a rabbit who I named Foster. I quietly buried them shortly after finding them, but there is always new life every spring!  

 

When You Need a Friend

You can count on me like one, two, three, I'll be there,

And I know when I'm needed,

I can count on you like four, three, two, and you'll be there,

'Cause that's what friends are supposed to do...

- Bruno Mars

All That Glitters

 

All that glitters is not gold.
Shakespeare wrote that 400 years ago, but they are words which will never prove untrue. Because we like to think that all that glitters
is gold.
But just because the new, shiny obsession has come into the public eye,
and just because the revolutionary idea seems so wonderful,
and just because an object, or person, or want, seems so glorious and so valid,
most all are plastic underneath.
And even if, at first, they seem to hold lasting treasure or value, it only takes a matter of time for the top coat to chip off,
and the true colors to show through.

Don't chase after plastic dreams. Search for gold. And set your heart above,
where Christ is.

I'm sorry I am not attributing the pictures; they were in my folder and I do not know where I got them. Someone took them, and I shall do better next time to tell you who.

Tales of an Oversized Shirt

 So my Great-grandmother lives down south, (and when I say that I do not mean Florida, I mean two hours away,) and my Mema periodically goes down and visits her, seeing that Great-grandma Maggie is going to be 98 this year.

And Mema likes to bring us home some of Grandma Maggie's discarded clothes from time to time. They are usually quite old and normally do not fit. I really don't understand how Mema always brings us home clothes which are size 12 or 14, becuase Grandma Maggie is the size of a toothpick and probably wears small of everything. (And we don't wear 12 or 14s. Hmm.) That question aside, she brought us a bag a few weeks ago.

I picked through it, always on the lookout for good fabric that can be re-cut into something else. My search was rewarded with an over-sized, off-white shirt of some kind that I gladly took home. And last Saturday I decided to be one of those cool people on the internet who takes a potato sack and makes it into a prom dress, and then post a seemingly easy tutorial on how to do it.

Well, this isn't a potato sack, and I didn't make it into a prom dress. But I did have fun.

Observe the shirt. Yes. Awkward. So I took out my scissors and promptly cut off the turtle neck aspect. Then I cut off about three full inches on each side and sewed it in. Then I wondered what to do next.

Ah ha! Ruffles! The answer to every problem. Using the excess fabric from the sides, I cut out four rows of ruffles and sewed them to the front of the shirt. Then I gathered in the neck, because it was huge and I was not going with the cowl-neck look, and stitched it down.

Happy day in my bedroom. Very, very happy day. And the wonderful part is that I actually like it! Now go take an old tee shirt, some scissors, a bit of thread, and get to work. If you ruin it then you didn't waste any money, and if you love it, then you have one new shirt in your wardrobe that cost you nothing!

Some good tee-shirt tutorials: (since mine isn't really a tutorial)
Ruffles and Stuff
Vertical Ruffles

{The Desperate}

            
              There is a frightened child inside of each of us. There is a broken criminal, a grieving soul, a torn heart beating in every chest. All around you, mentally, there are castaways locked in stone cells. All around you there are cowering people who are crying from fear; silent people who have been screaming for too long for help and have finally lost their voice

                The voice of the desperate is a voice we can all understand, because we have all been desperate at some point. It is a cry that passes races, passes borders, passes ages. Everyone has been the blood-shot, wide-eyed victim with nowhere to go. Everyone has been through the nights when you wonder if you'll come out alright with the rising sun.

                And yet this voice, this voice we all know so well: it is the easiest one to ignore. The easiest one not to hear.

                Because we're selfish.

                And we don't want to be reminded what desperate looks like and what desperate sounds like. We were desperate once, and it was painful, and we don't want to hurt again. We don't want to remember the time we were lost.

                So we look away from those who are hurting now, as if they're some taboo substance. As if what they're going through is more shameful than what we went through. As if, somehow, they are sinning more than we sinned. As if they are less people because they've been desperate so long.

         We're less people because it's taken us this long to hear them.

                And what we don't seem to understand is that these desperate people are normal. They are the majority. But we've thwarted our view so much that we think they're the minority. We think happy  people like ourselves are the majority and our peaceful lives are more normal in the world.

                But they're not.

                There are hundreds of abortions performed every day. There are  thousands of people caught in slavery. One out of every 2 children live in a single-parent home. 45 people are murdered every day, (besides abortion.) Dieing alone. Living alone. Living invisible lives. Living lives shaped by immense grief.

            And this is normal to so many people. This is what they're living in. This is what they're living with. This is who they are. 

            This is what has molded them.

            And they're crying. The tears are breaking away their heart because no one is willing to bend down to where they are lying to lift them up. No one is willing to show them the love of God because we haven't taught our knees to bend that much or our neck to stoop that low.

            Because we think that we're being good Christians by staying away from these things. We think that God has commanded us to have nothing to do with these sins. But, actually, he's commanded  us not to sin in these areas ourselves. But He never said that we shouldn't help those caught in them.

            And we're just being down-right selfish to say otherwise.

            Jesus dined with a tax-collector. He spoke with an adulteress. He encountered the demon-possessed. He worked his will through redeemed murderers. He was crucified between two criminals.

            Jesus had everything to do with the desperate.

            In Luke 18:35-42 there is a story of a blind beggar sitting by the side of the road. When this man hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, he cries out that the Lord would have mercy on him, because this man is desperate. He is desperate to be released from his blindness that has shaped his life.

            Jesus is in a crowd in the street at this time. I see these people as the ones who are in some way following this King of Nazareth. This is the general crowd which has heard his teachings and seen his miracles or at least heard of them. And yet when they hear this blind beggar calling out,

            they silence him.

            Verse 39:And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

           

            Sometimes I think we are that crowd, professing to follow Jesus, but silencing the very ones for which he has come to show mercy. We have read his words and have learned of this majestic Father who mercifully reached down and brought us to life while we were dead in desperation.

            But we see the desperate ones around us, and we walk on. We silence them.

            They're not good enough for us to associate with. They are a part of taboo lives that good Christians have nothing to do with.

            We disregard the dirt in the world around us, shake the dust from our clothes, turn our eyes politely, and walk on by. Walk on to our gold-gilded church buildings to read from our new Bibles and wear our silk suits. To impress us. To impress those around us. To make some statement that we are the good ones.

            But we're selfish. We're disgustingly selfish.

            Because we have been given mercy boundless and free, even we when were desperate. And to whom much is given, much is required.

           

            The desperate need love. They need the mercy and grace of those who say they're been saved by a loving God. We need to stop turning up our holy noses. If we say we are followers of Christ, then we need to walk where he walked.

            And he walked among the loveless so he could show his love.

            You once stunk as bad as they. You once screamed as loud as they. You were once them.  

 And Jesus did not pass by you.

I am not discrediting God's sovereign work, and the fact that He can save without man's work on earth. He does not have to work through us to save the desperate. But he chooses to work through us for His glory, and He has commanded us to live lives reflecting the love he has shown us.

We are loving Christ when we love the broken, and his purposes are worked through us when we obey his call to reach out to the least of these. For whatever we have done unto them people, we have done unto Christ. 

You Have Good Reason to Rise Up

Because we are the sons and daughters of Christ. Don't you just want to get up and dance when you see this? I do.

And Rise up, we will rise up 

He's alive, He's alive inside us and we will rise up

We claim the victory, He won on Calvary, celebrate the king of glory 

So rise up; people of the Lord rise up!

 Have a beautiful weekend remembering the sacrifice that was made so that we could become children of God.

I'm off to make some silk flowers for my hair for tomorrow. 

Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

 1 Corinthians 4:10