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The Joy of the Lord

This will be quick today…

I am tired of struggling! Internally, externally, I am ready to give up AGAIN! My anxiousness, or the busyness of my mind I could say, is fixed on just wanting my life to work. I want to be well, I want to be able to do the things God has put in my life to do, I want to sleep and wake up rested, I want to stop feeling disappointed and disappointing. I am past wanting to do more than just take care of my family, home, and personal life…well, most days anyway…I really just want to get up and have a normal life, which to me means fitting in the most important things and a couple fun extras without all this struggle!
Anyway, so “the joy of the Lord is my strength”. I heard somebody mention this and explain it in a new way, and I was thinking about it more…The joy of the Lord (His delight in me, His happiness in me, His NON-disappoint in me) is my strength. When someone important is not frustrated with you, even when you are frustrated with yourself, you gain a little strength. As frustrated as I am with sickness and tiredness and constant struggle to be a decent wife, mom, friend, daughter, granddaughter, minister (we are all ministers!), He isn’t frustrated. He will fulfill His purposes in the midst of this, not when it is over. Now. In the middle. Here I am, Lord, in the middle!
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The Picture

Last night, the Lord spoke to me once again through Selah.


I had been rocking Yemi before bed, and I got a little emotional, thinking about some things in regard to Selah when she was a baby. I was thinking about the things I didn’t get right, and the struggles I still have, the wisdom I still search for. I was feeling really insecure for a few moments about how I had spent these almost 5 years of motherhood…You moms may understand (?)…
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Anyway, after a little while, I was putting Selah to bed, and she said, “Mom, every night before I fall asleep, I look at that picture.” (It’s a picture of me holding Selah when she was 6 weeks old.) Then she said, “It makes me wonder when I’ll go to heaven, and that maybe it’ll be today!” I thought that was a little strange, and said, “Why would that picture make you think about that?” She said, “Because when I look at it, I see God holding me and loving me when I was a baby, and I see God holding you and loving YOU when I was a baby, too. It makes me so happy, I just want to stand on my bed, and raise my hands as high as I can, and praise the Lord!”
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Thank you, Lord, how could I ask for more? What else matters but that You are holding us and loving us? Fears and doubts can settle down, goals and plans can take their lower priority: Just as Selah was at rest in my arms in that picture, I am at rest in His arms. It’s nice to remember that I am Someone’s little child! I keep trying to be more than that.

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Abortion

This may or may not make sense, but for me, this tragedy in Haiti has made me think and pray more about abortion. These are certainly not new thoughts, but the abortion issue is about so much more than the 2 sides debating between it being a woman’s choice to decide what happens to her body and feeling that taking away life in the womb is indeed murder. I’ve just been struck lately with what happens when a person, or a group, or a country decrees something to be good or at the least acceptable, though this something takes away a life.

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When we do this, and I say “we” because “we” are citizens of a country who is doing this exact thing, we think we have solved a problem by helping out desperate women who aren’t ready to be mothers (but were ready to have sex, except in rare situations). We think we are helping them and empowering them, but really we’re giving them a right they were never supposed to have: the right to end a life. Taking on this right has serious consequences before the Lord; just believing you have this right in the first place, whether you act on it or not, is devastating to the soul. It puts us in a position we were never supposed to be in, where we actually consider that ending a heartbeat is a viable choice for US to make. How terrifying to know that humans are in this position, in many countries. We’ve tried to take one of God’s jobs (the giving and taking of life) into our own feeble hands, and instead of lifting us up to a divine position, it has lowered us to the position of savages.
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When I think of the deceased citizens of Haiti being thrown into dumpsters by huge bulldozers, because they don’t know any other way to clear out the wreckage and death, I think of how precious each of those people were to their family, friends, and God. I think of how horrible we would feel in America if that earthquake had happened here, and it was our family members’ bodies being thrown in a mass grave–no time for a funeral, no gravestone to mark their place in history. And then I think of the mass grave we have thrown our children in since abortion became legal in this country. How carelessly we have decided who gets to live and who doesn’t. What we say is alright, we do. And what we do is what we become. When I think of this, it is hard to breathe the air and walk the ground of this country. I don’t want to have any part of it. I don’t want to experience our freedoms if it means I partake in a society not just where this audacity occasionally happens, but where it is legally acceptable. I don’t ask the Lord for mercy for us. I do ask for Him to show us any way possible that those of us against this can take a stand. I want to die standing for the right thing; I want to be on the right side when it’s all over. Shutting up about it in order to not offend anyone is not taking a side at all; may we be prayerful and courageous.
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Tragic

This week, our hearts have been heavy and our minds have been in turmoil over the earthquake in Haiti. It’s something I can’t watch on television, because I already have enough mental images in my mind to make me weep and pray as often as I have a moment to do so. I’m praying for the orphans with waiting families, that they would be united, and I’m so excited that in several U.S. cities, this has happened! I’m praying for orphans; that the Haitian government, and the U.S. government would make quick and wise decisions toward their well-being, possibly making the U.S. a place for fostering and adopting in a fewer-step, less-money process. I’m praying for the people who are homeless, lost from their families, mourning loved ones; I’m praying for the people who are seeing so much death, such as in Rwanda’s holocaust, that they will need to be taught once again that we are all precious human beings, created in the image of God, made for better than this. I’m praying for God to rise and show compassion, for miracles, for His hands and feet on mission there, and most of all, for His Presence to be there.

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Sacked by the Quarterback

This is a song I wrote last month about learning some humility. I cannot even explain how slow and thick my brain (and I guess my heart as well) seems to be! It’s hard for me to sit back and accept whatever challenges come my way; I want to figure them out, fix them, and quickly move on. God is teaching me this: My place is not up, fighting. My place is down, trusting. So opposite of how I thought I’d live my life; I may not have even obeyed if I wasn’t simply forced to the ground!

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Sacked By the Quarterback (2009)
I know that this isn’t what people want to hear, but you see I’m falling here
One minute standing then out went the lights
Is nobody else crashing down on this battlefield it’s whirling around me still
little birdies and stars in the skies
Chorus: Well, now that I am down, I guess I’ll sing this song
all that I’ve tried is wrong, and all my fight is gone
Now that I’ve been sacked by the quarterback
here’s my new strategy, I’m taking time to see how much I need You.
Verse 2: Some people stop when they see they’re about to flop but I hold on ’til I drop
Mixing faith with my own stubborn dreams
Trying to stand so tall, trying to do it all, forgetting the root of me
is here in the ground, with my face to Your feet,
oh this gracious defeat, I can breath in relief,
I am chased to my knees once again, I am chased to my knees once again..
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This Week

There are so many things I’d like to blog about. Like ten different subjects! But I am just going to talk about my week. And I am going to try to keep my blogs to 3 paragraphs. Can I do it? Is it possible?

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A friend of mine and I were talking at the beginning of the week, and to make a long story short, I just feel this great longing to be known by the people closest to me. In my mind, there is this community that exists of loved ones from the school years through college through churches through missions through now…and I don’t feel very connected to them! My life is at home for this season. A lot of my community happens online. I want to be known and I really and truly want to know what is going on in the actual heart and soul of my loved ones. Wonder if blogs can help accomplish this? Or an old-fashioned phone call would work, too. It helps to just know what it is I’m trying to achieve by putting up pictures online, doing facebook, writing blogs, or even putting songs up on youtube. I want to give to others what I’d love to receive from them: a little taste of heart and mind.
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Anyway, I’m on my third paragraph now so I’ll make it quick! This week has been pretty good; after the total train wreck that Christmas was for me, I slapped myself into the schedule that I knew would get us closer to sanity. I am extremely tired and if I didn’t have kids, I would be in bed all day, so that is a bummer. But I feel a sustaining from the Lord as I follow through with this schedule and do the basics He has laid on my heart for me and my family. I have been soaking in more of His Word, thoroughly enjoying home school with Selah, feeding my family nutritiously, playing and getting lots of hugs and kisses from Yemi, and getting in bed early each night. I am extremely blessed.
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God’s Faithfulness to Yemi

So, in this next to last chapter of our marriage journey I am going to talk about our adoption. I felt blessed the entire time we were in the adoption process, because we were actually doing it! We were done discussing or praying for the right time, and that was an awesome feeling. After getting Yemi’s referral in Dec. 08, we had a court date set in February, and we hoped to bring her home in March or early April! But we had some more testing of our faith to endure…of course!

At the end of January, we received our second picture of Yemi. She was about 6 months old and had lost weight since her 4 month picture and weigh in. She looked very frail, and we questioned it 4 times but the adoption agency said everything was fine. Then in February, literally in one week, the following things happened.
So, the events of that week in February:
*Adoption agency said we and the other families who shared the same court date would need a miracle to pass court the first time because of a paperwork mishap. We all prayed and fasted, and God decided to move in an awesome way…for every single family except us. There was an additional problem with paperwork (not on our end) that couldn’t be solved quickly enough. I remember that phone call, and I remember the Lord saying immediately,” Will you choose to be offended by Me or will you choose faith?” You know, I have spent my whole life trying to live a life of faith, and be involved in things that challenge me to do that, but in that moment I knew that pleasing Him with my faith wasn’t so much about my actions but my reactions.
*In that same week, I can’t remember if it was right before or right after the court date, we got an email from our agency saying that the babies in our orphanage had not been getting food “for some time.” We had sensed something was wrong because of the picture of Yemi in January, and now our worst fears were coming to life. 2 babies in this orphanage had died that year before the parents could come rescue them. So, directly after this email, the families started a big formula drive, and a week later, 2 people were in the air with hundreds of pounds of formula. It’s confusing to explain, but I’ll just say that actually by the time we got that email, UNICEF had already started to give Plumpy’Nut to the babies and the children were already gaining weight and much better. We found out once we were actually in Ethiopia that the nurse during January and February was terrible, and finally quit. When she was replaced, the new nurse saved 9 babies’ lives by seeing the babies were not thriving and getting them what they needed. If you ever have a chance to watch this video and give to World Vision/Plumpy’Nut, do it. It is for real. We got a new picture of Yemi at the very end of February, and she looked good as gold. Praise the Lord!
It was awesome to go to Ethiopia and see this journey come to an end, although I would happily do it again. It had been a time to hang onto the Lord, see into reality that we would have never been forced to see otherwise, and join in the kingdom work of making the least of these family! I will write another time about prophetic words and scriptures the Lord gave during the journey, and His faithfulness to the present, as she is a healthy, chubby, happy, smart 17 month old running around as I type this!
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Our Marriage Journey; D.C. & Adoption Years

This last bit has been hard to write! I’ve shared really honestly about the difficulties and surprises of several periods of our lives, and this last segment (2007-2009) has probably topped them all (in regard to difficulties and surprises).

I guess to start it all off I have to say that I still don’t know or understand what is going on! I have learned to let go and move on, trusting that the Lord is faithful if not altogether weird and completely nonlinear. He doesn’t put puzzle pieces together like the picture on my box says to! He has His own thing going on. I wish He could see that if He doesn’t give me a clue I can’t possibly help Him! (Hope you know that was totally tongue in cheek.)
There is some truth brewing in my heart about people from the Bible who tried to do things the way God was telling them to–like Moses when he went through all of that with Pharoah, instead of it being a quick and easy task to free the Israelites–like Paul, when he kept getting thrown in prison or shipwrecked when he was supposed to be preaching to the Gentiles–It’s like we search and search (when we’re young anyway) to find out what potential or calling we have toward a certain area of serving God, and once we know it and set out to do it, He makes it nearly impossible. We go out with God on our side, and what good does it seem to do us? There is something to this.
Through the youth ministry of the Bridge since 2004, we were spending time with young guys and girls all the time, and Jack’s God-sized dream of Diverse City miraculously came to life in the Summer of 2007. We opened in a store in the Towne Mall, and were a safe place for kids to play video games, eat, hang out, have music lessons and Bible Study, and honestly just come to find adults who wanted to listen and “sit a spell”. We knew this was reaching students who were not going to come to church, and it was built on relationships, not activities where kids remain unknown and unnamed. This may be another blog in itself, but I struggle with living in Kentucky (vs. overseas) because I see many local ministries (especially ones within one church, like not in cooperation with others) with so much money and support poured into them and they never take a look back to see that they aren’t meeting true needs. They are just able to say they have this ministry…But Diverse City was not like that.
Also, in the fall of 2007, we started our adoption as if our lives weren’t crazy enough with a bunch of kids at church and the Mall! It was so exciting to finally get started after all my research and longing and tears over the orphan crisis in Ethiopia. 12% of Ethiopia’s citizens are orphans under 13 years old! We mailed in our applications on Oct. 31, 2007 & officially began waiting in January, 2008. Selah was 2 and a half years old, we practically lived at Diverse City, and we would soon have a new baby girl in our family!
In Spring of 2008, some things changed that started a downward spiral for Diverse City. It was pretty hurtful and we hoped for a miracle…but it didn’t come. It was hard to see other ministries get started and everyone get excited about them, when this amazing opportunity was passing us by. We closed our doors around Christmas, and that space is still empty. That death was really hard for Jack, and it was a hard death for me, too. This wasn’t the first time we had done our best to live out “His strength is perfect in our weakness”, only to (dare I say it?) be disappointed at how our limits and inadequacies shone brighter than the noonday sun. On a very personal note, it makes it hard to get excited about “stuff for God”. The good news about this is that sometimes in ministry you can get TOO excited about stuff for God and forget God; what a tragedy it would be to fly high in ministry but be grounded in the ditch relationally with Him. It happens.
On into the Summer and Fall of 2008, we were also getting pretty antsy about waiting for a referral for our baby girl. We were told a wait of 2-5 months. We waited 11. But Dec. 2nd, we received the referral of Yemi Abigail! It was wonderful and we had so many people supporting us in so many ways! The journey was far from over and I don’t know if we got a single good night of sleep from February to April 21st, 2009…
But I actually better save that story for another blog! Thanks for reading this far!
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Ah, New Years

New Years has always been a big deal to me. I’m big on focus and simplicity.

Here are my basic thoughts…
*I want to live surrendered, at the foot of Christ, enjoying Him, and not getting all freaked out about making everything happen. No day is a waste if I’m here, in my heart. (Mary, John 11 & 12)
*I want to use my spiritual gifts until Jesus returns: encouraging, giving, intercession, missions, mercy. I don’t want to look around and see if anyone gives me a thumbs up. i’m tired of that! I want to use my gifts for the Lord! (Col. 3:23)
*My marriage is going to get better every week! (Eph. 5:1)
*Raising up the girls in the truth and happy heart of the Lord; I want them to know Him intimately, not just about Him. Meeting more christian friends will be wonderful for them; praying about groups they will join.
*This year, we decide on Selah’s elementary education, or at least the first year of it. Lots of research and prayer there!
*This year, I feel like I need to realize the clues when I am getting exhausted and stay very flexible regardless of who is inconvenienced. Lots of discipline required here, which is difficult in itself but gets much harder when I’m tired.
*We want to work on our house, since we are always, always here! For 8 years, we’ve really disliked some things and some were just gross (carpet where 4 dogs, um, lived.) I was the queen of the “only buy what you must have because we need to practice equality with our global neighbors” parade, and we have changed very little about the house. But, although I still feel the same way as i did during my “reign” as queen, I never fully got an answer from God about what to do in regard to this situation of living in “The United Excess of America” except “be still and know Me, and live by the Spirit. Do what you CAN do, don’t worry about what you can’t.” Didn’t get those specific rules I was hoping for. But through the process my heart got where He wanted it to be. So, I don’t see things in such black and white, wrong and right anymore; I just sort of feel what we can do and what we can’t do. What we can give and what we can’t. It is not monetized or written law. It’s harder this way, and I bet you I’m not even halfway correct in the way I’m living. But that balance will ALWAYS be a tight rope I’m conscious of walking.
So, there’s my upcoming year–or at least what I think I’ll be spending it on. Cheers!