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15 Years of Marriage…and the Lies That Add Up

(Ooh, I didn’t mean to make such a scandalous title but now that it’s there, I just can’t erase!) It’s okay, you’ll see where I’m heading as you read on…

Jack and I are celebrating our 15th Anniversary tomorrow, New Year’s Day! I can’t believe it’s been 15 years. I will never forget that snowy day in a packed church where we, with such hope in our eyes, said “I do.” No one could have told us what would come next, what trials we’d face, what mistakes we’d make…we just had to experience it for ourselves.

And along the way, along with the surprises, doesn’t the enemy of our souls just enjoy coming in and devouring that hope, those promises?

The lies do begin to add up as he whispers fears and blame…and after 15 years, I’ve finally learned to call him out and let him know I’m not afraid of these words. They have no hold on me. My choice is made because I bend my thoughts and will and desires to another whisper. Do these lies seem familiar at all to you?

Lie #1…”We have nothing in common.” For me and Jack, this “lie” has lots of truth in it. We are hilariously opposite in truly almost every way. Extrovert, introvert. Hot all the time, cold all the time. Owns seven screens, happy with one. Steak, salad. Small talk, heart talk. Jokes, blogs. Midnight, 9:30. So guess what? This doesn’t have to be a problem. It’s all about perspective. 1 Corinthians 12 reminds us there are different kinds of gifts, and that the Body of Christ is made up of many parts–and no one could do their part well without the other members doing their part well. That’s how it can be in a marriage, too. We can appreciate the way our spouse thinks whether we understand it or not. They are an individual first before they can be a member of a partnership. I like myself, and I like being an individual first. I have every intention of hanging onto what makes me ME. So, in the same spirit, I have been learning to value Jack and his opinions, strengths, and even weaknesses, as I want mine to be considered and accepted. I don’t want to put my convictions on anyone anymore. I get my one life, and so does everyone else! The only thing we need in common is loving Jesus, each other, and our family. That’s the truth to cancel out this lie!

Lie #2…”He’s changed.” Well…yeah. That happens to people over a decade and a half. The only way I could recognize Princess Leia in the most recent Star Wars movie was by her eyes. And she’s just as beautiful…but obviously she’s changed through the years. Someday that’ll be us. And not just our physical appearances, but we all evolve through time mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially. We aren’t always going to like what we’ve become or what our spouse has become. But here are three things I’m learning to do to combat this lie.

First, we go to God’s Word, which reminds: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive what grievances you may have…” (Colossians 3:12-13) We are MUTUALLY accepting, having compassion, being patient, with ONE ANOTHER. Do I really think he’s the only one who has changed, who has built up a mound of grievances and idiosyncrasies? Whether I see it or not, I am being loved and accepted as I myself work to love and accept. As we love and accept even things we don’t like (I’m obviously not talking about sin, evil, abuse, etc) people tend to unfold, and their layers come off. They let go of defenses and you connect. It’s a beautiful thing to see someone free to become who they really were meant to be, and they will never become that if someone is pressing them. It’s scary, it feels risky, but it’s really good. It’s offering to someone what you would hope they would offer you as you grow into the best version of yourself.

Second, we pray! When we pray for our spouses, no matter how long it takes for fruition, our perspective and heart toward them changes very quickly. I have seen so many times where I chose to not start a difficult conversation, but prayed for several days or weeks instead, only to see my husband’s countenance change and he himself bring up the problem for us to discuss. We can trust the Lord, He’s a good Father! He knows what we need, and He loves our spouses and is quite capable of speaking to them! (I love and recommend the book The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian!!)

Third, we set our hearts to serve and obey the Lord with our own lives first. I can’t live Jack’s life for him and I’m not supposed to. He has duties that are not mine to perform. I can support him by doing what is on my plate faithfully and joyfully, and trust him and the Lord with what is really not mine to worry about or accomplish.

And last but not least, Lie #3…”If I had married so-n-so, I’d have…” Ugh. This one’s really a sad and desperate attempt of the enemy to get us when we’re down, because we rationally know there’s no way to know what would have happened if we had chosen a different path. We never know what someone else’s home life is truly like either. This thought, this lie, is a mirage in the desert. I think I could have been happy with several different guys that I liked in college and Jack could have been happy with several different girls he liked, too. Why? Because we CHOOSE to be happy. “God’s will” for our lives wasn’t one choice 15 years ago, His will for our lives is right now, every single day. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 tells us what God’s will is for us: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This is God’s will for us. In what we chose, or in whatever situation we find ourselves in somehow, this is God’s will for us. Our active stance is to take joy, pray, and give thanks.

 

The lies have a way of adding up if we listen to them, but so does God’s Word. We can go from strength to strength, building precept upon precept, living out the love He gives, without condition.

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Doing Good in the Enemy’s Territory

I was asking the Lord today–why is it so hard to do something good? Why are the things that would save lives so incredibly hard to accomplish? I was specifically praying about things like adoption, foster care, and you know, world peace. 😉

And He gave me a very simple answer.

We are trying to do good in the enemy’s territory.

We are trying to do good in the enemy’s territory and the enemy hates it. He’ll do everything he can to keep families from healing orphaned hearts. He’ll put roadblock after roadblock in the way of help organizations actually helping. He’ll make sure there’s just enough corruption and hopelessness and risk to stop God’s people from giving and going.

God has given the enemy the territory of the world for this time, and so we see the effects of that in every place on the planet. And although we are the underdog, we are the foreigners here, we are the sheep among wolves, we have a power in us and a backing from God that undermines the power of the enemy. He cannot touch our souls! And God has the final say of what the enemy can allow in the life of a Christian (read Job!) so we are not afraid.

So we are not afraid.

We have to remember this until His Kingdom comes (a word on that in a minute):

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand. Ephesians 6:10-13

We’re praying for His Kingdom to come here, but it won’t come as a regime change…not yet anyway. It’ll come in hearts pioneering and pressing on in one calling, one act of obedience, one selfless act of love at a time. The Kingdom will come in one heart at a time like it did when Jesus walked on the earth, talking and healing and loving…not rolling heads in the government like He was expected to do. Thousands of ah-ha moments, one heart at a time, because of Someone’s love and perseverance and sacrifice, and now we follow in those footsteps. It happened then and it’s happening now, not in a sweeping widespread coup but in prayer and living our lives not for ourselves.

Jesus wasn’t afraid of doing good in the enemy’s territory because He knew God’s plans for His life could not be changed or thwarted by the enemy. We have that same assurance. We know Who is ultimately in charge, Who can shrink the territory of the enemy, and Who can heal the inner man of whomever we are interceding, advocating, and loving.

 

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#HowToBuild: The Living Word

“…We are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss…Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple?” 1 Corinthians 3:9-16

We are in the building process, every day, through the circumstances God allows into our lives, but also through the choices we make to add layer upon layer onto our faith!

One choice that we must make in order to build (and build upon) a firm foundation is to be daily and regularly in the Word of God.

Communication between us and God is set in motion when we are in His Word. There is always something new and always something more, if reading is accompanied by openness to the Holy Spirit. If we ask Him directly for His input, He will open new truth that speaks to the current status of our heart and life! I have that much confidence in the Holy Spirit/Word of God duo!!! If the Word feels dull, confusing, irrelevant, infuriating, boring, or even wrong, we can tell Him how we feel. The Word is alive, interactive, and meant to bring conversation with Him.

Being in the Word of God is one of the main ways we can hear God’s voice, because His Word IS His voice! When we have begun to recognize His voice in Scripture, we begin to hear Him speak outside of it, too. A thought while we’re driving the car, an answer to a particular prayer or question. Reading His Word is one of the main ways we can learn to differentiate between which thoughts (and even words from others that are directed toward us) are from God and which need to be dismissed and forgotten. It gives us an innate discernment, what is called the “mind of Christ”, because our hearts are melding into His as we read more and more about what He loves and hates. It grows in us a change of opinion when our opinions were wrong. It grows in us a softness where there needs to be mercy and a fierce determination where there is meant to be justice. His Word is living and active. It goes in and it changes things. It is the nutrient our souls were meant to ingest daily! I can’t help but think of the yogurt with the “1 billion acidophilus cultures” in it. The package declares this incredibly wonderful but creepy message: Active bacteria, live cultures! Gee, thanks!! (But really…thanks!) That healthy bacteria that we’re ingesting, as weird as it sounds, is making our digestive system a much happier place. The good bacteria needs to be there to overpower and kill off the bad bacteria that would make us sick. Think of God’s Word, all of it, any of it, as a living and active ingredient that goes in where He knows it needs to go, to whatever parts of our heart need to be cleansed, overpowered with truth and goodness, and made healthy again. And just a side note, most of us don’t get these live cultures in the food we normally eat. Very few restaurants are handing out rejuvenating, life giving food; we have to go out of our way to find it and consume it…hint hint!

Love and respect for the Word of God grows the more we become acquainted with it. Psalm 119 is an intense chapter of appreciation and longing for Scripture. The wisdom and the joy of the writer! He had found something worth going on and on about…!

In different seasons of life, we have to get creative and make being in the Word happen. Here are some ideas and resources for that, just to name a few:

*Listen to podcasts, such as Passion City Church , Martha Kilpatrick , Bethel Church , and Beth Moore. Even if they are just playing in a sometimes-empty room, grab what you can as the Word of God streams through the air of your house!

*Watch preaching and teaching videos. Some of my favorites are: Anyone from International House of Prayer, Kansas City , especially Misty Edwards. We don’t have to agree with every point teachers make on videos we watch, but our hearts will feel if someone is just not lining up with God’s Word. Obviously, not everyone out there with videos online is preaching truth. The more we are in His Word for ourselves, the more we will be able to discern.

*Get involved in group or personal book studies, that dig into one particular topic or book of the Bible. Here’s a good resource: Women of Faith. I have personally always gotten a lot out of Beth Moore studies, but those were my pre-children season type of studies!  I highly recommend them though. I also read books and resources by Martha Kilpatrick regularly. You can find her info on the link above under podcasts.

*Read blogs! The transparency of blogs from people truly seeking God are invaluable! Here are some great ones I read: Ray Hollenbach and Ann Voskamp There are so many I could share, but those are the ones I usually click on when they go through my Twitter feed…

*Hide His Word in your heart. Memorize verses with your family. Write a verse a week on a poster and tape it to the wall next to the dinner table! I never realized the work, honestly, that the Word of God that I had memorized in the past was doing for me all these years. So many times that I had hope or bravery or the words to say, that was a direct result of hiding God’s Word in my heart throughout my life. Some of those verses were learned just so I could earn a piece of candy! Haha!

*Pray His Word…back to Him.

*Sing His Word…out loud!

*Just open it up and read. Daily, if we feel overwhelmed, we can read a Psalm and a chapter from a book of the New Testament for starters, and then see where He leads. There’s no right or wrong way to be in the Word. Sometimes God will keep me on one passage or sentence for weeks. We can’t be all about quantity with this. There are no stickers on any charts here!

I want to share this new song with you that I’ve been writing the past couple of weeks, “Your Voice”.  He is speaking…because He loves to. His Voice, His Word, these are some of the sweetest gifts He could have given us…and they are our’s in abundance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Breaking Through The Fog

Surely I’m not the only one to feel the fog. That uncomfortable state of feeling unconnected to anyone, even yourself, and definitely God. You can’t remember the truths you always fall back on for comfort, and you can say the words but they don’t mean anything at the moment.

Some days you wake and the fog is not there; mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually you’re alive and awake with light feet, no dragging. Aren’t those the greatest days?

There was a voice in my head, and then a literal voice of a friend, saying to me like a lighthouse in the middle of this fog:

“But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith!” Jude :20

Yes! Truth my brain could grasp! There is something I can do while I wait this out!

Like when you have a cold or some other sickness that weakens your senses and resolve and enthusiasm for life, you build up your immune system. You do purposeful things to get strong again, to treat your body to some kindness and goodness and wellness. You take extra vitamin C, get extra sleep, eat extra veggies and fruit, stay hydrated with echinacea  or super triple antioxidant berry tea–whatever it is, you find ways to physically put into your body whatever it needs. Why does it need the extra TLC right now? Who knows! The stresses of life is probably a sufficient enough answer! It doesn’t matter WHY your body is a mess and needs the time of strengthening, it just does, and we do what we need to do.

The same is true for our spiritual nutrition, our spiritual immune system. The stresses of life want to take us down for the count! The enemy wants to take us down for the count! But we have a defense; we can build ourselves up in our most holy faith. We can surround ourselves with truth and hear it, say it, read it, sing it, gulp it down like a giant bottle of Emergen-C.

He takes care of the rest.

Do we feel better immediately after a dose of physical nutrition? Not necessarily. But it is doing something internally that will benefit us at a later date. The same thing goes with the Word, worship, prayer, putting on our armor, soaking. In the unseen, battles are being fought, faith is being built. We are reminding the enemy and ourselves that there is action we can take against the moods and stress and stuff of this temporal life when we choose to build ourselves up in our most holy faith.

Whether we wake up to fog or a brilliantly blue sky, we’re not a slave to whatever we wake up to. The grey does not own us. We have everything we need for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3); we can choose today to fortify ourselves for tomorrow. And of course our efforts are only a small part of how we are reached by His goodness; He promises that every day His mercies are new (Lam. 3:23)!

May we, by His grace, commit ourselves to reaching forward and grasping them!

 

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Truth #2: It’s Worth It

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One of the greatest lies that keeps us down is:

“It doesn’t matter what you do, you probably won’t see any change anyway…so just live how you want.”

Well, I am here to say that this is not true! If the changes we make are significant enough, we will see a result! Sometimes the result is just knowing that you could do it, that you could do whatever you set your mind to. Sometimes the result is total freedom from a pit you used to dwell in! And sometimes the result is a change physically that everyone can see. Either way, when we don’t give in to this lie and we persevere, we emerge transformed.

It’s worth it.

Personally, my health forced me to make the choice to be wheat and (mostly) sugar free. I now have sweets at certain special occasions and no longer feel the need to abstain 100% of the time. But most of the year I was sugar free with no exceptions, and there were so many times I thought, “I still have fatigue…My body doesn’t look better…I still have trouble sleeping…I don’t know if I’m going to see results or not, I just wanna say forget it!” Still to this day, after 10 months and losing 20 pounds, I do still struggle with some (but not ALL) of the physical problems I had when I started. So, for me, there have been some physical results and rewards for sure, but the real reward, the real harvest I have reaped from the seeds I have sown (BY GOD’s GRACE) are that my natural habits have changed!

It is no longer the norm when I feel tired or upset to turn to sweets. Is the thought or the temptation there each and every time I feel down, to eat Oreos or ice cream? YES. But it’s like that was the old me, and I feel it- almost tangibly- the correlation between a frustrated, confused, even more tired, sick Lyndsay and the Lyndsay who grabbed cookies and simple sugars whenever she felt low. That was a dark, deep pit! Sugar wasn’t the only bad component of that pit but it almost symbolizes it for me! God has taught me how to rise above and say HECK NO to the steps leading down to that place.

There is a spiritual principle that is undeniably true: We reap what we sow. If we sow self control in those hard moments, if we sow lifestyle changes in the day in day out, if we sow prayer, truth, scripture, hope…we WILL reap a harvest! And that harvest could bless a lot of people.

Whatever you need to do for your health, do it, keeping in mind that your life affects more than just you. I want to live a self controlled life that has appetites for all things under the leadership of Jesus Christ in order to show my daughters that I can’t just live however I feel in the moment. If nothing else, if no other benefit comes from a healthy relationship with food (meaning we eat it for fuel and not to meet an emotional need), but exemplifying this to my children, it’s worth it.

It’s worth it!