Shh!

We all have those people in our lives that we think are loud talkers. You're probably thinking of one right now, since I just said that. Maybe you're thinking of me.

I never would have considered myself such, but then, I hadn't given it much thought. I had always lived the way I guess we all live - trying to be heard in our world.

I always lived a life longing to be heard, hoping someone was paying attention and taking note. Of what, I didn't know. For what reason, I hadn't a clue. It just seemed like if I was ever going to be anything, someone had to notice. Someone had to hear.

As God has come into my life in increasingly powerful ways, I have come to understand it is simply He who has to hear. It is He who needs to notice. And He does; and He has. And He continues to do so. And it is He who speaks back, who longs to be heard in my life.

But He has a different way. He shouts in a whisper. In stillness, in silence, in peace. In those quiet moments, His voice rises above all. In those still ticks of the clock, you can hear Him. I can hear Him.

It is in this whisper that there is justification. Sanctification. Strength. Meaning. Purpose. Love. It is in this whisper that you find out who you are - for real, not by some stanard of the world whose measure is always changing but by the perfect measure to which your Creator created you.

I have had this moment. And I hestitate to say that because in truth, I have had this moment a lot. Frequently. Increasingly so as I continue to grow in Him. It is a moment that butts up against the sometmes crushing weight of the world that immediately jumps back in to redefine the standard, that will strip away this Truth if you don't let Him rest in your heart. And it is a moment quickly lost when you're like me.

Because I find that right after one of these beautiful moments, these powerful encounters with God where I finally understand, where everything makes sense...I irritate the heck out of myself. (And probably others. Sorry.)

I get full of this quiet strength, this disciplined energy, this humbled confidence. Like a golf ball settling into its hole, I circle around in these blessings as I try to find that place of rest in the middle of them. But I just don't know what to do with all that. With that energy, with that confidence. With that peace.

I want to talk about it, but no words do justice. I want to take hold of it, but the harder you try to grab onto it, the more quickly it seems to run away. It is something that has to just soak into your heart and you have to embrace it and live it. Just simply live it.

So last night, amidst one of these moments, I found this: the annoyance I find with myself is that I'm still shouting in a quiet world. God has stilled me. He has heard and answered me, in the most perfect and unimaginable way possible. I know Him in my heart, see Him in my mirror, and am just breathless - I get THIS? I ask Him. This is awesome! And in that peace, that strength, that confidence, even that energy, there is this quiet contentment.

That's the secret: quiet contentment. A life that doesn't have to shout to be heard. A life that has already been justified and sanctified by the only hearer that matters. A life that doesn't have a demand or a want or a wish in the world...because it is a life in perfect peace. (That is not to say I have no desire to continue to grow, to push forward, to develop. Contentment with today and a dream for tomorrow are not mutually exclusive.)

So I'm annoying myself...by living a shouting life against the quiet He has graced me with. By thinking there must still be some strife when my heart is screaming contentment. In the stillness, I can hear myself only louder. And it's thoroughly irritating. It's tough - because I want to share this moment. But the gift of the moment is that it is best shared by soaking it in, taking it to heart, embracing its stillness, and living it.

Jesus walked this earth for 33 years. I imagine He had some temptation to shout, to feel like what He was saying or doing or being here demanded to be heard. I know His world told Him that if He wanted to be something, He had to live loud. As a political leader. As an official leader in His Jewish tribe. Yet what I see in Him is beyond the noise.

What I see in Jesus - and what I hope we all see in Him - is a life that embraced this quiet strength. This disciplined energy. This humbled confidence. This stilled contentment. You wouldn't have considered Jesus a loud talker, and the way He lived His life was in perfect alignment with this presence within Him. But His life, the life of our Christ, spoke volumes beyond the world's loudest voice. It continues to speak today.

I'm committing myself to speaking the way my Lord spoke - through the way I live my life in the humbled embrace of my Father. It is His gift....that among other things, I don't have to shout any more. My story is here; and it is heard.

What are you shouting about? What message are you trying to make sure is heard? And what if you gave that question to God? What if you let Him hear you and took His answer at His word? Would you be able to live a quieter life, outside of the tumult and the noise? Would you make a bigger impact in your world - maybe even tell the story you were trying to tell all along?

Holy Hot Glue

You've heard it said that it wasn't the nails that held Christ to the cross - it was His love for us. But...what about the hot glue?

I did not grow up in a Christian home, but there were a few token "icons" around the house. My brother had an illustrated Bible and I had...well...this:

Ask me what it is. I can't tell you. It's Jesus on the cross surrounded by cheap plaster and real seashells. Ask me when and were it came from. I don't know. Mom says I must have gotten it at the beach, and I vaguely remember a trip to Myrtle Beach when I was barely old enough to remember, but I don't remember picking this out or bringing it home or even seeing it anywhere. For as long as I can remember, though, this little sea Jesus has been in my room. On my dresser as a child, now gracing the top of my bookshelf.

And for as long as I can remember, we have never figured out how to fix Jesus.

For the better part of 27 years, Jesus inexplicably keeps...falling over. I would wake up in the morning, and there would be this statue on my dresser. Completely intact, but Jesus toppled into the clamshell. His cross came disattached at the feet, and He fell. We tried krazy glue, but it didn't hold. We tried it again, and nothing. For months, then years, it was a constant guessing game as to when He was going to fall again. Every so often, I would look at my dad, statue in hand, and say, "Dad, I need you to fix Jesus again."

He always tried. It never worked.

After awhile, we took to placing large globs of hot glue at His feet. It's still there. You can kind of even make it out in the picture. A new fall, a new glob of hot glue until there was no way at all Jesus was falling off His pedestal again. And then...

He fell off the cross. Or the cross fell off of Him. Jesus would still be standing, but I'd wander over for a clean shirt and find the cross lying behind Him. Between Him and the seashell. Away from His hands. And just...down. Several more years of fixing, more krazy glue, more hot glue, more vain attempts. And then...

The cross broke. In two. Tall-ways. So Jesus, through the hot glue at His feet, and the bottom half of His cross, through additional hot glue, remained standing. The top half of the cross...I guess He let go because it snapped off and keeps falling off. Just this week (at age 27), I found the top half of the cross fallen sideways between Jesus and the seashell. His hands still outstretched, but no cross there to hold Him. I put it back, but who knows how long it will last?

I say that to say this: I don't know why Jesus keeps falling. I don't know why His cross keeps breaking. If you asked my rational mind which part of this treasure would break, I would tell you the plaster or the seashells. There's not so much as a chip out of either. But the cross...

It's just a mess.

But wasn't it always? Wasn't the cross a mess? Wasn't the perfect, sinless Son of God hanging there like a common criminal for the sake of the guilty a terrible, horrible, beautiful mess? It shouldn't have had to happen that way. Yet, I am thankful that it did. I am thankful that I have a God who will come down here and get into this mess, made what seemed like a bigger mess, and came out with grace, mercy, and an eternal, reconciling love.

Maybe this broken statue is my Lord falling for me (the object of His affection) over and over again. I know I have fallen for Him.

I'm not ashamed to keep a broken Jesus on display. I have my own brokenness, and He's been broken for me. If you ever visit and look at this little token, you might find before I do that His cross has fallen again. It's ok; I'll just laugh and tell you this story. But I wouldn't get rid of it for all the world. It means something, and even on the days when I'm not sure why my heart is so attached to this display, it's got something deeper in me and I cherish its continued presence.

Hot glue and all.

Perhaps all that glue is a sign of the way He's melted my heart as I willingly submit to being at His feet.

Hope Amid Disaster

Yesterday, tornadoes wreaked havoc on areas of my state, my region, and my nation. The images of what is from what used to be are heart-wrenching. Some of them make me sick to my stomach. So I spent the night alternately thanking God for protecting me and my loved ones from mother nature's dangerous fury...and asking Him to pour out His blessings, His mercy, His presence on those affected. With that second prayer, there was also this: that God would show me, us, those of us left standing, a way to put flesh to His presence for these communities (which are our communities).

For those of you fortunate enough to not know disaster first-hand, let me lay out sort of how this all works. Disaster strikes, and your neighbors are the first to show up. (If you don't know your neighbors, get to know them. Really. They can be your strength in the moment.) Then, miraculously, the media arrives. Usually in droves. More in the way than helpful, they root through the rubble for that emotional touch (See this teddy bear? It belonged to a child that used to live here. *toss teddy bear carelessly back on top of rubble pile*) and shove a microphone in your face so that you can tell the rest of the world what it's like to be devastated. Sometime after that, search and rescue crews arrive and start sifting through what they can, pulling and herding people to safer territory. The Red Cross and other relief organizations move in, setting up emergency centers where you can sleep, shower, and shelter yourself. They offer food and clothing, the basic necessities, to get you through the coming hours. Gawkers, volunteers, and a handful of well-meaning individuals show up to help you (or get in the way) through recovery and cleanup, digging through to salvage what they can and assisting in moving the damage so the rebuilding can begin. Through all of this, power is out. Gas lines are cut. Sewer and water lines, likely damaged, are useless. Sewage contaminates a great deal. Landlines are down; cell phones are jammed. You are alone, except for those who have shown up to do something, anything. You spend your nights in shelters, in friends' guest rooms, in hotels..and you spend your days in the ruins of what used to be your life. Goverment officials show up to tell you what the damage really means and how they will help you when the red tape clears up. Your insurance agent has great news - he's found a loophole so that they don't have to pay for any of this. And then the trash crews start coming through with heavy machinery to push debris to the curb, then a special trash truck (oversized, with a giant claw much like the stuffed animal carnival games in the grocery store) devours the remnants of all you have ever known. It's hauled away and then...there is nothing.

There are some groups who have come up with neat ways to help. Tide (the laundry detergent) sends mobile laundromats to wash your clothes. Because it's a taste of normal and a small gesture that makes an impact. Grief counselors - from community organizations and government agencies - come in to talk with the victims, to assist on the emotional side as best they can. First responders come with donated stuffed animals to give to the children, something to hold and squeeze and hug. Something to be...just a kid again. And of course, there are groups that mobilize by the thousands to assist in the cleanup and rebuild.

Then what is left?

As I prayed to God for some way to put skin on Him in these communities, I was immediately flooded with the images of the loneliness. Because while it's great to have the shelter, the food, and the clothing, the help during the day and the place to lay your head at night, the truth is that whenever there's a moment of silence, of darkness, of stillness - when you can't do anything else because the lights have gone out or the volunteers have gone home or you're just completley wiped of energy - the weight of the situation is crushing.

Crushing.

So I wondered - what can we do to meet these people in that place? In that extremely lonely, dark, quiet, tumultuous place where the words of a grief counselor, the outreach of the community, the one salvaged treasure is nice...but just doesn't cut it?

And what I thought about was this:

How can we get Bibles into the hands of those in disaster areas?

This isn't some hyper-evangelism effort, moving in on disaster to introduce God. These people are already looking for Him - some who have known Him before and others looking for Him to make sense of everything. And in the moment of truth, we're mostly too busy saving our children, our pets, our treasures, to think of something like grabbing our Bible.

But those of us who read His word every day know how He uses it to speak to us. We know what a comfort it is in our darkest moments. We know even when we don't feel like reading, we open those pages anyway because something calls to us. And there, we find hope. We find grace. We find mercy. We find promise. We find something to hang onto, something meaningful, something real.

Those things, above all, are what these survivors need. They need something for the lonely moments, something to hang their hearts on, a promise revealed, a constant Friend. They need the encouraging words, the hope, the grace, the power and wisdom of the God who sees them in their shelters, in their streets, in their dirty hair and donated outfits and distress and disorientation.

And you know - you KNOW - there are churches sitting on piles of old pew Bibles, long since replaced by newer versions or fresher binding. You know there are publishing houses who would make a donation to give this hope to these people. You know that you and I are sitting on our own cache of Bibles - different translations, old favorites, versions we used to read every day but haven't touched in years, ones we bought or received as gifts that didn't really speak to us the same way a differently-worded one did. We have the Word; and there are people who have lost everything who need that Word.

Can we find a Good Word for them? Can we get it into their hands? So that even when there's nothing left around them...they know they are never alone.

Passion

Passion.

Our passion is that which God has put into our hearts, that niche where He has both gifted and energized us. As someone who loves to read what others are saying, I have noticed a significant uptick in the mention of passion throughout books, blogs, and other media in the past several months. It seems everyone has a way to help you capture your passion, to make it part of your life, to live off it and even thrive through it.

In many ways, I find this excellent. Life without passion is painful. We all understand that, right? You live in this competing reality in which your heart is crying out for something and for whatever reason, it's simple to ignore that burning ache in favor of what you "should" be doing or what "makes sense" or what is "profitable" or "secure." It is agonizing to turn out backs on our passion.

Yet, I submit that much of the advice out there is equally damaging. The tips and tricks to harnessing your passion, to bringing it into alignment with your life goals and present situation, to mold it to fit your living, are noble, but dangerous. With this mentality, it is easy to fly right by your passion on your way to obsession only to find yourself, months or years or decades later, doing something you used to love, something that used to energize you, and finding it dreadful. Finding it tedious. Finding yourself doing your passion but not living it.

Because when we take control of our passion, we inevitably corrupt it. We put it in a timetable. Or a schedule. Or a deadline. We quantify it in whatever terms we can - days it took, efforts expended, income generated, compliments and criticisms, and beyond. It's as if our society says we have to justify our passion to make them worthwhile. To give them meaning. To even...make our passion legitimate. Without quantification, overscheduling, obsession, complete control, and the discipline to make our passion relevant, we are all teenage girls with flowery journals full of "poetry" or schoolchildren with sketchbooks of refrigerator art.

I find this to be true in my own journey of passion, as God continues to touch that place that sets me alive. I'm oscillating between these phases of getting stoked about this or that project and diving into it with energies, then as it wears on and nears completion, already quantifying it, getting ready to show it off, thinking about potential feedback, noting the effort and work put in, and setting arbitrary standards for whether I will count this "worth it" or not. Because I know there are people who are looking for those details, people who will look at me and say it's nice, but it's not meaningful. It's not a real contribution to anything. It just...well, it's nice.

Then the project ends, and I look at it with half-hearted satisfaction. So what happened? What happened was that I tried to turn passion into productivity. I tried to twist it to meet standards or arbitrary definitions. And as such, I lost my love for the work. My heart sinks because I look at my project and realize I missed the journey. I missed the love. I missed my chance to thrive through something God has put in me because all I could think about was harnessing that passion and making it...something.

There are too many projects like this in my life, and I'm betting in yours. Projects that began with such energy, that gave us the chance to touch something blessed inside of us. That drew us closer to understanding God and ourselves, to living out love in a radical way. To living passion.

How do we go about changing that?

The answer is simple. Instead of trying to harness our passions and draw them into our lives, we need to let our passions take control of us.

We need to let our passions define for us the moment. When our passion defines us, we live in an authenticity that needs no further explanation. And we find the following to be true:

1. We are making a real contribution, whether it fits some standard or not. Because we are working out of the fullness of who we are. Because we have tapped into what God intended for us. And God intends us for Him and for His community, so whatever we do matters. On an eternal plane.

2. We are more content with life in general. Our whole system of measurement has changed, and we have a keen eye for what really matters when we refuse to submit to some random standard.

3. Our energies are restored. When our passion fuels our work, instead of our work trying to fuel our passion, we find endless reserves of the strength, the fire, and the pleasure of simply doing what we do.

4. We have a better understanding of ourselves...and our God. We are able to live without contradiction. Without one reality competing against another. Without one idea of meaningful conflicting with a deeper appreciation for meaning.

5. We have fewer regrets. We aren't surrounded by projects, moments, or memories of where we lost touch with what we were doing. We aren't looking at things that remind us that somewhere...we lost it because we changed what matters. Living out of our passion lets us live fully and not look back wondering 'what if.'

We need to let our passion fuel us instead of looking for ways to fuel our passion. When we do, we will find our passion to be more than a noun (more than that which we do). It will be an adjective (that which defines us) and also a verb (that which we live). Yes, we can rediscover a passion for passion....if we let go and let passion lead the way.

What are you passionate about? Have you lessened your passion by trying too hard to take control of it? Where would it take you if you let it take the lead?

God is With You

I'm reading my way through the Bible, as I do from time to time. And mired in the Old Testament, I'm stuck on this concept of the Israelites in battle. When they have humbled themselves and "the Lord [is] with them," one Hebrew can slay an entire civilization. When they rebel and have not sought God's will going in, the tables turn and God's people die by the thousands.

I think that's incredibly cool, and I find myself 5000+-year quarterbacking, rooting for them as God is with them and practically screaming their foolishness when He is not. "Look in Achan's crawlspace!" I'm screaming when I know they are headed into slaughter. "He's hiding something sinful!"

I know. It's kind of a weird thing to get into. That's just how He made me.

The thing is this, though. As I'm reading these stories and over and over again, those particular words, "The Lord was with them," I am also crying out for my Lord to be with me. Then realizing my unfaithfulness (insert any number of shortcomings here) and admitting to myself that...I've spent my life not really thinking about that.

Not really thinking about whether God is with me or not. Just assuming that He is because He said He will be, ignoring the caveat that just like His people, I have to seek Him out and submit to Him.

Did you know when God told them not to go....they didn't? When God tells me not to go somewhere, I look at Him a little cock-eyed and then get out my pom-poms. "But I'm fired up, Lord! C'mon! WE can DO THIS!"

Uhm...no. No, we can't. Because God has already said this is not what He wants to do. I'm not going to rah-rah Him into doing it with me and, to be honest and with the benefit of hindsight, I'd be better off listening to Him about this sort of thing.

It takes a significant paradigm shift to start thinking of the journey in a new way. There are so many voices competing for a say - the world says we should do it one way; family and friends yet another; the Lord a third; and somewhere in the middle of all of them, the voices of our own questions, worries, confidences, energies, and passions...which are a jumbled mess of both righteous and unrighteous understandings. Yet the only voice that promises Promise is God's.

My life makes a lot more sense when I not only hear Him above the din but choose to listen to His wisdom. It's tough. It grates against a lot of the things we have always had in our lives, at least for me.

And it's tempting to give in. To give up. You know...I'll admit it. I have not always lived a pure heart. I didn't grow up knowing this was an option, and I used the tools of my former life and worldview to their fullest. Now that I've chosen (and choose every moment) to listen to a Voice that isn't simply true but is Truth, I butt up against my former self every second. And there are a lot of places in this world slow to believe a girl can live something different. There are people and places that think this God-act is just another game, that my motives remain unpure, that I will never be more than I ever was.

It stings, but I get it. It hurts, but God is with me. And still, I cannot help but choose His Truth. It is beyond all that I could have imagined, and there's something absolutely wonderful about just living as it is. Just living Truth. Listening to the only One who truly gets a say in all of this, whose words rock my heart and comfort my troubles and cover me in peace. I'll give anything for that.

So back to this: I want to go where God is going with me. I want to live in accordance with His plan for me. I want to walk His path, His footsteps, and live in His mercy. I've lived so often in fear, wondering if God is with me and thinking He must be though I never asked. It's time to start asking, then taking those bold steps that say: Where You go, Lord, I will go. And where You say to back off, I will stay away.

Because as tempting as the greener grasses may look, anywhere that God is not with me is nowhere at all. And I'm not really into getting slaughtered.