I asked Him this, simply, “Father, what does it mean to mother?”
This, His girls, is what He said:
Happy Mother’s Day, my sisters.
And if you would like to receive more encouragement, God’s heart for you, click here to subscribe to Loop: what you need to know.
So grateful for you,
I cry, let this be holy ground, when the trees shake like mad and the thunder comes so I burrow my head down low and wait for waters to subside. Her arms wrap round, my knees pressing hard into brown wall to wall. This floor is the cradle where she comes down low, bending over me. The first time and the last time, in twenty years that I am open with her all the way. And then, soon after, I close it up.
I can’t tell you why.
Except that the way we try to be perfect and pride gets in the way, dictating decisions that would have kept me soft instead of hard. Or, maybe I was afraid of hard and so I chose what I thought would be the softer way to fall.
Either way, there was the fall.
And the ground in December, underneath bare almond trees is not the same as a mother’s arm around a teenage girl on her brown bedroom carpet.
There is comfort in telling the truth, even if it is fear that propels the words to tumble out. Whichever way they come, it is truth we need to speak, that needs to pour out, unrehearsed, untaken back.
Let it out, girl. Let the thunder roll and the shoulders shake with the terror of telling it straight out.
It is better to be known, for the real you, and not the fake you all bundled up in a place you only think is soft but is the stark cold ground under which you believe no one hears you cry.
Linking up with beautiful heart sisters, over at Lisa-Jo’s place, for 5-minute Friday. What comes to mind when you think of the word, “comfort”?
I wasn’t supposed to be here, in this TCBY across the country, dolloping sliced fruit and sprinkles on top of frozen cream. My friend at college encouraged me to attend a Christian retreat that summer, not go to Washington D.C. for a morning teaching internship and an afternoon yogurt shop job. I had just confessed my darkest sin, in prayer, at a retreat that spring, and I wanted to start a new life, with Jesus. My friend was nervous about me going—thinking I was too vulnerable to go across the country and live with other students I didn’t know. He told me he felt God wanted me to go to this Christian retreat, with other college students from our Christian college group, and not go to Washington D.C..
But I felt like I was supposed to go. . .
Do you know how much I love Jennifer’s place–her beautiful heart and the art she creates? Join me over there to read the rest of this post about how I met my husband–the story I share for Jennifer’s beautiful series: Our Love Story Written By God.
Father, I see her dancing, her eyes looking for me, her pink lips turned in a smile.
“Are you watching? Do you see me?”
I see you, dear one, your floaty pink twirls and pointed toes. I see how you lean, stretch, then turn and turn–arms overhead, head back, back arched, lemony hair pushed back from your eyes.
She is tender, Father. She takes in my emotions, a subtle sadness, a wave of irritation on my brow. Her sweet eyes look into mine before she declares, “Nobody loves me!” Eyes so big, watching mine. Waiting. . .
For the rest of the post, please click here and meet me over at my friend Michele-Lyn’s, at A Life Surrendered, where I am delighted to be guest posting today.
[I]t seems easier to love people who seem more similar to us than different. We gravitate towards people who look like us, talk like us, think like us. And these are the people in our lives whom it is easier for us to quickly call friends.
Do you agree?
I do this, more than I want to admit.
Sure, I smile at people I don’t know at the skateboard park while my kids zoom around, engage in chit-chat with parents of diverse beliefs when handing out meals during school lunch duty, hang out with my 80 year-old widowed neighbor in her cozy, tidy, little house. But I save what seems to be the truer, deeper heart connection stuff for people whom, for reasons I’ve decided, seem safe. And I choose to not engage, truly, with almost anyone else.
I decide, based on my set of narrow criteria, without even realizing it most of the time, whether a person is friendship material, or not. And I miss out on opportunities to grow and trust fully in the Father’s plans for me, when I choose to not even ask Him with whom He calls me to engage – and love.
Yesterday afternoon, tired and spent, after a long but fun mission trip meeting to prepare for our family’s trip to Tecate, Mexico, with 39 other people this summer, I thought of the beautiful diversity of our team, people I am just beginning to get to know. From 60 year olds traveling alone, because their family members don’t want to come, to preteens and young families with toddlers, we all have amazingly different stories. And it takes these meetings, preparing our hearts for being stretched while we are out of our comfort zones and serving far away from home, for me to remember the beauty of the lives all around me. All the time.
For we sit and listen and share. We want to learn each other’s stories. We want to begin to discover pieces that the Father finds in His beloveds, all along.
When we let each other in, take the time to gather and listen and respond, in His name, we are friends, needless of whether we have much in common or not.
We have everything that’s important in common, don’t we?
You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you (John 15: 14-16).
So I pray for the Father’s Spirit in me to move me more in tune with His will. Let me be open, Father, to whomever You bring into my life. For it is a lie that I have nothing in common with people I happen to not yet know and to whom I feel a stranger. We actually each have everything in common — all brothers and sisters.
Some of us {and this is our job, friends} just don’t know it yet.
When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance (Luke 15: 5-7).
How are you challenged around the concept of “friendship” with people God brings into your life?
[C]ounting gifts:
[S]weet girls, I haven’t yet been able to get up a post this week — but I couldn’t help but grab my phone and videotape myself for a minute to tell you what is on my heart. {Subscribers, please click here to come on over to watch/listen.}
The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing {Zephaniah 3:17).
{P.S. It’s “Jonathan David Helser”, not . . . what I said. :) }
Praying for you, friends,
Jennifer
[I] lay in bed, watching light tiptoe soft behind the shade, and search for words, looking for hope, peace, life coming. Here I am, deciding for myself what beauty is. And I stop.
Sometimes beauty isn’t all gentle, beautiful quiet, with birds singing and breezes blowing sweet flowers’ breath through a stretched-wide open window.
Sometimes it is just messy.
And it is raw.
Pulling myself up, my usually early-bird mind feeling groggy and slow, my daughter comes in to tell me, worry in her eyes, “The boys are fighting.”
And I pull on my teal shammy robe, the one I’ve had since college, the cloth that has been wrapped around me through years of mornings of both love and strife and hope and confusion.
And there they are, two angry, frustrated bodies all tangled, rolling around on the wool-patched rug. Almost silent, no words here, just a confused mess of emotions, arms wrapped here, legs bent and pressed in.
Frustration and anger, compounded by lack of sleep {it is difficult for a night owl and an early bird to share a room, sometimes}, result in quiet and fierce energy. I separate them, my body instinctively placing itself in the middle of the storm. In a moment the walls come down, and there are tears.
They each blame each other for the beginning of the fight, but words aren’t making much sense.
And I know how, in our frailty, our humanness, these bodies of our just don’t have the strength, the peace within us, by ourselves, to live with love, each moment, without anger welling up and urging us on, to fight.
Fight for what we think we deserve, what we want, what we crave.
I want to fight, too. I am tired, too. I am weary, too.
And as I remember the struggle of these two little boys, their bodies exploding with emotion they feel they can’t contain, I want to claim this beauty of needing the Father so clearly. Light tiptoeing silent behind white morning shades or not.
Beauty isn’t just in light dancing, but in the tangled mess here, on the floor.
Here, in the mess, in the noise and confusion and tangled disorder of our hearts, we need Him.
And He will meet us here, if we let Him.
Beautifully.
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me (2 Corinthians 12:9).
What mess are you in the middle of? How might you feel all tangled up, worn out, weary? How can I pray for you?
Dear friends, Are you good at making your relationship with Jesus complicated? Are you good at making yourself believe He is far away? The Father had some things to tell me about this, and I hope you let your heart be open here, to what He shared.
I am delighted to be guest posting over at Lindsey’s love-filled space, The Little Missionary Girl All Grown Up, for her series on the Father’s Relentless Love.
Won’t you click here and come on over, joining me, and listen to what He has to say?
Gratefully,
Jennifer
[S]ometimes it just wells up, the disbelief, the lie that I know is a lie but I find hard to resist anyway . . .
that I am loved like this. . . that I am wanted like this . . .
I am good at finding an excuse to not have faith.
I am good at saying I want to believe and acting like I don’t.
Everything in me rebels against You, Father, more often than I let myself see.
But You see.
And You love me.
Sometimes I just need Your arms around me, holding me close, telling me again, it’s going to be alright — that when I fall You don’t turn away but rush in, open arms.
You see the choice to fall, the initial turning away from You, and still . . .
You love me.
I wait here, needing to hear Your words, Your breath in my heart wiping away all the sin, cleansing me again.
Tell me again, Whose and who I am.
Tell, us, Father, Your girls.
You love me.
Happy Valentine’s Day, His girls! I pray His love, His richest blessings, pour out upon you today, drenching you completely. You are adored, right here, right now. I say ‘yes’ with you, to believe.
My friend’s gentle words to me, something written in her journal, wrap love tight, right around. Breath catches while heart swells. All resonating, tender true. Her words press deep, reminding me of the intimate shaping of our hearts, these lives He gives, the finger paint dance-touch of the Father in everything we say and do.
Footprints are evidence that someone’s been here. Fingerprints are further evidence — that someone has not only been here, but has touched things, held things, moved things. Likewise with God. His footprints tell us He is with us; His fingerprints on our lives tell us He holds us, touches us, moves us.
And then she sends me a Steven Curtis Chapman song that she had forgotten long ago:
FINGERPRINTS OF GOD
[For Emily]
Psalm 139:14, 15; PHP 1:6
I can see the tears filling your eyes
And I know where they’re coming from
They’re coming from a heart that’s broken in two
By what you don’t see
The person in the mirror
Doesn’t look like the magazine
Oh, but when I look at you it’s clear to me that . . .
I can see the fingerprints of God
When I look at you
I can see the fingerprints of God
And I know it’s true
You’re a masterpiece
That all creation quietly applauds
And you’re covered with the fingerprints of God.
Never has there been and never again
Will there be another you
Fashioned by God’s hand
And perfectly planned
To be just who you are
And what He’s been creating
Since the first beat of your heart
Is a living breathing priceless work or art and ….
Just look at you
You’re a wonder in the making
Oh, and God’s not through, no
In fact, He’s just getting started and ….
And she signs her words to me, to you, sweet friend,
Just wanted to let you know ….
love,
K
Happy Thanksgiving, His girls
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well (Psalm 139:14).
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (Phillipinans 1:6).
Fifteen years ago I put on my white dress, the ivory cascading down to my toes, and stood nervously on my father’s arm as my sisters and my friend stood in yellow dresses at the fountain in the garden. You stood there too, in your gray morning suit, twenty-three years old and too handsome for me to behold. We had met two years prior and had known in less than a month that this friendship, this laughter, this love and uniting of hearts was good, was different than anything we had ever known. We could not imagine life without the other.
And before the pastor, who lifted our vows to God and guided us through the sacred vows, we promised to each other I will be the one who loves no matter what, I will be the one who stays and holds and challenges and believes and pursues, despite all circumstances, in the face of whatever God brings. We pledged, in faith, that we would be the soft place for each other when we were weary, and the rock on which the other person could, with the Father, stand.
You were the one who knew my past within a week of my knowing you, and you loved me still. In your eyes, before I even let God in to show me, you showed me what hope looks like, forgiveness and new beginnings. Now I know better and recognize that it was the eyes of our Father that I was looking into then, on that bench, when I told you my deepest pain, all along.
You show me what love looks like, in the sacrifice, in the believing that there is good in store when a life is surrendered, handed over, trusted so that it is no longer your own. In these years you have shown me this is where life begins, in the I will, the letting the Father’s life be our life so the pressure to perform, achieve, and be worthy of love ends.
We are worthy because we are loved. We are connected in the I will – the promise that we will continue to love, continue to serve, continue to sacrifice and be granted His mercy and tenderness to do it well.
And in the failings and victories, the falling and rising, we remember the promise, the commitment to love, in His name, and we learn more how to make the promise last.
I will.
Yesterday I was invited to participate as the prince in the “dinner-feast with the prince and princess”, a play performed to the audience of stuffed horses, unicorns, and puppies. My daughter, five-years old, dressed me in a crown and asked me to bow to her, the princess, and we danced in the light of late morning, ducking behind the rocking chair in the corner when it was time to exit the stage.
And I enter this world, where magic lives, the hand of a child grasping mine, dropping the other roles that consume me so easily and becoming, instead, the pursuer of the princess, the dancer who joins his beloved at the ball.
Music of the apple-blossom fairy swells and my daughter twirls and knows she is beautiful, my delight. I know that watching her, seeing her, participating with her, in the dance, when she asks, is how I am most needed now. The other to-dos, pressing, must wait. This moment, entering in, slows the hurry of the things less of the heart. Oh, but, sadly — and this shows the truth of my struggle– it is so hard for me to stay. The pressure of what I think needs to get done this day makes me flee too soon. And the music of my heart stops as I let my agenda, not my Father’s, dictate what I do. Jesus, forgive me: let me say ‘yes’ to this dance You offer with You.
So many moments I squeeze short, opportunities to stay with Him, heeding His voice, trusting His pace. My daughter, asking me to stay, to keep dancing, sees my pace and asks me to slow. Dancing is a response of the body to the heart. “Look, mommy, I am telling a story without talking.” (Oh, beautiful, I see!) And I watch and see what she means.
What story do I tell her, in my running from moment to moment, addressing the present in a flurry of activity with the eye of my heart on the next? I voice whispers, “Stay, heed the music being offered”. Do I stop often enough to hear the music playing in my heart? Am I heeding the music He brings?
The music of the heart–the dance He invites me to dance with Him– might be full of twists and turns, fancy footwork, and complicated rhythm. But maybe not. Maybe it’s a slow dance, a lullaby, a nursery rhyme, the soft beating of a heart. Whatever music He sings promises a story of beauty and hope, of redemption and joy. Open my heart, Father. I want to hear it.
My dance of this life tells a story. I can participate with Him, or away, and my heart with Him, in response to His music in me is the story where I am fulfilled, present, soaking up the words He gives, not critical of the beginning, anxious for the end. And this is the story I want to present to the Father, the story of the heart that gives His life to others, the story I want my daughter to read.
