processing

here is a rather vulnerable post.  i am not even sure if it is okay to write about on a blog, but since i will keep everything anonymous, i will go ahead and process my thoughts for you all to peak in on.

i am sure you all have had those really hard times when you are faced with wondering if you should talk to a friend about something serious going on in his/her life or not.  i was faced with one of these situations this past week.

for me, it is a struggle between how much i am able to have a place to speak into her life, how much she may or may not receive or react at me talking with her, and even just the plain responsibility that comes with getting personally involved in someone's life.  i mean, it is a serious responsibility to call someone on something and then to realize that if she does decide to repent of what she was involved in, she most likely will need someone there in her life to encourage her and be there for her when she is going through the thick of it.  it isn't like i can come along, point out a major life issue, then disappear.

i think of all the things i struggle with in this, it is the fear of being rejected that gets to me the most.  i am not one for confrontation.  i would rather avoid someone forever, or close to it, before having that serious talk that could cause emotions to flare.  even after i felt this past week that the Lord was giving me the green light to talk to this friend, i was so nervous because i anticipated her reaction not being favorable.  in fact, i really anticipated her getting angry with me.  yet, i was losing sleep over thinking about her, praying for her, and asking God what i was supposed to do about it.

i finally got to the place where i knew that i could speak the truth in love to her.  i came to the point that regardless of her reaction or whether she changed her decisions in the area of concern, i knew that for me to remain silent on the issue was not loving her.  i was so consumed in thinking about how it would affect me negatively, that it was hard to see straight about what was the best for her life.  you see, if i really love someone, i am willing to do what is best for her regardless of the consequences to me.  if it was more important for her to hear the truth in this area that she was not seeing clearly in, then i am only being her friend if i tell her the truth.   this is not easy for me.  i definitely struggle with the fear of man.

so, i wrote her.  i have yet to hear back.  i kinda doubt she has even read it yet, but i know it won't be long until she does.  i know that in the grand scheme of things i will stand before the Lord and He will say, did you really love?  did you love even when it could cost you rejection?  did you love when it made you feel squirmy and uncomfortable and awkward?  did you even love when it got messy?  i hope that i can say yes, i loved those you put in my life.

honestly, when it comes down to it, even in the times i have myself reacted poorly to even the most gentle of corrections, i am thankful that i have people in my own life willing to love me enough to say something when they see me doing something that is hurting me.   i have reacted poorly to correction in the past.  but there are these golden moments that stand out to me in my memories above most others of when someone said something to me about my behaviors that made me mad, but affected my decisions for the good years and years later.  i still think back on several of these moments again and again.  i hope i can be that person to this friend.  i hope God continues to send those real friends into my own life.

charis

getaway

i get to see this beautiful view very very soon... tomorrow in fact!  we, as in the married couple we versus the family we, are going to my favorite place this weekend for a getaway.  this getaway is both celebrating our 8th anniversary and the fact that we can go out of town before we have a new little one that will make it impossible to getaway for a while again.  plus, i have discovered that i am indeed very much a quality time person, so the thought of a whole weekend with my husband, with no interruptions, makes my heart leap and spin with joy. 

our getaway is to santa cruz.  santa cruz will always hold a very special place in my heart.  while i was growing up, my grandparents lived in santa cruz, only a couple blocks from the beach and the boardwalk full of rides and lights and caramel apples.  i have some of my very best childhood vacation memories in this little beach town.  when i was a teenager i would go jogging along the cliff overlooking the surfers and past the surfer's museum and light house.  i would take long walks there with my sister and i would tell her that someday me and my special someone would walk on the very same walking path and look out on the beautiful pacific ocean.

on labor day weekend of 2001, my now husband, then boyfriend, completely surprised me and asked me to marry him on a bench in front of the lighthouse and looking out over the very scene that i loved so dearly.  eight years later, we have made santa cruz our family summer camping trip destination and started those family memories with our own kids in the very same little beach town that i have mine in.  every year we go back to visit the bench that he proposed to me at... sentimental, i know.  i am looking forward to sitting on that bench with my beloved husband and friend and watching the surfers and the waves and let all the good memories come flooding back and make some new ones.

oh, happy getaway to me.


charis

take the time

this is kind of a funny picture to post on a day when it is forecast to be in the 80's, but i just love this picture.  it takes me back to the day that it was taken - my youngest son's birthday where my husband and i just spent the afternoon enjoying our kids and celebrating life.  it is of a beautiful bridge up where we live that just causes wonder in me every time i am there.

it is an image of beauty.  there is beauty like this all around me at many points of everyday, but i am often too busy with the urgent matters to stop and take it in.  i have read so many different people blog and write about the urgent vs. the important, so i know i am not alone in my often busy-ness.  i am blessed to be a stay at home mom with my kids, besides being involved in a young house of prayer and teaching music lessons on the side.  my temptation is very often to get things done.  i relish the moments that i take a time to stop and really look at what is around me.  i find beauty in my kids.  i find beauty in my home.  i find beauty in lovely sights and smells and tastes.  i find beauty in the beautiful small northern california city i live in.  i find beauty in the Word of God. 

as i am forced by the mechanic i am taking my car to for an oil change to set aside a priceless hour and a half of my day, i will determine to use it to reflect on the beauty that God has put around me.  He has given me so much and i take so little time to realize it and allow thankfulness to burst forth in my heart.  maybe this interruption to my day is a beauty in itself if i can just take the time to see it.

charis

unless

this post is a continuation to my previous post fearless trust.  i would recommend reading it first.

i would have despaired unless i had believed
that i would see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.   psalm 27:13

how much of my life is anchored in the belief in the goodness of God?  it is not only enough to believe He is good.  it is essential to believe that i will see this goodness in my life towards me. 

many of my latest posts have been about a central theme of hope.  besides going through the trials of pregnancy, i have been challenged in my faith in so many areas of my life in this past season.  i actually found out i was pregnant during one of the hardest weeks of my life.  it was a bright spot of hope in the midst of a swirl of confusion and temptation for fear.  for both of these reasons i haven't blogged as much as i would have liked.  sometimes when i am going through the dark night of the soul (and puking my brains out on top of it), it is very hard to articulate anything other than, "help me Jesus!"

i found this simple cry for help to be the meat of my recent prayers.  i would stand in the shower, feeling so weak both physically and emotionally that i would burst into tears and just say, "help me Jesus!"  sometimes that is the most powerful prayer that we can pray. 

trials in life can either drive us away from Him or drive us to Him.  there is so much in life we cannot control.  there is so much disappointment.  there are so many questions of, "why?"  there are so many things that i would much rather not walk through if it was up to me.  but i cannot control my circumstances.  what i can control is how i posture my heart.

do i harden my heart to protect myself?  or do i allow the pain of disappointment and the sting of fear to drive me to Him?  when all the world around me is shaken, it is only Him who doesn't change.  it is only Him who is left there constant and firm and unchanging. 

at the end of the day, the commitment to follow Christ is as simple as that:  following Him.  i can do so many things that are so good and beneficial, but they mean nothing if when things get tough i turn away from Him.  there are so many people who have every reason to despair - there are so many reasons for any of us to despair.  i love that one word in psalm 27:13:  unless.  unless any of us believe that He is not only good, but that we will see His goodness towards us in this lifetime... there is where our hope must lie.

is your current circumstance driving you away from Him or to Him?

i would love your comments and feedback.

i will leave you with a picture of my 22 week belly (more than halfway to the finish line!)

charis 

fearless trust

a while back i did an in depth study of my favorite psalm in the bible.  i was reading back over my notes the other night and it reawakened in me a hunger to practically know these truths to be realities in my own life. 

the psalm i love (you may already know for being a reader for a while) is psalm 27.  in a previous post i shared of how i named my 2nd son uriah from this psalm.  click here to read that story. 

if i could give psalm 27 any title i wanted i would title it a psalm of fearless trust in God.  i think this is such an important passage of scripture for my life because of my lifelong battle with fear and trusting God.  it seems like over and over again God brings me back to this issue to remove one more layer of the onion and get closer to the deep places of my heart that i carefully guard.  i gain one level of victory that gives me grace for the upcoming season, and then i need a deeper level for the next. 

i have faced in the past six months a lot of issues in my life that challenge my tendency towards fear and away from trusting the Lord.  i have shed many tears asking the Lord to not only change these circumstances, but also asking to awaken hope in me in the midst of them.  i am finding that hope isn't only about things someday getting better or circumstances someday changing.  the deep truth of hope is anchored in the belief that God can be trusted and His lovingkindness never fails and never ends.  of course we all would love for certain things in life to just be different.  sometimes there are so many things that need to change that the pressures are overwhelming.  yet the essence of fearless trust in Him is to be able to say that even if nothing ever changes, God isn't going to leave me alone to be completely consumed or drowned in my circumstances.  this is the essence of hope.  click here and here to read more about this kind of hope.

though i have lots of thoughts swirling around my head this morning about this subject, i am going to try to focus on just this one and save the others for a later post.  the last verse of psalm 27 says:

wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

i don't know about those of you reading, but i hate to wait.  i think one of the character traits the Lord has had to work on the most in my life is patience.  and yet, david's sums up his psalm in this final encouragement, "wait on the Lord." 

i looked up the word wait in the hebrew on blue letter bible and it is the word qavah.  qavah is not a passive waiting.  it is very active:

to wait, look for, hope, expect.  
waiting, to look eagerly for, to lie in wait for, to wait for, to linger
to collect, to bind together, to be collected

the lexicon describes this as:

1. to twist, to bind
2. to be strong, robust (binding fast, tying fast is applied to strength)
3. to expect, to await (enduring, remaining, which differs little from the notion of strength)
to expect Jehovah - His aid, to fix one's hope on Him

a couple of these really speak to me.  for one, hope, which is a common theme to this season in my life, shows up in these definitions.  to wait in this context means to hope.  i love how active this waiting and hoping is - it is expectant; it is eager; it is lingering.  when i think of linger, i think of taking that extra moment when all the distractions come crowding out the heart connection with God and just purposing to fix my eyes on Him. 

i love that this type of waiting is equated with strength.  it is like the twists of a rope that make it strong enough to test with lots of pressure.  it is enduring, remaining strong, and fixed.  it is to expect God to help.  this is powerful to me right where i am! 

so, just as He clothes the lilies of the field, that are here one day and gone tomorrow, He will also take care of you and me.  we can expect this of Him.  it is His very nature, and His lovingkindness towards us cannot fail or ever end.  so be strong.  take heart.  wait on the Lord.

charis