Broken Lives and Shortbread Cookies

There are these shortbreads I've been baking for 16 years.  They're not ordinary shortbread cookies. They're whipped.  And by whipped, I mean I put butter, flour and a bit of powdered sugar into my faithful Kitchen-Aid, turn her on high and let her roar for ten straight minutes while I go about my business.  Of all the fussy, truffly, ganachy, decadent treats I make every Christmas, these common cookies are by far my favorite.  In fact, I blame them for at least ten of my extra pounds--I mean really, when the recipe calls for equal parts butter and flour, you know the scale is going to taunt you for the rest of your life.  But the key to these cookies isn't in the ingredients.  That's nothing new.  Anybody can make a shortbread.  The key is in the whipping.  A friend was over the other day, and I force fed her one with a bit of Earl Grey tea (because who in their right mind would have one without that specific tea?).  She said, "These are tricky little cookies.  You put them in your mouth, and then they disappear."  Exactly.  There is so much air in those gloriously golden dollops that they melt instantly on your tongue.  Clouds are made of them.  They grow on trees in heaven.  On the day God rested?  He was eating them.  I know this.  I am certain.
But there is one little problem.
They break.
Every year.
When I attempt to place them in a container, inevitably several of them crack the instant they are lifted from the cookie sheet.
It's because they've been whipped.  Hard.
And sometimes life does that to us.  Whips us.
Leaves us feeling like a batter that's been tossed around the planet mercilessly for too many long, lonely minutes.  And those minutes feel like a lifetime of relentless horror.
I know this because I've been watching it all around me.  Lives of those I love have been caught up in some kind of violent cosmic hurricane and the debris and splinters of their world swirl around us.
Children terminally ill.
Family with cancer.
Wedding vows abandoned.
Suicidal children.
Mothers addicted to drugs.
Depression that doesn't lift with talk or pill.
And these aren't just words; these are the stories of souls.  Precious, hurting souls. Souls I've talked with this very week.
They have names; they live, and they breathe, and they break.
Dear God, they break.
And were I to have a hundred hands, still I could not stitch the shards of their lives back together, still I could not wipe away all the tears, still I could not fix the fractures.
Noah saw this same stuff, was witness to great woe.
God placed him on the ark, told him He would send flooding rain.
And Jesus told us In this world you will have trouble. (John 16:33)
God did send rain.  Though Noah expected it, having never seen it, he didn't know how overwhelming a flooding rain would be. And though we know trouble is promised, we are still stunned by its staggering blows.
Noah sat on that boat, goats bleating, crickets chirping, and a family that no doubt freaked as the waters rose.  Did you ever stop to really think of Noah?
Because I thought I knew everything about the whole ark experience.  The two by two animals, the pretty little brown flannel graph boat that floated like a cruise ship on blue felt waves, and the gorgeous rainbow bookended by cottony clouds.  Mr. Thomas taught me all about it at Faith Baptist Church when I was growing up.
He was a good man.  His stories captivated me as he used strips of felt to create a canvas of biblical times. He taught me well, but the truth is, he left a few details out.  The ones that didn't fit neatly on his 2 by 4 foot flannel graph board and easel.
I've thought about those things lately.  A lot.
If I was Noah's wife, I would have been fine for a little while.  I would have let him build his ark.  I would have even helped him, baked him muffins and brought him coffee.  I would have created feeding charts for the animals and packed an overnight bag 'just in case.'  When the rain came, it would have been a confirmation to me that he wasn't crazy.  I would have made tea and sat by a window to watch that strange phenomenon I'd not yet seen as it poured down in sheets of clear liquid like tears.  But friends, did you ever stop to think of the crowds of people desperately crying out and beating their fists against the cypress wood begging to be let in?
God had already shut the door.  And if y'all want things to get really real, we should just discuss God shutting that door.  Because nobody wants to tackle that topic.  Understanding God isn't easy.  He doesn't fit in a theology book or a Dayspring Card.  He can't be tamed, fully fathomed or simplified into words that completely encompass all of who He is.  He can't.  Anyone who pretends otherwise is dead wrong.  But know this, there is not one single description of God in the Bible that is false.  So when we don't understand or God forbid, we don't agree, we stand on what we know to be true.
For the Lord is good; His love endures forever.  (Psalm 100:5)
So when I think of the reality that Noah could give them no relief, I remember that The Lord is still good in that decision to shut the door even if I don't grasp it.  That right there would have been the end of me.  I'd have climbed out a window, slung out a rope, screamed at Noah to let me help them.  Because who among us can ever sit idly by when another is in trouble?
And this is a rather inconvenient truth.  Our God does allow trouble.
No Sunday School teacher on the planet can make that fit neatly on their flannel graph board.  It's ugly and glaring and uncomfortable.
And still, there is more.  It got way worse.
Did you ever think about the bodies?
Because surely when they looked out the windows of that ark they saw bodies.  Floating and lifeless beings that finally surrendered their fight to survive.  The carcasses of animals and cadavers of their friends and neighbors sloshed about by a deluge so strong that none, not one, single soul survived it.
All broken beyond repair.  I know I'd of wept and wailed, and I am not even going to pretend I would have accepted the decision of a sovereign God.
I
would
have
been
ticked.
I'd have yelled.  I'd have pleaded for Him to show Himself.  To explain Himself.  To give me some understanding.  And where is the yelling and hollering and pleading before God for answers in our churches today?  Does that fit neatly on Sunday morning between Bless the Lord  and Oceans in the worship set?  Because what if we all got just a little more honest and spit up just a wee bit of the truth of our souls?  What would church look like then?
But this is what is worst of all.
After the rain stopped its relentless forty days of pounding, there came a deafening silence.
For 11 months heaven held it's tongue.
Our God was silent.
They floated aimless on an ocean of water with no end.  No idea where they were going.  No idea when or if they would hear from God again.  No idea how long their food rations would hold out.  No idea if they would survive.
And if we're being honest, when you've lost that much, would you even want to survive?
They had nothing left.
All I'm saying is we've seen troubles yes, but we're in good company.
God did not speak.  That we know of, Noah heard nothing from God for over a year.
And how does a sometimes silent God work with our pretty paintings of God as a doting Father?  Is this not perhaps the reason people walk away from the faith?
I'm just asking.
Maybe we were sold a Dixie cup of grape Kool-Aid, and after sipping a little while, we discover, there's more.  It's not all grape.  It's not all sweet.  It's not going down easy.  And we feel jilted, deceived, conned.  We feel stupid for falling for it.  We think we're idiots for drinking the Kool-Aid, and we're out.
Because we've tried to live right, you and I.  Haven't we?  Tried to follow the rules, be good little Christians. God said Noah was righteous and scripture says Noah did all that God commanded him.  Indeed he did.
Obedient, God-fearing men and women can do exactly as God instructs and still bear witness to great sorrow.
I'm talking about the kind of sorrow and confusion that follows your child telling you they are gay.
I'm talking about the kind of pain that follows cancer, stage 4.
I'm talking about the knock out punch that happens when you made a bad investment and your family loses their home.
I'm talking about the stuff we don't want to talk about.  I'm saying, let's have this conversation.
In this world you will have trouble.  Jesus said it because He was willing to have this conversation. Not once did he shy away from the truth of who He is or the questions of a people hungry for a Savior.
So Noah and his family are just about in the middle of what seems like nowhere when we read this:
But God remembered Noah.
God--
our God
the God who was silent,
remembered.
See, that little phrase there is a game changer for me.  It's everything I need.
When He remembered, He sent a wind to dry the land, and He closed the floodgates.
Still though He remembered, He remained silent for over half a year longer.
Why God?
Because I know women whose husbands are dead and children whose mothers are dead, and they've lived through the silence of heaven.
But God remembers.
And this is what we need, is it not?  We need to know that God remembers us.  In Hebrew that phrase means He calls to His memory.
If I'm going to drink from the bitter cup, I want a God who calls me to His memory.  I want a God who doesn't forget I exist.  A God who cares enough to choose to call me to His mind.  Because maybe the Kool-Aid doesn't look right after all, but faith isn't what we see.  It's what we don't see.
Around the seventh month, Noah and his family stopped drifting and landed on solid ground.
Faith is believing solid ground will surface and the boat of our lives will land there because our God will not forget us.
Around the tenth month, Noah and his family could see the tops of the mountains again.  Earth was still there.  It did not give way.
Indeed the earth is established, it cannot be moved.  (Psalm 93: 2)
Then, after 370 days Noah and his family set their feet on soil.
Do you hear me when I say it was a year?  An entire year of their lives they drift and float and wait. Lord knows we drift too, don't we?  And finally, their God speaks.
And when He does?  Do you know that He just picks up the conversation right where He left off?  No Hi, how are you?  It's me, God. Missed you.  How you been?  What did you think of the ark?  How'd the elephants do all cooped up?  
Why?  Because He already knew.  There was no catching up needed; He was always there.
Emmanuel--God with us.
And He is here now in the midst of your story and my story.
Right here.  Right now.  In the middle of the debris.
The Lord is near to all who call out to Him, to all who call on him in truth. (Psalm 145:18)
I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)
There's the whole rainbow bit too.  Everybody loves that part, but for me, it's just Him talking to them like He never left.
Because
He
didn't
leave.
He
never
does.
And while we're discussing Him.  God isn't afraid of our questions.  He's not phased by our doubts. He's not offended by our disappointment.
In fact, I think when we get real and honest and quit pretending, that's when we start to really see God.
Not the God of fairy tales.
Not the God that's just sugar and no spice.
But the LIVING GOD.
The God who has His own will and plan.  The God who didn't make us so we could enjoy life, but rather who made us so we could have life.
And by the way, that life we get to have?  It's HIM.  He said, I am the way, the truth, and THE LIFE. (John 10:10)
Romans 8:5,6 says this:  For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped  by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by things of the Spirit.  For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace.
Maybe this is the crux of it all.  To survive the flood, we must live according to the Spirit.  And there's only one way to do that.
By faith.
It always comes to this, doesn't it?
Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who approaches God must believe that He exists and the He rewards those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
That same passage says Noah became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Faith that he exists.
Faith that He rewards those who seek Him.
Faith that if God be for us, who can be against us?  No enemy can stand against the power of His name.
Faith that He will shelter you with his wings, you will find safety under his wings.  His faithfulness is like a shield or a protective wall. (Psalm 91:4)
Faith that our God's love is loyal. (Psalm 92:4)
Faith that though our God is a consuming fire, the Lord is (also) just in all His actions and exhibits love in all He does.  (Psalm 145:7)
Because the outlook of the flesh is death.  And when we're in the midst of a flood, sometimes all we see is the death, but
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
Knowing this doesn't remove the angst of life.  It isn't a promise that our spouse will return, that children won't go hungry, that the stroke won't take his speech or that Alzheimers won't steal her memory.  But knowing it changes our outlook to one of life and peace. It reminds us that beneath the raging waters, solid ground remains.
Cookies crumble.
They just do.
And life?  It stings sometimes.
It just does.
But God remembers.
And that is enough.

The Mothering Chronicles 8: Sometimes Their Hearts Break

This morning my cat sat outside the french door, her eyes like peridot marbles following every step I made.  She was hungry.  Apparently mousing doesn't always fill her belly; she wanted real food.  Just one problem.  We ran out.  (What? You never run out of cat food and have to scramble your precious feline an egg or crank open a can of tuna?)  Now, the truth be told, said cat chose us as her family and refused to leave.  We never--REPEAT NEVER--chose her.  And frankly, I can't say I'm overly fond of her.  She only shows up when mice are scarce or she wants to lay on Nate's fuzzy Georgia Bulldogs blanket.  Usually this happens at 3AM, and she announces her presence with a feral meow that curdles milk. (And in case you were wondering . . . no, my husband doesn' t hear her.)  So I can't say I jumped to open the door and let her in.  But after ten minutes of this pathetic-starving-cat-stare-down, I finally called out to my eldest, "Nate, did you feed Lovely?" (Pass the buck, right?) And then came his reminder that we had been out of food since the night before. And no matter how annoying that cat may be, I couldn't watch her sit there hungry.  Couldn't just watch her suffer.
Later, reading in Genesis--Hagar and Ishamael's story--it struck me how hopeless Hagar must have felt when she was cast out of her home by Sarah and Abraham.  Hagar had to know Ishmael was Plan B all along, the-just-in-case-God-doesn't-come-through child.  But God came through and Isaac's birth erased Sarah's use for Ishmael.  In Genesis 21 we find them "wandering aimlessly through the wilderness" alone and in desperate need of water.  Verse 15 says, " . . . the water in the skin was gone . . ."
No water.
A desert.
A single mom.
No man.
No money.
NO WATER.
Hopeless. 
Life gets that way sometimes, doesn't it?  Parenting, loving, caring for our children can be that way sometimes.  Any mother knows that the only thing worse than feeling hopeless about her own life is watching when a child is broken and hopeless.  And it happens. 
When Cort was a toddler, he contracted a virus that caused little rice-like bumps all over his body.  They were sprouting like grass in spring under his arms, on his chest, his back, everywhere.  The doctor wasn't alarmed, gave us some ointment, and told me to administer it that evening.  Careful not to miss a single bump, I followed his instructions putting the ointment all over Corton's back and stomach.   After a short amount of time, Corton began to scream in pain. Uncontrollable pain.  Slowly, the ointment began to burn his skin.  He was severely allergic to the cream, and we rushed him to the Emergency Room.  The doctors had no idea what was going on or how to alleviate this seemingly allergic/chemical reaction.  Slowly the ointment continued to burn his skin, and layers began to peel off as it ate away at the surrounding areas. His face was desperate.  His screams cut me. I thought I was going to die.  They weren't working fast enough.  They weren't making the pain go away.  They weren't listening to me when I told them to do something. Do.Something.Now.  I remember begging God, "Take this pain away.  Make it stop, God, please."
Our children do suffer.
Sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally.
Hagar was so completely convinced this was the end of her son's life that she put him under a small shrub and wandered a bow-shot's distance away from him.  She couldn't stand to sit and watch her son die of dehydration.  Could not stand it.  And I wonder is that how the mother of the Brazilian girl felt when she left her child in the streets because she couldn't afford to buy food.  I wonder is it what the Ugandan father feels when his sons eyes are dark holes in a parched frame, and there is no clean water. Is this why they abandon their children?  Is it a slow-motion torturing of the parental soul to watch the suffering of one's own flesh and blood?
In their book, Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, Stephen James and David Thomas write, " . . . it seems that parents who don't let their kids struggle in life are more concerned about avoiding their own pain from watching their children suffer than they are concerned for the kids themselves."
And I want to hit those men and hug them for writing those words because of course the mother is concerned for the child.  Do they not understand that a child's pain is the mother's pain?  There is no human way for a mother to separate the two.  But they are right.  It is because we cannot separate the two that we don't want them ever to struggle.
Scripture says Hagar "wept uncontrollably."  I get that.
Can you see her there, clay colored clothing, face leathered by relentless sun in a world that for her remained dark?  She's weeping for the future her son will never see, for all that she hoped for, all that she wanted, all that could have been.  No, a mother doesn't know the difference between her personal pain and that of her child.  The two are linked and twisted and tied into one chain of emotion that no mother can untangle.  She only knows when her child hurts, when they suffer, she is ripped open with them.  This is the mother's lot.
Yet verse 17 of chapter 21 begins with the most beautiful two words maybe in all of scripture,  "But God . . ."
BUT GOD
And isn't that it every single time?
Apart from God, it is hopeless. Yes. Yes, it is.
BUT GOD
Every single time, every single situation, every single child.  Not one thing is exempt from this reality.  God exists.  He exists, and He loves, and therefore your situation is NOT HOPELESS.
Not hopeless.
BUT GOD.
Scripture says, "But God heard the boy's voice."
We hear our children's heartbreak, and we weep with them.  When they were young, I couldn't bare to withhold food from my sweet babies.  If they cried my entire body insisted they needed food.  (Read:  SERIOUS. MILK. LETDOWN.)
Imagine if a child's tears can wake a mother at night, what must they do to God--their Creator?
God hears your children.
He hears.
They need to know their heavenly father always hears.  When they suffer and we offer comfort, we need to tell them the truth that not only do their earthly parents care desperately, their Father in heaven hears every single cry. Saves every single tear.
Then the Angel of God speaks to Hagar and asks her, "What's the matter, Hagar?" (Gen. 21:17)
Why did he have to ask?  Sometimes I think we need to name our own emotions when it comes to our children.  She was weeping uncontrollably, but what was the root of her tears?  What was the emotion she ultimately felt?
"Don't be afraid, for God has heard . . ." (Gen. 21:17)  Fear.  Her emotion was fear.  Perhaps it was fear she had not only been abandoned by the man who helped her bring this child into the world, but also his God.  Perhaps it was fear not that she had been abandoned, but that her boy had been abandoned, that somehow God's love had missed her son.  Don't we need to know that no matter how fiercely we love our children, their Heavenly Father's love is greater still?
And when our children hurt, when they are broken--because life will break our children at some point along the journey--we need to acknowledge not only their emotions, but ours too.  Because the momma is bound to her child from soul to soul.
Then he said, "Get up!"
She had quit.  She had thrown in the towel, and aren't we tempted to do the same sometimes?
When that child is thirty years old and still refuses to give up drugs.
When that boy is so angry and sullen he hasn't spoken a word to us in a month.
When that girl can't express why she thinks she may like other girls instead of boys.
When she's sixteen and pregnant.
When he's found smoking.
When that toddler has screamed for an hour straight and we don't.know.why.
Yes, we're tempted to sit down and quit.
I have sat down.  I have quit.  I've done that before.
But God said, "Get up!"
Get up my child and keep running this race.  Keep fighting the good fight.  Keep going.
BUT GOD.
Then He said to her, "Help the boy up and hold him by the hand."(Gen 21:18)
I love that part.  Sometimes, no matter how young or how old, how stubborn or how heavy, our children need us to
help
them
up
Just help them up.
And hold them by the hand.
Sometimes there aren't words.  There aren't verses.  There just aren't.
But we still have our hands, and they need us to support them.  Physically help them to get up.  Hold them in our arms, if they'll allow it--just for a time.  Emotionally help them to get up.  Spiritually hold up their arms like the people did for Moses so many generations ago.
And moms, aren't we good at that?  We may not be able to patch a flat tire or fold paper airplanes, but we know how to hold a wobbling hand until steadiness returns, don't we?  We do.
Then God said, "I will make him into a great nation." (Gen. 21:8b)
Those words:  I WILL.
They change everything.
Because when we can't,
HE WILL.
He is the God who is over all, above all, greater than all, He is the God who is FOR OUR CHILDREN.
I remember my first heartbreak.  I was 15 years old and some red-headed boy had snatched my heart and held it long enough that when he let go, it stopped beating for a while.  How often that happens to our precious, young girls and our tender young men. We say, "Be careful."  We insist, "You are so young."  We warn.  We advise. We implore. 
And.
They.
Fall.
In.
Love.
And when it ends, and it often does, they are--for a while--a shroud of who they used to be. 
When that boy told me he didn't love me anymore, I dissolved into myself.  Folded inside out.  Couldn't talk.  Couldn't think.  Couldn't eat.
And the only words of comfort (and I'm sure there were many) that I remember were those of my mother, "I wish there was something I could do to take the hurt away."  It was she who cried when she said those words.  Her daughter was suffering beneath the surface and there were no bandages, no Tylenols that could heal that hurt.
But God.
But God WILL.
And He did.  Only God could reach into the fibers of my heart and weave together a tapestry of His grace, His sovereignty, His peace, His joy, His HOPE.  How much hope it will give us parents to remember that though we may have planned for our children, God Himself willed their presence on this earth.  God Himself has a plan for their lives.  God WILL make them into a "great nation" for His name's sake.  It's His purpose and His plan on the line.
With God, it is NEVER hopeless.
And He will accomplish all His promises concerning our children.  HE WILL. Mother, hold that truth.  HE WILL.
Finally, God enabled Hagar to see a well of water.
I've wondered if, though she never saw it, the well was there all along, or if he miraculously made one just for them.  I like to think God said, "Let there be an oasis."  I like to think He did that just for them.  But ultimately what matters is that He did indeed provide.
He did intervene.
He did make a way for hope's seed to take root in the souls of a teenage boy and his single mother.
And moms, when our children's pains are deeper than the booboos and ouchies of childhood, when they are farther than our hands can reach, when we ache in the corners of our souls for the hurt of our flesh and blood, we need to ask God to "enable us to see the well of water."  (Gen. 21:19)
We need to remember that it is He who is LIVING WATER.
Isn't it perfect, certainly no coinsedence, that Ishmael was a young teen at this time.  Likely he was physically stronger than his mother.  We don't really know.  But it was his mom who went to the well, filled the skin with water, and brought some back for her boy. 
Sometimes bringing them water is just that, a cup of water.  Sometimes it is a list of the scriptures that have carried us through difficult times.  Sometimes it is the retelling of those times in our lives when we despaired . . . even of life.  Sometimes it means getting a good counselor.  Letting them talk to a trusted friend.  But know this, mommas, there are times when we carry them. Even when they're grown.  Not forever, but for a season.  Not enabling, but empowering.  I'm not talking about being the mom whose son is forty and lives at home on her couch.  I'm talking--and I think your spirits will agree--about being the mom who knows when her child needs just a sip of water. 
A sip of hope.
But God
God Will
"But now, O Lord, upon what am I relying?  You are my only hope!"  (Psalm 39:7)

Pray with me:
God who sees, God who hears, God who is hope, will you teach my mother's heart to rely on you?  To expect you?  To anticipate your intervention.  To look for you in the horizon when the reality of my child is a deep pain?  When my own reality is pain?  Will you help me, Lord to cling to the truth that YOU WILL work, YOU WILL heal, YOU WILL men, YOU WILL cause hope to rise?  Amen.

But A Vapor

In January of 2008 I dreamt of death--my own. What a rumbling within my heart ensued in the days after that night! To stare into the reality that our days are not without end is unnerving, shocking even. I think of the movie "Bucket List" and songs with lyrics like, "live like you were dying." Their message like strokes of bold red on a white wall scream out the truth of our mortality. Yesterday I had my annual physical. The cholesterol came back good, the blood counts were fine, my foot still involuntarily jolts when my knee is tapped by the rubber mallet thingymajig. My sugar was a touch high, but when the lady asked me if I had a healthy diet, I failed to mention the Chic-Fil-A vanilla milkshake that served as my lunch on the way down. Instead I mentioned my organic garden; she seemed happy. Those organic carrots really raise blood sugar levels, I hear! I walked out of the Dr.'s with an A+ for health and the promise of many more good reports. But what if it had been different? What if, when she listened to my heart she heard a flutter or pause that shouldn't have been? What if when she checked for lumps she had come across one so stationary that she knew it could mean only one thing? What if she looked me square in the eyes and said in a gentle tone, "It isn't good, Sarah." What then? Would anything change? Tomorrow, I will spend time with someone who is in fact dying--shedding that mortal shell that carries our soul for a parenthesis on earth amidst eternity's ceaseless timeline. And I wonder, when she got the news, did anything change? I keep thinking of this lady's life over the years. I remember her since I was about 12. Just shy of 25 years I've watched her be the same--watched her love, watched her pray, watched her encourage, watched her stand beside her husband, watched her touch the lives of those around her, watched her perpetually worship. I'll most remember her as a lady among ladies, and one who loved her God. How would I be remembered? Really? Part of me wants to say, "Wait, I'm still working on that. Don't remember me yet. I need to tweak a few things first." My boys are young, my bill of health is good, my days are filled with schooling, gardening, cooking, neighboring, friending, daughtering, sistering, organizing, planning, laundry ( I should list that twice) dog training, bill paying. Filled. I feel, most of the time, like the carry-on I packed for a trip to Maine a couple years ago that was supposed to hold everything I needed for an entire long weekend. Or like a laundry basket that's been filled with water--it leaks everywhere. There's so much in my little sliver of life that I can barely keep all the ends tied let alone t's crossed and i's dotted. It's a tender time, I think, because my life won't be swollen and full and bulging forever. I'm going to wake up one day to silence in my home instead of the quiet, steady breathing of my early riser patiently waiting for me to greet the sun with him. And his tackling, tumbling brother won't knock me over with surprise jumps onto my back because he'll be grown. The Psalmist must have thought about these things too because he said, "So teach us to number our days, so that we might live wisely." (Psalm 90:12) And I'm left wondering, "If I'm to live like I'm dying--which, in truth I am--than what things should be on my daily bucket list?" There are like two million things and people all lined up, some not so patiently, waiting to make the cut. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength...love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22) Love God. Love people. Seems so simple. Maybe it is. Maybe every single action I take needs to go through this one filter, "Will I be loving God and loving people as I love myself if I do this thing?" And if I followed that mantra, then maybe my legacy would be tweaked enough. Maybe I would be remembered like this. She loved. She loved. That would be something. So, I know tomorrow isn't promised to me. I'm married to a firefighter. I face the reality of danger every third day when he leaves for his shift and I wonder, Will he come home? But what am I doing with the moments that are given me? What am I doing with the sweet precious mornings when that little rooster patters into my room wide awake and ready to discuss the NFL strike and the other one dives into my bed like it's a swimming pool? What am I doing with the few minutes between when the boys have gone to bed and Jeff is still up before he goes on shift? What am I doing with the people God puts in my life--the junior counselors at camp, the campers, the neighbors, the sisters, the friends, the parents? It is indeed a tender time, a time not to be taken for granted, not to be wasted. It is the allotted time. The bucket list time. Not the bucket list of adventures I want to take, but of seizing the moments that are my present reality and squeezing every ounce of life out of them that I possibly can. Ephesians 5:15 says we are to live carefully "redeeming the time" we are given. That word redeem carries with it the idea of rescuing something from being lost. My youngest son can't keep up with his shoes. He has about five thousand pairs, and none of them are where they are supposed to be at the proper time. When Sunday comes his brown dress shoes are surely down by the creek, and his camouflage boots are the only two matching shoes to be found. Sometimes I pick up his shoes, put them in a pile on top of the dryer, and just wait to see how long it takes him to notice they are all missing. He never has noticed. Not once. What if our minutes and hours were like that? God found them squandered and scattered haphazardly here and there, and He picked them up and placed them altogether for us to see collectively just how many precious moments we lost? I can't imagine what it would be like to really see all of that time together in one lump sum. It's my heart's desire to rescue the time God has given me. James 4:14 says, "...you are but a vapor, here for a little while and then vanishing." Like an early morning mist that whispers across a sleeping lake, our souls drift through these mortal days, only to return to the arms of eternity. May their journey leave behind the fragrance of God. Pray with me: Lord, I'm humbled that you've given me time. More of it than many. Help me daily to use every single fiber of it for love. Loving others, loving you, loving who you've made me to be. May I be known for love. Amen. Read with me: Ephesians 5:15,16

And There Before Me Lay a Chasm

I remember standing what seemed like a thousand feet high above solid ground on a three foot by three foot square, harnessed and attached to a bungee. The purpose was to jump, to defy logic and bound through the air towards concrete knowing that inches before I cracked open like an egg that rolled off the counter to the floor, I'd rebound and the elastic chord would shoot back toward the heavens, a human yoyo. All of this for fun. Yet when my feet found their heels attached to the remnants of what was solid and their toes pinching only air, somehow, they weren't so sure it was going to be much fun. What human in their right mind ever chooses to drop off any cliff? Life though, is so full of cliffs. One day you are meandering through meadows, bluebirds bantering back and forth and honeybees sipping cotton covered clover. Then you turn around and there before you lays a chasm. We even know they are coming. We're taught to expect them. Jesus promised them when he matter of factly mentioned, "In this world you will have troubles." But still, like the frigid waters of some wild mountain river they suck the breath from our lungs and render our limbs numb with shock. Some are greater than others--the ones that when you dare look down to see if perhaps you might find some way across, or over, or through, you see no bottom. No floor. No end. Then there are those that at first glance appear not much broader than perhaps your most intense running stride. You can jump them. You can swing over. Somehow you manage. And once across, you wipe the nervous sweat from your palms and exhale deeply. "Shoo. That was a close one. Thank God we made it through." But those deep ones. Those long ones. They remind me of the Mediterranean Sea. When the boys and I look at that body of water on the map it seems so small. Yet to the Grecian fisherman standing on her shore, The Mediterranean does not appear to have an end. He can't see the other side. That's what the long cliffs are like. They're the ones you face when the doctors tell you she's a beautiful girl with so much hope for the future, but she'll never stand upright in her adult years--some rare disease has moved into her body and refuses to leave. I listened to a man tell this story just today. Or the orphanage that has enough food for the over 100 children who call it home for only one more week. Then next week comes. Autism. Your major supporter has dropped you. Stage 4. HIV positive. No work tomorrow. Another lay off. I don't love you anymore. The teenage child who looks into your eyes and says, "let me live my life." Alcoholism. Chasms. Deep, deep chasms. And no human in their right mind would choose to drop from one of those precipices. They wouldn't. But they come anyway. We can't stop them. Part of the curse, yes, but knowing that doesn't make navigating them any easier. When I was preparing to bungee jump a too-skinny, grey faced man in baggy blue-jeans gave me clear instructions. I thought I understood them until I reached the crest and looked down. In that moment I remembered none of them. "One. Two. Three. Ma'am? One. Two. Three." "Don't count," I told him. "I'll go when I'm ready." And I did. I jumped down into that darkness. Not because I wanted to anymore. Not because I thought it would be fun anymore. Not because I thought I'd be better for having done it. Only because I'd come that far--there was really no turning back. And only because I believed the chord would hold. It had been strong enough to hold someone twice my size just minutes before. It's that way in our lives too. We've come too far to quit, too far to stop when we see just how dangerous life can be. And The Anchor will hold. I've found that to be true. He promised, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." "I will be with you until the end of the world." So we jump. Jump head-long into the realities of our lives--the chasms, whatever they are--knowing now how things will end up, but to whom we are harnessed. And we trust that His strong right arm is enough to carry us home. And it is on these truths I stand before the cliffs in my own little world. sometimes remembering all the other stuff doesn't matter. What matters is knowing we are held-firmly--by a God who isn't in the business of dropping those whom He loves. "Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation." Psalm 91:14-16

And The Leaves Have Fallen

The fencepost trunk of a maple whose limbs only days ago were roosters crowing scarlet red across a bluebird sky now stands bare--all of it's glory scattered and blown by autumn's wind. I have admired this particular maple from my window for over a week now and I'm sorry to see it's leaves flitter and fall. Soon they will be nothing more than the very soil out of which they first grew. How quickly--only a matter of seasons, less than a year--that tree went from being adorned by hundreds of peridot and then garnet leaves to nakedness. Aren't our lives so similar? On Monday a woman is surrounded by her husband and children and on Friday her husband has left for another. In Summer business was booming and in winter the driveway stands empty of the truck he could no longer pay for because business was dead. The sun shone high, retirement in sight and the stock market fell like bricks from the open bed of a truck. Now he is seventy and will take a part time job as a grocery bagger to pay for his living expenses. Yesterday they were married and today she buries him--only a few seasons of love and family spanned the distance between their bands of gold and the shovels of soil on his coffin. How in the midst of lives where people and possessions shift transiently through like crimson leaves do we continue to stand as the trunk of that maple outside my kitchen window? Tell me how we continue to love when God allows loss? Tell me how we continue to hope when God allows terminal diseases to wrestle the life out of a sweet child's body? Tell me how we have faith when we find ourselves standing alone with hands whose only contents are the flesh that glove them? When everything we thought was ours is now a pile of leaves in which others play and we are left staring at God alone, then tell me is that enough? Naomi met the autumn and winter seasons of the soul early in life. A desperate famine and the inevitable urge to provide for his family drove her husband to take Ruth and her sons to a land far from her family. I too have lived many miles from the family where I grew up. I know the ache she felt for her sisters and her parents--intense at first like a hammering on her chest cavity and then as the years passed only a dull weight woven into the strands of her heart within where others couldn't see. Only days ago I hugged the neck of a dear friend who would lock the doors of her own home and drive hundreds of miles south with her family to a place where work was more plentiful. Naomi's family may have moved because the wheat and barely no longer grew in her region but our families move too--because the work has ceased to exist. Famine. We know that name, don't we? We call it a declining economy; unemployment. We know what it's like to leave people and places we love. The Bible tells us that some time later her husband died leaving she and her two sons alone. Alone. We lose those we love in this life. It is the nature of life that death befalls and inevitably someone is left to mourn the soul who has shifted to the wind of eternity. Within ten years Naomi laid soil on the carcasses of her only two sons. God, please forbid the day that I would ever bury my own two sons. No mother should have to bury her children. That's not the order of things, is it? Yet that is exactly where I found Naomi this morning when I was studying one of the names of God--El Shaddai. The name, first introduced in Genesis 17:1 means all sufficient one or the God who is enough. Often, especially in the King James version it is translated God Almighty. It's meaning is probably more accurate when it includes the sufficient nature of God in its translation. When Naomi uses this name for God I can't help but wonder if there is sarcasm, a deep sense of irony in her words or if she has simply learned that though she has lost everything God remains enough. Whatever the case, upon return to her native home Naomi is greeted with excitement by her village. She says to them, "Don't call me Naomi! (pleasant) Call me Mara (bitter) because The Sovereign One (The All Sufficient El-Shaddai) has treated me very harshly. I left here full, but the Lord has caused me to return empty-handed. Why do you call me Naomi seeing that the Lord has opposed me and the Sovereign One (All Sufficient God) has caused me to suffer?" (Ruth 1:20,21) Can you see her standing at the center of her village--feet brown with dust and hands empty? "Don't call me by the name you once knew me. I am no longer that woman. The Great Sufficient God has made my life very bitter. I left here with heart and arms full and I return an empty woman. I have been humbled by the very God who is All Sufficient and I now know and call him by that name." Do you know what it is like to feel that the God you sing praises to has treated you harshly? Can you relate to Naomi when she says that this God who she worships has humbled her to the point of emptiness? I am captivated by her use of this name--El Shaddai--for a God who allowed such incredible tragedy in her life. The Hebrew word carries with it the tone of a mother who nurses her babe at her breast--that perfect sufficiency of a mother's milk superior to any other form of sustenance. Would I, in God alone find perfect sufficiency? Would I, in Him find all I want or need or thirst for? If material things were taken from me I am certain I'd feel humbled, but I think I'd still cling to God and call Him good. But if my husband and children were taken? Then still, would I call Him good? When God promises in His Word that He will supply all of our needs according to His riches, when He insists that He came to give us life to the fullest, when He declares I am with you always I am tempted, I believe, to confuse my own perspective with His. When He says He'll supply my needs can I conclude that means He will always feed my empty stomach? Ask the child in a remote village in Africa if God has failed to meet his hunger-swollen belly's needs. And when He says He came to give us life am I to assume that means that somehow that life embodies some form of ease throughout our earthly sojourn? Ask the families members of those who saw the waters of hurricane Katrina or the Tsunami about abundant life. What then do I believe about these promises? Do I come to believe that God's word isn't true or is in some way conditional? I have often quoted that verse about God supplying all our needs. I believe that God is who He says He is when He calls Himself Jehovah-Jireh, but I don't think we always understand the reality that only God knows what we need according to His plan and will. I only need sustenance in physical form if I am to remain on earth for a time longer. My greatest need has been met some time ago when Christ died and rose again--salvation. If the time appointed by God for me to return to Himself has arrived, then it could be possible that my physical needs would no longer be met because in fact, they would no longer be needs. The soul does not need sustenance for it's time in eternity. I must learn to measure my needs not through the filter of my human perspective but rather through the filter of God's divine plan. I hope you can hear my heart--I'd never say God would choose to neglect children who are starving. Never. His original plan included a perfect garden where we would never want for any physical thing, but we messed that up. What has happened since is a result of the reality of sin in our world. His first intention was NEVER for the pain or suffering of those He created. But it is reality now. And in that reality God has promised to meet our needs. That said, I believe it is necessary to take a long hard critical look at what we believe about our lives here on earth. If I believe that my every need as I see it is to be met then if it is not I will face a crisis of belief and a great disillusionment with a God who disappointed me. If however I can see the world through a lens not my own--that vantage point that is divine and therefore given me only in occasional glimpses--then perhaps when tragedy and loss in this life occurs I will accept it differently. Naomi could never have seen what God saw--she needed to leave her family and travel with her husband to the land of Moab because it is there that one of her sons married Ruth. Ruth, you will remember, is in the very lineage of our Savior, Jesus Christ. She needed to lose her husband and sons so that she would return to her village and there find Boaz for Ruth to marry thus continuing the lineage leading to Jesus. Like a scarlet thread the weaving of Christ's lineage began centuries before and not one of those families knew how the ordering of their lives would someday result in the salvation of mankind. Their tragedies, pains and losses were not explained but they still believed in a God who somehow remained sufficient. Hebrews says it well, "Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." (Hebrews 12:1,2a) It is true that we cannot always see the sufficiency of God with our human eyes. "But faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1) I cannot always see how God alone would be enough were I to lose everything and everyone I loved. But His word I know to be true and if God calls Himself The All Sufficient One then may I root myself in that name no matter what the winds of life may take from my branches. I can't help but consider again the naked tree outside my window. Christ too knew about the leafless body of a tree. It became His death cross, but it bridged the gap to The Life for all humanity. While on this earthly parenthesis in the eternity of my soul I pray that my eyes would be fixed on the person of Jesus Christ who found His Father sufficient even as he hung on a cross bleeding, naked and alone. It is in Jesus that I know I find the abundant life promised me. After all He claimed without hesitation, "I am the way, the truth and THE LIFE." (John 14:6) May we discover that the very life for which we hunger exists not in any earthly person or thing but in the eternal and divine person of Jesus Christ whom we possess always because He possesses us. Amen. Listen with me: Give Me Jesus--Fernando Ortega