identity and crazy love

Lined up on bar stools, their little legs not yet able to touch the floor, they busy their mouths with the munching on their cereal. At least that's what this morning's breakfast intelled. I stand there in front of them, looking into their little faces, hoping there I get to pour into their hearts.

And I say to them, partly so they become focused on me, and partly so I can focus on Him: "I need your ears to listen to mommy right now." And I speak each of their names, look into each of their eyes, and tell them who they are.

You are loved.

You are special.

You are chosen.

You are cherished.

See, that is their identity. That's who they are to me. So I start the morning now letting them know it. It's here, in the morning, where they haven't had an opportunity to choose good or bad. They haven't yet brushed their hair or their teeth or dressed or acted out or chosen good in any way. They have simply woken up and are set before their most necessary physical need for the morning: food.

And it's here I want to meet them with one of their most necessary inward needs: their identity.

See, that's where God has been meeting me lately. He's been showing me that my most desperate need isn't Him showing me where I can serve or how I can perform or what I should or shouldn't be doing. He's been meeting me in my heart and telling me to look to Him. To see who He is. To rest and meditate on Him. To know Him more. And here is the life-changing part: it's because of who He is that I am.

I am not what my actions or strength can muster up that day. I am not my ministry to Binkle. I am not my call to motherhood to my other two. I am not my role in being a wife to Scott. I am not the outfit I choose or the cleanliness of my house. I am not my career or my lack thereof. I am not the mess up of my past. I am not my childhood hurt. I am not my "no" when I can't or my "yes" when I can. I am not my hair on a humid day or my inorganization or my perception of the way you perceive me. It's ok...you can think through that one for a minute.

I am His.

And because I am His....because of who He is...I am purified. I am chosen. I am loved. I am special. I am daughter of the King. I am sheltered. I am safe. Praise God: I am heaven bound.

I am changed because of my understanding of my identity in Him.

"The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him-and of her."~A.W. Tozer

And if I am going to lead them to understand who they are in Him...to comprehend His unfathomable, uncontainable, unchanging love over them...it must start with their understanding of who they are to me.

I don't love them because of who they are or what they will become. I don't love them over what they will accomplish today or whether they get along or whether they love me back. I don't stop loving them when they talk sassy or use an ugly tone or throw a toy or stomp their feet at me. I don't stop loving them over disobedience just like I don't love them because of their obedience.

I love them because they are mine.

For this moment, for this day, they are my privilege to love.

My love over them is never dependent on them.

And here is the most free part of it all. My love over them...isn't about who I am either. It isn't based on my own ability to love them well. If it were, God help us all. Apart from Him, I am a messed up mess (If you're wondering if it's possible to be that messed up, my answer is yes.). But thankfully, my love over them is solely based on who I am in Him. On His ability to love through me. On His power that He's promised through the Holy Spirit.

And that, my friends, is some kinda good news and some kinda crazy love.

sharing this week

So, here's the thing...I don't really know how to start out this post...with the truth of walking a hard road with a hurting child or the joy He's poured out on us as we have the pleasure of walking it.

Because it's really just that...joy and heartache, intertwined.

In a child who has been in hard places, that hurt is real and trust has to be earned. Grace is critical and a foundation of love must exist if there is ever any expectation of obedience of the heart and not the body.

There is a difference in the two, you know.

Obedience of the heart comes because you love and want to obey.

Obedience of the body is just that. An act with no true measure of a heart desire to do so.

And we...well, we care much more about this boy's heart.

We care about digging in the deep and the mud and the muck of the mess he's held and establishing trust and redefining what he knows love to be.

Because we ultimately know we are called to be Him to him.

But enough about the hard.

Here is the heart candy the Lord has given me this week:

How he, a few minutes after a hard moment, looked at me and said, "sing to me about Jesus."

And I, still washing dishes, sing to him about my Jesus.

And he stops me and said, "no. To me."

So we lock eyes, and I get the honor of singing to him about Jesus.

And then, on the second night of staying with us, wakes up and says during our prayer time, "and thank you for my comfy bed."

And he continues to thank God for that comfy bed, that which I've taken for granted, over and over and over throughout the day every day.

And how, now that he knows he has a God he can pray to, he asks to do so throughout the day.

And how, just randomly, he looks at me and says, "mommy (I encouraged Mrs. Erin, but he was insistent on calling me mommy. How could I correct him?), I love  you."

And how I see my Winkle tear up over this boy's fear. How I see compassion that can't be taught in a book or in a bible class well up inside of him.

And how I hear my Tinkle and Winkle, at their own free doing, pray out loud thanking God for the gift of him. And getting to watch this boy hear over and over and over again how we really do thank God for the gift of him.

See, those are the gifts He's poured out to me this week.

how he's completely wrecking me

For the record, this is not my usual thing...to post selfies...much less this kind.

But, I figured if you actually saw that I was still sick AND heard that I have a new little guy to care for, you'd probably figure I needed your prayers.

It's crazy, I know. Taking in a life when you barely have enough energy at the moment to take care of your fam, but see, I have a bed.

And I have love.

And I have this God who has wrecked me for these kids I don't know.

And He is big, and He calls me to give big.

And did I mention He had a friend send me this just before the call?

But see, this kid, he's wrecking me, too.

He's a swooner. One of the first things he said to me was, "you're very pretty."

And, "it's fun here."

Oh, and did I mention he loves books?

And he slept last night? {insert the sound of the hallelujah chorus}

Be. Still. My. Heart.

And this morning, as we take turns praying out loud on the way to take Tinkle to school, I say something like...

And, God, thank you for Binkle {the names that rhyme with Tinkle and Winkle are just not as cute, so I apologize up front}. Thank you that he gets to be a part of our family for a little while...

and he interjects, "yeah."

And later, after the prayer, he says, "I want to stay here for a long and long and longer and longer time."

what my soul clings to

Tinkle has been working on a math project, due today, for a couple of weeks now. She had to create a board game that had a particular theme to it. I've watched the project come together and, here and there, have offered bits of advice.

She began working the other night on taping it all together. I didn't see the beginning of this work or else I would've warned her. See, she began taping the pieces of the game that didn't need a particular position before she began taping the actual road, those necessary pieces, to the board. The road, each piece needing to be connected securely to one another, needed it's position placed first.

I stopped her where she was, explaining the purpose of laying the road, the main focus of the game, first. As I helped her begin to tape that road together, we saw where we needed to take up the other pieces layed before.

Those unessential pieces were now in the way for the essential pieces.

They had to be removed.

As I began slowly assisting her, teaching her, to gently pull away those pieces, some of the board came up with them. The adhering of the tape to the board was so strong we weren't able to separate them completely.

"My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me." Psalm 63:8

I've been meditating on that verse for a few weeks now. I've read multiple versions of this verse, but I keep going back to this one, where it uses the word "cling".

What does it look like to cling to the Lord?

The original Hebrew word here is dabaq. It means "to cleave, to adhere, specially firmly, as if with glue, to be glued".

And I have to ask myself honestly, what is my soul glued to? What determines my steps each day? What do I say out loud or to myself? What is it that I hold to most?

Is it the Lord? A past? A sin? Insecurity? Control? Another human soul?

If I'm truthful, it's probably been all those things at one time or another.

And, it's funny, when your soul clings to something it wasn't made to, how much of a burden it can bare. How much life you give it. How much control it takes on.

But the truth is, Who I was made to cling to...brings forth

freedom, not frustration.

Birth, not burden.

Worth, not weariness.

So, I'm on a journey with God. I've committed to come to Him every morning on my knees asking Him to help my soul really cling to Him.

And I know He'll have to take up some unnecessary things in order to take up more of my soul.

I'm asking you: will you take that journey, too?

Because won't it be worth it? See, it will be His righteous right hand upholding us instead of that thing that weighs us down. To determine who you are based on how He sees you and not anything more. To feel the freedom of walking life with Him than the burden of pleasing others. To gain joy in all He brings to your soul than the job of meeting unnecessary expectations.

And I don't know about you, but that excites me. What a promise!

So, there isn't a formula for this, but in order to help you walk this road with me, I'm opening up a glimpse into what I've been doing lately. I try to come to the Lord completely unmade up (aka no makeup:)). I want to come to Him unadorned and as sincere as I can. I really do get on my knees because I am basically crying out to Him. I desire it that much and I want my posture to reflect it.

My prayers isn't memorized but it often is like this...

Oh Lord, I praise You for who You are! Thank you for Your love over me. Thank you for the promises that I have in You. God, help my soul to be completely satisfied in You. Help my soul to firmly cling to You. Remove any burden or weight that isn't intended to be there, and let me live passionately and purposefully and wholly in You. Let your righteous right hand uphold me, and let my value, my worth, my future to be tied...glued...to You alone.

I often pray out loud but not always.

May your journey with Him be sweet and may you rest in His abundant love and grace.

where we're safest

She's a quiet and gentle spirit, often assessing facial expressions and trying to scope out the inner thoughts of others. She's a helper by nature and in her world, people matter. A lot. She likes simplicity and enjoys the comforts of blue jeans and tennis shoes. She's my girl who leans toward perfectionism...legalism...the having to get it right. She presses in on herself to please others and perform well. She's slow to speak and slow to anger and quick to forgive. She believes in her heart that if it isn't positive it shouldn't be spoken and I know this because she lives it.

He's passionate and loud and seems to be talking at all times he's not sleeping. He is tender hearted, wearing his emotions, every one of them, for all to see. He is always saying how he feels without hesitancy. He is, without a doubt, the most loving boy I know, kissing me more times in a day than I can count. He is boy to very core of his bones and adores guns and swords and sticks and dirt.

And this is how I've changed parenting them:

She and I read Kisses From Katie before school. I try not to cry as I read allowed the words of real children covered in flies, crying in streets, orphaned. We head out, and I pray aloud as we go.

My prayers, before now, mostly consisted of safety around my children. Protecting them from bumps, bruises, struggles, and pain. Protecting their tender hearts and eyes and ears and, because I am a germaphobe, their little bodies from getting sick.

I used to care about that stuff so much.

But God's safe plan? Well, it looks different than mine. He cares less about our comforts and more about our growth. He sees the bigger picture because He created it and He's teaching me that those comforts I prayed for them...they can lead to complacency. He's teaching me to care less about that more about their growth. More about living for His plan and purpose. More about builing their lives to love and serve Him well. And, honestly, that looks a lot different than my original view of keeping them safe.

See, that usually...no...always...costs.

I remember the first real moment I realized it. The moment we brought home another little life to love on. That moment looked a lot different than I expected. There was a moment in which we thought their safety, their comfort (from a protective mom's stand point) could be compromised. In that moment, I struggled deep. All bets were off. See, I was completely torn over our call to serve other children, ultimately knowing it was our call to serve Him. Torn because it was no longer just costing me something...it could cost my children something. And that was a whole new ballgame. It wasn't what I signed up for. I remember falling to my knees, in that moment, calling out to Him. I was desperate for my Father to do something.

After all, wasn't He supposed to care about keeping them safe?

And it was in the next moment that changed a lot of other little moments for me. I remember Him coming to me in the quiet of that room, just He and I, my face to the ground. Coming to me as I cried out to Him, my own Father, because I didn't know how to serve Him and be the mama He's called me to be. The mama who is supposed to protect them fully. He spoke to my in my heart what this over-protective mama needed to hear.

Would you protect them from My plan for them?

I sat there in shock and then in retrospect.

What did I believe? What was I protecting them from? What is my value of their comfortable lives?

Because if I fully believe He is good, if I fully believe His plans are best, if I fully believe He's called us to serve, isn't this ultimately for their good? Isn't it all in His plan? Is He really as concerned about their safe, comfortable lives as I was? In that moment I had a choice to make. Was I going to cover them in a false sense of safety, or was I going to show them what it means to follow Him? Was I going to believe it by living it?

Did I really believe it if I chose not to live it?

Was I going to show them that risk for His Kingdom is better than a temporary, comfortable life. In that moment He shifted my earthly eyes to His heavenly plan. In that moment, I realized He is the Father who doesn't care about comfort because He knows how comfort leads to complacency. And that's where danger really exists.

Was I, in fact, leading them to danger rather than safety?

In that moment, He helped me see my prayers, my desires as their mom, for what they really were.

And my head still to the floor, I thought about it all-had my prayers really done that? Were my priorities as their mama teaching them to risk comfort and live fully for Him, in His safe plan? Was I really more concerned about Him protecting them from hurts rather than Him pursuing their hearts...pursuing them to boldly, riskingly serve and love Him well?

I still pray safety over them. But my view of safe isn't what it once was. It's more like Psalm 91, which I now pray over them often. Out loud. Safety is when we make The Most High our dwelling.

I now encourage them, pray for them, to be risk takers. Warriors for His kingdom. I let them know that sin, like complacency, is not safe. I let them know it is worth fighting. I let them know that there is a battle, and it has been won. I let them know that they have the power of the Holy Spirit to fight sin, to fight for His truths, and that doesn't always feel safe.

We soon round the parking lot where she will next open the door to spend another day learning. She unbuckles, leans forward for a hug and kiss, and she knows now what I will say.

"Shine bright for Jesus. Be fully lit up for Him. Go in, knowing you don't go alone, and serve and love Him well."


God, may we be risk takers for Your Holy name. May we serve and love You well.

He simply asked

Winkle, only 4, sat in the back seat telling me once again that he wanted to ask Jesus to be his Savior.

I knew this had been on his heart...on his mind. He's been questioning, wanting to know more of salvation and heaven and sin for a few months now. And since my grandmother recently went to be with the Lord, it has only increased our talk about it all. So, this time anyway, it didn't catch me off guard.

I replied my now usual reply, "Mommy hopes and prays that one day you will do just that".

Expecting to the conversation to shift to things like monster trucks or motorcycles, I was most caught off  guard by his next reply.

"I can do that right now."

I looked back at him in my mirror, admittely in shock.

His little hands folded, his head bowed down, I heard him say it so simply, "Jesus, be my Savior."

And he lifted tha little head, locked eyes with mine through the mirror and said, "See! Now He's MY Savior."

I sat there in disbelief for a moment. Is it really that simple? Isn't it too much for a 4 year old to take in? Had he really just accepted Christ?

And I reflected how I'd put him off for a few months now. I reflected how he knew what sin was, by the way he now admits his sin...calls it sin...prays to ask forgiveness of that sin. I knew he understood he needed a Savior because of his sin.

But he's four.

I reflected on how he was always the one who begged for more of the knowing and not me pushing him toward it.

I reflected on the "how" of this prayer he just prayed.

It was as though he said to me, "If you won't lead me to my Savior, I'll go myself."

And he did.

Still, this mama's heart didn't want to mislead him into thinking what he did was real. Only, the funny part of it all, it wouldn't at all be me misleading him into thinking it was real because he is convinced it is real. He truly has the faith of a little child. If anything, it would be me misleading him into thinking it wasn't real.

I asked for prayer and counsel from several people. One from an adult who had a very young child, now a teenager, receive Christ. One from an adult who did receive Christ at the age of four.

And the response I kept hearing over and over and over was this: believe him. There's absolutely no reason not to believe him.

See, his God who pursues him with His unfathomable love, He is not bound by age or time or life experience. He is capable of saving him, and so we believe He did.

So, still in shock by the beauty of it all, we celebrate with him.

"I have summoned you by name; you are mine." Isaiah 43:1

We will watch him, expecting fruit.

We will continue training him just as we normally would. 

We will still expect him to be four.

We will await baptism until he is old enough to tell his salvation story with others...or until he goes himself.

Dear One Who Meant To Harm Me,

Dear One,

 

While it was you who meant to harm me, with those words and with those actions, I doubt you meant it to the depth that I felt it. I'm sure not for the length that I lived it. I’m writing you to admit I’ve thought about that hurt, chose to feel it, for far too long. See, I am a sinner. It was me, in my pride that I found justification for my grief, for my hurt. My flesh, my eyes…they wanted to stay focused on the hurt because it felt a little powerful. In some sick way, it comforted me to feel the hurt of being wronged. I liked being the victim and the hurt, maybe even you, to be the villain. In that story I had written

 

I chose my hurt instead of His healing.

 

I chose the feeling of being wronged over the power of His redemption from it.

 

I chose to feel sorry for myself over choosing Him, who could fill my sorrow.

 

But that story is being rewritten.

See, Jesus came.

 

Sure, I’d already known Him…had Him. I just didn't want to claim His power over this. If you’d asked me if I wanted it, though, I’d have said yes. If you’d asked me if I wanted to let go of the hurt… to heal…to forgive, I’d have said absolutely. I see now how I wasn’t ready before. I see now how my sin-filled flesh overpowered my desire to forgive.

But that story is being rewritten.

 

See, Jesus came.

 

He, the God who doesn’t change, He came to mess with that mess within me.

 

He came to change me.

 

And I just want you to know…

 

His love pursued me. In that pursuing, He’s allowing me to love you better.

 

His love forgave me. In that forgiveness, He’s allowing me to forgive you.

 

His power is sufficient through me and over me. In that power, that hurt no longer has it’s hold on me.

 

His rightful spot is taking it's place over me. In that spot, He’s filling the pride that says it's all about me.

 

His grace saved me. In His saving grace, no hurt can ever be my hero.

My story is being rewritten.

 

See, Jesus came.

 

Love,

 

His girl