Unplugged

The things I've been doing for the past few weeks - VBS, a new full-time gig as a contractor's assistant, even the day-to-day life stuff - has been energizing me.  But beneath it all has been building this complete exhaustion that I was almost naggingly aware of and yet hardly at all noticed.  Honestly, it hasn't been a physical exhaustion.  That, I'm fairly commonly aware of and can cure with some good sleep.  This has been more of an emotional, drifting into spiritual, exhaustion that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

What I knew, in an unexpected moment of clarity Tuesday night, was that I needed a whole lot of God.  Everything of Him He had to give to me.  So I prayed for such.

That prayer wasn't enough.  It was only the tip of the iceberg.  I needed to pray.  I couldn't focus, couldn't do anything else, couldn't even manage anything mindless like a game of minesweeper or an hour of TV.  My heart was parched, and I needed to talk to my Father.  And I tried to make it all formal, but I couldn't go there.  (If you've been sneaking peeks of my new book, Prayse, know that those words are words my heart needs to hear and that's why I write them.  We have got prayer so wrong.  Me included.)  I just laid there for awhile, talking like I was talking to a friend, rambling really, out loud because there really wasn't a reason to pretend I had to whisper or just "think" about God.  I wanted to talk to Him.  I wanted to talk this out.  This building exhaustion that in the blink of an eye, I had become so suddenly and profoundly aware of.

I won't tell you what I prayed because that's not really the story.  And I don't really know.  I was just talking.  Letting my heart pour out whatever measly words it had and not confident in the moment that it was anything.  I remember having the vague thought as darkness fell that I mumbled to God (after this long, drawn-out conversation I'd been having with Him) that I promised to pray as soon as I figured out how to do so.  It was just one of those nights.

For a few moments, while I was still thinking in my heart that I needed to pray, it occurred to me that I had.  That I was.  Somehow, I felt better - not because I felt holy for praying but because my heart felt better having just taken that time, even had I never consciously understood it as prayer.  That little bit of release opened me to see a bigger picture of my exhaustion, in particular.  What was eating my heart.

I was plugged up.  There's been so much grief and agony and trauma and pain course through my life in the past couple of months, and in that moment of clarity, it all clamped down on me and I knew that's why I was exhausted.  One thing right after another right after another, and my heart was open to this dialogue with God and so I wasn't overwhelmed when I saw it all.  I just asked Him to help me trace it back.

What it was is this: it started with my dog.  Kiira.  With her seizure.  Something in the helplessness of that situation, the senseless violence I watched hold my beautiful buddy hostage, something in that burrowed into me and plugged up my heart.  The things that happened after that, though I had tried to work through them as they came, hit that plug and just built up inside me.  The grief of Harold's death. Stresses in relationships.  Another death close in the family.  The little annoying this and thats of daily life.  I was trying to push through them but they were getting trapped inside me, blocked by this little place of Kiira that I now knew needed more.  Needed grace.

All I had to do was whisper her name, and I heard her big ol' feet start sliding against the floor as she stood up and came into my bedroom to see what I wanted.  Tail wagging.  A little hop in her step.  She's my girl.  She walked in, and I looked at her and realized that in almost two months, I have not looked at her once without pain.  Without worry.  Without fear.  Without guilt.  That she had suffered, that it might happen again (it has not, as yet, thank God), that I couldn't stop it.  She walked over and nuzzled me, and I wrapped my hands around her head like she likes.  And I made myself push everything aside and just tell her I love her.  And that I forgive her.  And that I hope she forgives me.

Those few little words started breaking up that plug.  It started to release some of that exhaustion in me, not to mention an avalanche of I-thought-I-dealt-with-this-but-no's that were pent up behind it.  I know it sounds odd, at the least.  She's just a dog.  What a tiny incident.  It wasn't even her fault.  But these are the kinds of things that happen every day and sometimes, they just weave their way into our hearts without our knowing it until we're just heavy.  Burdened.  And we've got to track it back to figure out where it all started.

We've got to be willing to find grace for every moment.  Forgiveness when it seems ridiculous and unnecessary.  Kiira didn't need me to forgive her; but my heart needed that.

So I kept talking to God for awhile, one hand scruffing up my big girl's jowl, the other holding off the attention-hogging puppy who gets so direly offended if she's not the center of your world, just talking to God.  It wasn't that heavy-hearted, "I need to pray" anymore.  Just a chat.  Because I felt the release, felt myself unplugged, but wasn't ready to give Him up yet.  I just wanted to keep talking.  Just because.

There probably wasn't an Amen.  Just a sigh.  I am notoriously bad about forgetting amen...I'll sometimes add it five or ten minutes later when it suddenly occurs to me I didn't officially conclude my praying.  Oh yeah.  Amen.  Shrug.  But when my exhaustion broke, I was exhausted, so I just kind of trailed off and started thinking about the fireworks that were set to start in just a few minutes, the ones I wrote about yesterday.  (And what I'm telling you today is likely why those fireworks struck me the way they did.)  And fell asleep just a few minutes before they started, awakened by dogs to see the last. one. firework.  And laugh and thank my Father.

He knows just what I need.

Is there a place in your heart that's plugging you up?  Something that needs grace, maybe forgiveness? Is your heart burdened to pray but you don't know how?  Start talking.  He's listening, and He'll walk you through it.

Boom Boom How (can you compare)

I'm a girl who loves to worship in the dark.  A candlelit sanctuary or a night under the stars - that's where I can't help but be in awe of our universe and the God who created it.

Last week at VBS, we turned down the lights on Thursday night and sang a song of worship in this vast, dark room by the light of a few glowsticks and the little haze coming out of the ceiling lights.  Looked just like stars.  And before I knew it, I was raising a hand.

Earlier this week, of course, there was another chance for that: fireworks.  Now, I actually fell asleep five minutes before they started here in my little town (lousy daylight savings), but the dogs woke me up just before the finale.  I jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and looked out just in time to see....one firework.  One.  An ooh, but no ahh.  Then I laughed.

Because that thing hit my heart as the sound hit my ears.  Just one of those awesome off-white explosions that trails into little streaks of light falling back toward the ground with that earth-rattling boom just a few seconds delayed by the distance.  I just laughed.  Somehow, I knew my God was speaking to me.

I'm just amazed, I guess, by what He does in the darkness and the way the night sky shows His glory like the daytime cannot.  That He can bring light where we aren't seeing any.  From a light that shines far away to a million little bodies that can only reflect it.  The seeming peace and stillness, but there is this backdrop of the noises of life.  (Mostly bugs, critters.)  

In the darkness, He rumbles through our world and it carries - His presence, His voice - it carries over distance and you sort of understand where it's coming from but it's so visceral (your body feels it so strongly) that you don't even want to sort it out any more.  Then you throw in a flash of light with that - from a firework or from a bolt of lightning - and I just want to cry out - How much more incredible could you be, God?  This is You!

It is extravagance.  It is the completely unnecessary but beautiful work of bringing things onto a backdrop that seems incongruous.  Here is everything, still and at rest, circling into its cycle of night for a much-needed bit...and then here is God pouring so much wonder and beauty back out into it.  He just makes me smile.

We see things differently against the darkness than we see them in the light.  That's the nature of Creation.  It opens us up to adventure - passageways that maybe wouldn't be interesting if we saw them in the light, but the pure mystery entices us.  It opens us up to excitement - new discoveries to be made.  It opens us up to imagination - whoever walked under a crooked old tree in the daylight and mistook it for the shadowy fingers of a forest creature?  (No one.  Ever.  That's who.)  It opens us up to a new splendor of God.

Then He tops it all off with a beautiful light show.  In the simple twinkling of the stars.  Various phases of the moon.  A flash of lightning and the grace of rain.  Or even in the fireworks - extravagance in themselves (for how else could you describe an item we created exclusively for blowing up/wasting) - in the colors and the grandeur and the little streaks of wispy light that fall back toward our humble town.  With a little Boom-BOOM to go with it, a sound that carries in the darkness in a way I'm not even sure it carries int he light...and you can't help but smile, laugh a little, and raise a hand to our God.

BOOM.  BOOM.  How...can anything compare to the glory of God in the darkness?

Independence Day

Today is a national holiday in America - Independence Day.  Colloquially known as the Fourth of July (you know, in case that big word "independence" trips you up).  Across the country, people will celebrate the day 236 years ago that a few brave men declared freedom for a barely-settled territory that expanded into this vast nation we now call America.

With all of our problems here, the things we haven't figure out yet about living together, the politics we argue about in capitol buildings and living rooms across fifty states (and a handful of territories), the social inequalities we haven't balanced out, the lifestyle choices and differences of opinion that keep us conversing, debating, arguing, and often hating each other...we'll still celebrate what it is to have the freedom today in this place to be working those things out.  Because we know there are a lot of places where freedom does not reign.

Is one of those places your heart?

On this Independence Day, are you looking for a little freedom yourself?

I know, I know - it's not New Years.  This isn't the time we make resolutions.  But couldn't we?  Couldn't we take this opportunity, in the vast glory that is the summer sun (but a little too much sun this year, Lord) and the long days and the vacations and the energies that just aren't there on a cold winter's night, couldn't we take this day to resolve our bound hearts, too, and declare independence?

Freedom isn't easy.  For any of us that have known what it is to have our hearts caught in the vice grips of anything less than love, it's easier said than done.  Today, though, we have an example.  An example of men who knew it had to be done.

These men drew up a formal statement.  Pretty much the equivalent of a restraining order.  "America is our land, and your iron fist, oh king, does not rule here.  Hands off."  Then they used whatever time they had while the message crossed the ocean and back to brace themselves for battle.  Because even these men knew freedom doesn't come so easy; you have to fight for it.  They weren't so naive as to think a simple sentence - "by the way, we're free" - would hold off the powers of the English monarchy.  But they had tasted what it was to not live that way any more, and that was worth fighting for.

Before you pick the fight, you have to know what you're standing against.  You have to know what you refuse to stand any more and stand for something different.  You have to brace yourself with visions of the aftermath - what would it mean if the mighty king of England really had no say in America - and let that vision drive you.  This will hold you strong in the moments, the months, the years that seem to drag on in battle.  It will remind you what you're fighting for...and why you're willing to die for a chance to taste that.

That's how our Founding Fathers did it; that's how our Loving Father did it.  He dared to dream of a world reconciled to Himself and found us worth fighting for.  He found our freedom worth fighting for, that we could be free to love Him.  He drew up a formal statement, a notice to the powers of this world that this is His land and their iron fist does not rule here.  Hands off.  Then He nailed that proclamation to a cross so that everyone could read His Word.  And don't you know?  He's been fighting for us.  He is willing to fight - even to die - for this freedom that we could choose Him.

Still, we know our hearts are sometimes bound.  By the obvious, by the unexpected, by the grand things and the insignificant.  There are things within us and we don't feel free.  What better day than this to go after them?  What better time than now to declare our independence?

I encourage you today, amidst backyard barbecues, picnics in the park, bonfires, pools, and fireworks, to take a moment an celebrate your independence.  Granted by a piece of paper sailed across an ocean...and by a proclamation nailed to a cross.  And if there's something holding you back, take today to declare your independence.  Craft a formal statement.  Put it in your heart and eyes what you see life like without a gremlin's control of your life.  You have every right to be free; our Father says so.  Today, proclaim it.  "Spirit of [brokenness, shame, grief, anger, hate, depression, loneliness, abandonment, _______], this is a notice that this is my heart, my body, my life and your iron fist, oh wicked presence, does not rule here.  Hands off."  Taste what it is to not live that way any more.  Let yourself experience that freedom.  And know there's probably a fight coming, but let your vision fuel you for the battle.  You'll know, in just a taste, that it's absolutely worth fighting for.

And when darkness falls, head outside and blow something up.  Because that's part of what we do today, too.  Boom!  Let the glory of your independence pierce the darkness and light up the night.

Happy Fourth, America.  And Happy Independence Day.

Count to One

There's a lot of emphasis on numbers in our world.  In most businesses, I think.  It's the bottom line or the demographic reach or any other number (pardon the pun) of numbers we focus on to determine if what we're doing is a success or not.

I know there are certainly times I feel the pressure.  Times I'm trying to get something going, forge a partnership, or whatever it is with my writing in particular, only to have someone "well-established" (think: large numbers popular) ask me how many subscribers I have, how many followers or fans or likes or traffic I have.  Well-intentioned people wanting to know about my book always wonder how many copies I've sold.

These are questions I don't answer with numbers.  And won't.  I answer them with stories.  The truth is, the numbers aren't that important to me.  I know there are a great deal of people out there - "experts" let's call them - who say that if I don't focus on the numbers, I will never "make it."  I don't think that's necessarily true, and I'm basing that entirely on One Guy who made it without ever counting past one.

That Guy, of course, was Jesus.

Read the Gospel accounts, and you'll see that each story is Jesus and the one.  Jesus and the leper.  Jesus and the tax collector.  Jesus and the demon-possessed man.  You never see a recap or a recount or a tally list that says, "Jesus went to Galilee and cast out 14 demons, restored sight to 3 blind men, opened the ears of 1 deaf man, and converted 42 to follow Him."  No.  Sometimes, you see that He "healed the sick among them," but if you read it all in context, you know that this wasn't some mass prayer of healing, not some blanket action.  You know Jesus took His time with each. one.  Individually.  That's the kind of Guy He was.  (And is.)

There are other numbers in the Gospels, and you might think it's contradictory, but it's really not.  The Gospels record, to the number, how many fish came up in the net when Jesus told His fisherman to cast again.  153.  They record exactly how many containers of wine He made from water at the wedding.  An exact number, not an approximation.

Why share these numbers and not the others?  Why not count the numbers of people He'd healed and tally them up?

Because these numbers - the fish, the wine, the loaves of bread divided to feed the thousands - weren't about relationship.  They weren't about what God was doing in His restorative work for this world.  These numbers spoke to His personality, His very nature, His extravagance.  He wanted us to see how lush He pours out His blessing on His people.  These numbers were speaking about Him: who He is.  Not how He works.

The one - the leper, the tax collector, the blind man - with whom God took His time was a relationship.  The story of Christ wasn't about the numbers, then.  It was about His interaction with His people, the intimacy with which He engages His children.

He wants us to see the contrast in numbers - how beautifully extravagant and rich and fruitful He is in His nature...and how when He is with us, we are all that matters to Him.  One.

Who can argue with that kind of example?  I certainly can't.  That's why I stopped looking at numbers a long time ago and started looking at my inbox.  At my interactions.  Listening not to how many copies sold but one life at a time that my words mattered in.  One life that returns to church because of something I wrote.  One heart that cries out for God because of a few meager words, that if we're honest, I just borrowed anyway.  They're His.  And so are the other numbers.  What right do I have to count as mine what are His?

So that's that.  I will say that I peeked at the numbers this weekend (it's human nature) after my 2-day giveaway of my first book ended.  (Amazon Prime members can still download the Kindle version for free.)  And I told a few people, but not many.  I was humbled.  Yes, I cried.  It's so surreal that God would do that through me.  But it's the one I'm still concerned about, the one I still concern myself with.  The One I seek to emulate...and honor somehow with all He's given me, that which I count as blessing.  And still the number doesn't matter; I am blessed to overflowing.

Because of the One.

What Feeds You

As we work to uncover our gifts (yes, giftS - with an S), I think part of our equation is always what we seem to be pouring out into other people's lives.  We're told that our gift is for His work in the Kingdom, that He is using what He put in us to somehow bless and encourage others.  Thus, we know, when we are blessing and encouraging others, we have found our gift.

Caution: This may be draining.  And incredibly inaccurate.

Because there are people out there that we can bless and encourage without being in our gift, and they will tell us we are terribly good at what we're doing and they are so thankful for us.  Then, years go by and we find ourselves stuck in things we can do but haven't necessarily been gifted to do, and we're drained from pouring our energies into it.

This is precisely the cause of so much church burn-out.  And trust me, I know - I've been there, too.  They say (whoever they are) that in most churches, 20% of the people do 80% of the work.  And I would add that it's work that is draining them because they are capable, but not called, to do it.

It is entirely true that what God has called and gifted you to do will bless and encourage others.  But here's the second truth of our purpose that I think we leave out: whatever God has put in you uniquely to do, what He has called and gifted and purposed you for, will feed you, too.

Do you get that?  Your gift is not given for the sake of others; it's for your sake, too.  It is to bless and encourage you.  It is to draw you closer to God.  And if it's not doing that, then it's either not your gift or you're not giving it back to Him.

You know this is true, any of you who have for even a moment touched on your purpose.  It is those moments where you're just lost in time.  Where you could do this forever and not even grow tired.  Where the sun sets and you're not ready for it to set because you're not done yet.  When you walk away without a care in the world, but more - with a smile and a song of praise on your heart because that was it.  You know that was it.  That was awesome.

It's the adrenaline of your first roller-coaster ride, where you hop off and run back in line.  Let's do it again!  Let's do it again!  It is the exhilaration of your first free-fall (I'd say cliff-diving, but you're probably thinking bungee-jumping, so whatever suits your taste) and not quite being ready for the ground to be underneath you again.  It is dancing in the rain.  It is hiking the trails...and a little off the beaten path.  It is climbing the mountain.  It is spelunking the cave.  If your purpose isn't giving you the high of a grand adventure...then you have to consider you're missing something.  Because when you hit on it, you know: this is what it does in you.

As I write about purpose, I hope I'm encouraging you to start searching for yours.  But don't settle for what you can do because there are a million things out there that we can do that will only keep us so busy that we never find what we should be doing.  And I encourage you today, for a bit at least (a week, a month, whatever it takes for you) to stop asking what you're doing that's making a difference to anyone else and ask instead what you can do that fuels you.  It sounds counterintuitive and a little self-centered, maybe, but when you hit on it, you will realize it's not.

Be honest about the process.  Don't settle for shallow.  When you get to that place, that awesome adventure that is your purpose, that draws on your heart and pulls you closer to God, that blesses and encourages you, I promise that if you pour yourself into giving that back to Him, into focusing on that work, into pursuing that purpose...then it will naturally flow that you will bless and encourage others.  Then you will know you've got it.  This is it.  This is awesome.