Journeys

So here I am again at my blog after two long, tumultuous months.  I've been anticipating these moments of silence here at keyboard.    Feeling, without it, inadequate to process this rounded adventure, this circle I seem to have traveled.

 Because I am at long last home.  In many ways it feels like that.

I am back in the state where I grew up.  I am back with my friends of old.

 And yet, being 'away from home' for so long, I found that my true home was simply in Christ.  I grew content after a long period of resentment.  I grew secure in my self and learned how to be at peace.  I came to a point where I told God my preference but relented to His ultimate will.

And He brought me here.  He was faithful.  And the trip, the traveling, the newness for the kids, the goodbye to a friend of the heart made there, the welcoming arms of awaiting friends, the arms of my husband; this has all been a whirlwind and now I am somewhere so familiar trying to remember all that I became while away.  Wanting not to lose the closeness I gained there with God.

So I am balancing;  allowing in and releasing and acknowledging what yet to keep.

This is the journey I now find myself on.  Because the journey never ends.

  I only feel now, two weeks in, a bit like I am settling.  I am comfortable and happy but tired and overwhelmed as well.  Paradoxes, again.  Always.  This physical home I'm in, so similar to the one I was raised in that at night, I can almost feel like a child again in my parent's house.  I feel in a way, that I've come full circle but I know enough to understand that a circle continues on.  There is so much more.  I've only just begun.

Last week spanned long.  Emotions electric, tension high.

Crossing those bridges of change never comes easy. 

Even the idea of a turn can cause one to trip.

 All weekend I struggled with sanctification and obedience; Christ in me.

 I did the very thing I judged in another.  I winked at my own sin; defensive, justifying.  I heard God telling me one thing and I did another.  And I made excuses out loud.  And I have lacked trust and joy and gratitude.  I have been white-knuckling.

 Today I read Ann Voskamp: topic - joy and gratitude.

So, now finally, house hushed, though messy, I have made it here.  I am  Finding Time to Create. 

And I'm thankful for women honest enough to bestow not only wisdom but also an admittance to struggles. 

This creative thing I do with words and time, is work and fun.  Food and soul. 

And so when last week ParenTeen class turned into marriage counseling, needed, because I try so hard in my own strength to be chaste and reverent but fall short in demonstrating joy or peace and I'm twisting pretzel shaped in my chair, typical closed-off body language just wanting it all to end, the talking, the honesty, the sharing, and the beautiful, soft, class leader, another honest woman who gives confirmation and wisdom, says, "Nicole.  Blog when you get home.  You think well with your fingers"  then I know.  Know that this means healing for me.  The confessions, the thought process, the time away with God.  This is healing.   

Hope Deferred

Hope Deferred is the current working title of a book I've been writing for, um, six years now? 

Hope from the Hebrew word, which among other things, means; to wait, to be patient, to be pained, to trust.

Deferred,of course, meaning,delayed, drawn out. 

It was no coincidence that when the idea for my novel materialized,it was upon the arrival of my first daughter.

The daughter I struggled to conceive.  The daughter I feared I would never have.

 It was only after the Lord brought her to life, and into my life that I was able to tackle the topic of what that waiting feel like, in the context of fiction, of course. 

But I haven't worked on the book in a long while. 

And I've learned contentment.  And acceptance

And there's nothing I want so badly at this point in my life.

Lately, however, the significance of this Proverbs is taking hold of me again as I watch people I love encountering these delays in their own nonfiction lives. 

Proverbs is a book with boundless wisdom and profundity.  But the teachings are often short one-liners.  Tiny golden nuggets.  I wish they were at least blurbs.  A little more expanded on.  When I looked in my concordance I noted that the word deferred is used only in this way once. In this Proverbs.  The other time its used in the Old Testament is in Genesis and it has a different root, meaning more, to procrastinate.

The Proverbs meaning includes;  to develop.

If our hope is in God, then it helps to recognize that He is not just procrastinating in His timing or His answers.  He may be delaying in order to develop.


The truth is though, God can make us wait so long, we literally feel ill.  We may fall into depression, even.

And I think what happens with this phenomenon, and why we feel so sick, is because often what we are hoping for is Godly.  Psalm 37: 4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

I remember being so angry with God when He was denying me what I thought, was a Godly desire.  I spent many nights telling him that He promised to give me the desires of my heart. So why wasn't He?

However, I certainly wasn't delighting myself in Him.  I was too angry at Him. 

But I don't believe He was withholding as punishment. 

No, what finally turned around was that I said, "OK."  I gave it over.  I said, "You know what I want.  I still want it.  But I'll learn to be content without it." 

And then I got my beautiful little girl.

It doesn't always work out that way.  And this is not a sermon.  In fact, I'm not even here because I have answers. 

I'm just hurting and relating with those I know who feel like giving up.  We know that it rains on the righteous and the unrighteous alike but that doesn't help when we see our prayers of a Godly nature go unanswered for extended periods of time. It can begin to feel like God doesn't care about what we care about.  We can begin to doubt God's motives and even existence. 

The sermon yesterday was about satan and his lies.  And I think in our moments of hope deferred we are under even greater temptation to fall for satan's lies. 

The pastor pointed to four steps the enemy uses:

His first tactic is to bring about doubt. 

And then a challenge.

Next the appearance of a better alternative.

And finally, the perception that you can't trust God. 

I know that when we are hurting and feeling abandoned by God, there is great temptation to abandon Him.  And we need to guard our hearts against this. 

There are no hopeless causes.  God can change anything.  Keep praying.   Keep hoping.  And keep praising.

Ask God to reveal His heart to you.  And to reveal your own heart.

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
-Matthew 6:33

And here's my confession:  I have not entirely learned contentment or acceptance.  There are things I've given up on.  There are areas I've stopped believing in and for.  My hope has been deferred so long, I've moved on. 

I need God to reveal these things to me daily.  I need to examine my own heart and motives.  I need to make sure I love God best and mean it when I sing, "this world has nothing for me."  And I need to begin again to believe that there are no hopeless causes. 

Still

Heart breaking under all this burden. 

I'm not ready.  I'm not healed, whole enough for this. 

And it all comes crashing; the timing, as they say, impeccable. 

I'm Moses, stuttering; David, with a past.  Lacking the courage of Caleb, the assertiveness of any Malachi call.

This is all true.  My own words falter, the years before condemn.  I, too full of fear, shy to a fault.  Hesitant. 

But still.  Still.  Still. 

We are here, He and I, in this argument, which I can't help but worry He's getting tired of.  

He wins every time.  Because for all the resistance I've put up, He has proven able to cover me in all my shortcomings. 

Really, intercession hurts.  It's hard to be willing.  To not be overcome.  To be prayed up. 

What it takes to love.

 But we can't help but love when it's love which has saved us.

My Calling Now

"Humility is such an illusive virtue, isn’t it? As soon as you think you’ve got it, you don’t. That’s part of the problem: When I finally achieve humility, I get proud of myself. My humility cries out for recognition. Humility is terribly fragile."

-Kenneth Boa

What am I doing, God?  What do You want from me?

 I feel like I've screamed this out so many times. 

I want to be called apart, I want to be used by God, I want to be different. 

But I continue to enter into the ways of the world. 

Basically, at the core of me, the very thing I hate, I want.  I'm the teenage girl, hopelessly attracted to the bad boy. 

Here's the deal:  I'm on a high horse of humility; a pedestal of piety.  Leave out the oxy and it's just moronical.

Here's the confession:  I'm never quite sure if I'm burying my talents under some false guise of humility or rightly waiting on God's timing.  
 
 I want simplicity but envy complexity.  I want anonymity but still to be heard.  I want heavenly reward but earthly treasure too. 
 
So God has to lay me low.  And perhaps this is His greatest gift to me.  This is tender protection.
 
And my calling now, to listen for the baby, to calm the wild child, to bring up a godly man, to cherish the sweetest of hearts, to have a chaste and reverent spirit, to write when led and pray, pray, pray for others.  Because my words are nothing unless they lead to the Word who became flesh.  And I cannot lead where I have not been.  And I persevere but it's not a competition. 

I'm struggling today, God, with all these recurrent human ailments; frustration, impatience, worry, judgment.
 
The list long, these sins.

And I'm heavy with other's burdens, fighting You on them, because I don't want them.

I want to be away with You, forgetting that You want that too but that what You desire is that I come away and lay these burdens down. 

Maybe, I'm making it all about me. 

And You bring me to Galations 6.  And I know that every word there, I'm to be reading.  I'm to be humbly, bearing the burdens.  I should not grow weary in doing good.

 And I know now why this healing hurts.

I am brought back to the place of my own burdens and the pain of what I had sown.  And so now, the opportunity to do this good by prayer and bearing and sharing.

  Faced with other's sins, I can make a choice.  I can bear and pray and restore.  Or I can recoil for fear of revisiting.

I come here and so often, I write, delete, write, delete, because I'm too afraid of sharing or facing my own hidden, long ago pain.  I hear Your voice and I hide like Adam in the garden, out of fear.  

I know I've been called and I'm willing....so long as.  So long as, I can guard these certain things.  So long as what I'm called to share isn't too risky.  So long as, it's easy. 

But You never said it would be easy.

And then I go to A Holy Experience and You challenge again.  Always, challenging.  And Ann Voskamp says she too has recoiled and speaks of vulnerability.  And her words challenge. 

She asks if You are leading me to serve. 

So I manage to come here and offer this confession of how I want to serve but how fearful I feel. 

And You know. 

Lord, I do not know all You want to do with me and through me.  I just want to be willing and able.  And perfect love casts out fear.

I pray, too, for all the women You are amazingly using to write Your words.  And for the She Speaks Conference for women like me with stories from You. 

 

Do we know the Truth?

Or are we Plato’s cave dwellers, watching shadows dance across the wall, mistaking them for what is real?

Chained to a life of uncertainty.

Outside; the sun, the Son, the Absolute, the Truth.

But our cave of relativism we prefer because the Absolute is bright. It hurts the eyes.

We cannot speak with authority if we do not know the Authority. We cannot speak a declaration if we do not know Him who declared His love by way of cross.

We have turned away from God and instead toward government for help. We read newspapers for the answers instead of the Word. Television entertains us but we know not the one Who gives true joy. We seek comfort from Social Networking rather than from the Son of Man.

We speak in questions because we do not know the Truth.

The Truth who is Man, who is Word, who is God.

The Truth says, “Seek through prayer, not Google.” The Truth says, “I AM your portion. Do not distract yourselves with false appearances and Facebook.” The Truth says, “Humble yourselves.” But we want platforms instead of Peace.

The Truth warns of suffering and self-denial and separation from the world.

 But we’d rather watch shadows dance across the wall.

It’s all relative, we say.

The shadows make sounds and we strain to hear them when what we really need is to silent them, so we might hear the small, still voice.

To know, to hear, to see the Truth is a responsibility we do not want.

“Is it really true?” the serpent asked and we’ve been questioning ever since.