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Doing the Beautiful

/ amylynw / 2 Comments

Between the lines… what really happens?  More than I can write about.  I want these writings to be something my children can look back on and see… love… laugh… learn… remember.  This month has been full to the brim with adventures, excitement, ordinary happenings and trying ordeals.  Some days have felt full.  Others have felt more like everything has broken all around me and what was once beautiful is being spilled onto the floor and wasted.  But more on that later.

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Sometimes I feel like I’m looking in a mirror when I glance up at this girl.  She’s eye-level with me now.  When did this happen?

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Sometimes I am looking in the mirror.  Yes, I was rather grossed out to see there was enough dried-on toothpaste flung onto our bathroom mirror for someone to play tic-tac-toe on it.  Yes, I took a picture.  Because I know this aberration will not be seen when these kids have flown the coop and I have all day long to polish my bathroom mirrors.  That is what I’ll be doing, right?

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This guy’s blue eyes fill a special place in my heart.  They are the first to open in the morning.  They are tender with tears when he misses his little sister visiting Grandma.

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Way back on January 5th, we were woken up with rustling feet and excited voices.  Big sister pulled everyone’s signatures and proudly presented this card to us.  Then littlest sister proceeded to eat the breakfast I was served in bed.  It was a special morning, marking eleven years married to the love of my life.

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Before the leg was hurt, everyone enjoyed watching Daddy crank out some moves on his blades.

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Don’t be fooled by the princess helmet, polka-dot pants and Mary Jane shoes underneath those plastic fisher price wheels.

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This girl can bust out some moves of her own!

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Sometimes I have helpers in the kitchen.  Sometimes an egg beater covered in vanilla pudding is the trick to stopping the evening-blues that tend to hit sweet two-year-old girls.

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Often there are hand stands, flips, break-dances, and other movements thumping the floor.

January 2013

After our December journeys, our van really did look that bad.  Not a speck of shine.  Since we had exactly enough money for a car-wash, we treated our van to a little pampering.  I’m not sure who was more excited: the kids or I.  Betty was in awe and when we exited the wash and kept saying, Again!  Again!

January 20131

Five days a week, there is school.  I relish the one-on-one times.  Jack is like an airplane who has stopped its taxi only to get faster until its airborne.  He is flying over obstacles, and getting better and better at sticking to a hard task until it’s finished.  The new camouflage overalls given to him recently have been a huge hit.

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Other spaces in my day find more messes.  More brokenness.  More being spilled out.  Sometimes I react like Jesus’ disciples did to the woman who broke a very expensive jar of perfume with which to anoint Jesus’ head:  Why this waste, Lord?  The time spent cleaning up, making beautiful, or saving for something special.  Then, disaster, messiness, shattered glass.  What’s the point?

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I hear Jesus speak in return to my disgust, my wondering, my anger.  You have done a good work for me…  You have done what you could.

Jesus never wastes trials.  Our perspective is so temporal.  It sees the shards.  He sees the end.

The ultimate brokenness was for you and for me.  He hung, perfect and sinless, bleeding and broken on a wooden cross.  More pain than shattered glass or ruined hopes.  In His brokenness, He crushed through the worst barrier separating us from God: sin.  While his mother wept and wondered at this loss, this waste of a perfect life… God saw the end.  He saw what we get to see now!  Resurrection power poured out on all who believe.  Forgiveness of sins.  Eternal life.  All because of brokenness.

Nothing we are going through is a waste.  He redeems, sweeps up broken pieces, restores, heals, forgives, and makes beautiful that which we thought was defective.  He turns what we think is worthless into something of unimaginable value.

So I will keep on doing what is before me.  What I can do.  I will give Him my best, my cracked, empty self.  Jesus says when we do this, we have done a beautiful thing for Him. (Mark 14:6)

ER Date

/ amylynw / 2 Comments

Please, God, just let us stay at home tonight, I kept praying.  Matthew went to bed at 8 o’clock, looking feverish and limping into bed.  A two-week-old gash on his leg changed from a sore that looked like it was healing, to an angry, swollen, sore leg.  Infection was swiftly making its home in his blood, taking up residence where it has no right to belong.  So, here we sit in Hallway Bed A.  Emergencies all around us, requiring us to take a hallway bed.

Thank you, Lord for his leg.  In a different century, that might not be.

We see how frail our bodies are.  How quickly a small trip up can lead to more serious consequences.  It was just a wooden box.  It was just a little wound.   How can it wreak such havoc?  One thing leads to another.

We see people we know.  A friend of theirs rushed here by ambulance because of an overdose.  One choice ravages a life.  One thing leads to another.

The red creeps past the black marker.

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It’s been awhile now.  Antibiotics are surging into his bloodstream.  Picking a fight with the nasty bad guys we can’t see.  The red stops creeping.

Fear collides with peace.  We will keep our eyes on You.  

Going home for the rest of the night.  We’ve had fun on our ER date.  It’s been awhile since we had one of those.  Prayers all over the globe were answered on our behalf in a lavished-on grace-full way.  Home tonight.  We eat popcorn in our bed, fully aware that God is good.

We will keep our eyes on You.

The Quality of Endurance

/ amylynw / 4 Comments

Twenty-three minutes later, I’m drenched in sweat.  My second cross-fit workout is in the books.  My new coach, long-time friend, and husband of ten years, is planning out daily workouts for me to do.  I was terrified of the burpees, but did all 45 of them, in addition to the other things on my list.  I was afraid of what people would think when they saw a crazed mother in a bright orange shirt, running around the block yet again.  But I did it anyway, and it feels good… now.

That wasn’t the only tough thing to swallow today.  This morning Matthew went to his ENT doctor to see what’s going on inside his ears and nose.  He’s been having a wicked ear infection, related to the other issues in his sinuses, brought about by Wegener’s disease.  The news wasn’t exactly good.  For a few years he’s had a hole in his septum, which has stayed the same, never getting worse.  Today, however, the doc said it is considerably bigger, and Matthew will be needing reconstructive surgery within the year to repair the damage.  What this looks like, exactly, we don’t know yet.  He said they will probably use a part of his rib!  It is all a lot of new stuff to take in and think about.  We have had our tears.  Not necessarily tears of discouragement, as much as feeling worn out with it all.  It’s like a race that you know isn’t over, but this particular loop is just super tiring.  More medicine.  More surgery.  No improvement.  It’s a vicious cycle.  It’s amazing how such a tiny part of his body can literally be eating away at itself, even though the rest of his body is in excellent physical shape.

When troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  These muscles in my body don’t have a chance at growing unless they are put under some serious pain and suffering.  I will never endure more than a walk around the block unless I subject myself to two blocks, and then more.  In the same way, when our faith is tested, our endurance to hold on, grows.  Our Heavenly Father is not just concerned with the end result.  He’s very in tune with the process of getting there.  A process which doesn’t always make sense to us.  But we trust Him and do another set of burpees, so to speak.  Because we want to be like Jesus.  He set the example very high, of what true endurance through trial is like.  He trusted His Father, and so must we.  As we relax into His strong arms, there is little room for anger.

As Matthew prayed today, “We are not children of a poor man.”  No, our God is very rich.  Tonight we choose to believe His promises, and we choose to sing:

…Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes

Bless the Lord oh my soul
Oh my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I worship Your holy name

You’re rich in love and You’re slow to anger
Your name is great and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness I will keep on singing
10,000 reasons for my heart to find

Bless the Lord oh my soul
Oh my soul
Worship his holy name
Sing like never before
Oh my soul
I worship your holy name

(-Matt Redman, 10,000 Reasons)

 

222,222

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Two-hundred-twenty-two-thousand-two-hundred-and-twenty-two.  Wow.  Our incredible van recently pulled out the cool mileage of 222,222 on the odometer.  It’s been an “Ebenezer” to us, reminding us that, thus far the Lord has helped us. (1 Samuel 7:12)  We’ve never named it before, but maybe it’s time.  It failed inspection yesterday, which I find both reassuring and faith-building.  Count it pure joy, we’re told.  It’s reassuring that God is still in control and that He hasn’t changed.  Our faith grows when we’re faced with trials of different kinds.  This particular trial comes on the heels of some recent study and thoughts I’ve had on God’s love.

So often we think of God’s love as a tidy package in perfect wrapping, tied with a bow.  I just finished reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  My heart feathers have been ruffled in a good way.  I’ve been thinking a lot about God’s crazy love.  In Ephesians, Paul prayed that we would know that love now.  How can we know this love that surpasses knowledge?  I think one of the first ways is to stop putting our own definitions and expectations on God’s love.  Stop equating God’s love with blessing, ease, and provision.  God promises to always love us, but He didn’t promise that we would be free from pain, sickness, heartache, trials, and even death.  No, He rather promises that these things won’t separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39)  There is no aspect of God’s love that promises you peace, safety, and posperity.  When we’re faced with trials of every kind, these things should test our faith and in turn increase our knowledge of God’s love.  We are such emotional creatures.  If God allows us to suffer, we think He has stopped loving us.  Our mindset in this culture is to eliminate all difficulty, pain and discomfort.  I’m not saying we should all switch our water-heaters off or start walking everywhere.  I’m not actually saying anything, except that we need to examine ourselves to see if we’ve placed such a high priority on safety and comfort at the expense of reliance and trust in God.

Complacency and ease are often the very things which wedge our hearts farther from a true knowledge of Him and His love.  When we face really hard things, they either break us or make us.  I hope and pray that my faith in an unchageable God will grow stronger through fire.

Ebenzer.  Thus far the Lord has helped us.  I am persuaded.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A Host of Ordinary

/ amylynw / 4 Comments

“If we were never depressed, we would not be alive.  If we were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness and exaltation.”  I think depression is one of those things that is both never talked of, or spoken of too much.  It is debilitating, but it is also used as a crutch and a homey little corner to hang out in while the world keeps marching past.  I’ve been in both places.  It is comforting to know that depression is in fact confirming that I’m alive.  I am not something material, I am someone with a soul.  I have been silent on the topic for the most part, thinking that if I admit that I’ve been depressed then that equates having lost my faith in God.  Not true!  I have also used depression as a crutch.  Not peeling out of my pajamas, not showering, not eating correctly, basically nursing this depression in my heart in order to feel something.  If I feel like a failure, then at least I feel like something.  Those are depressing words, and they’re words I’ve believed.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah had just come off a very enormous high.  God showed Himself so powerful.  Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal, prayed until it rained, and then the power of God came upon him so that he ran 17 miles from Mt Carmel to Jezreel, arriving ahead of Ahab’s chariot.  After all these incredible happenings, he became afraid of a threat from Queen Jezebel and ran for his life, about 90 miles away.  Then he left his servant and ran one more day into the wilderness alone, before collapsing into a bitter state of depression.  Elijah?  The same guy who “prayed earnestly that it would not rain for 3 years and it did not rain”?  The same guy who again “prayed earnestly that it would rain and it rained”?  The Bible says he was a man just like us.  He was alive.  He felt highs, he felt lows.  That week he pretty much went from the highest high, to the lowest low.  He wanted to die.

What did God tell him to do then?  “Here, do something great for me and you’ll snap out of it.”  Nope.  God told him to get up and eat.  Simple, right?  Well, if you’re anything like me, those simple instructions from the Lord are the ones that are often the hardest to do.  I’d rather do something that looks good on the outside, or maybe even go to a Bible study to make myself feel better.  The antidote for depression is obeying what God is telling us to do.  “Get up,” might be the first step.  “Get dressed,” might be step two.  “Splash some water on your face,” might be step three.  It’s one step in front of the other.  It is ordinary, non-spectacular acts of obedience that meet depression where it rears its ugly head.

Every day God inspires us to do the ordinary.  I see and hear it all. day. long.  SURELY there is more to motherhood than another poopy diaper, or dirty bowl, or broken plate, or teary naptime, or sleepless night, or messy room.  Surely there is more to my life than the host of ordinary things that pepper my life each day.  But God is in them.  He inspires them to happen each day.  He is the God of the ordinary and spectacular.  Every once in awhile we might have a Mt. Carmel experience, but generally speaking, our life is more like a drought or a run through a desert.  How awesome it is when out of the depression comes a gentle voice encouraging us to “get up and eat.”  He always provides what we need.  He didn’t tell Elijah to eat without first putting the food right there beside him.

There is no excuse for me not to get dressed… I have clothes.  There is no excuse for me not to shower… I have running water.  There is no excuse for me not to exercise… I have all my faculties.  There is no excuse for me not to eat… I have food.  There is no excuse for me to eat too much… I have self-control.  There is no excuse for me not to do every single one of the things depression tells me are impossible to do.  When we do what God’s Spirit simply tells us to do, depression is gone.  However, because we’re still alive, it will always come lurking.  May you be encouraged to fight this horrible beast with the most ordinary, God-inspired tasks that He puts in your life each day.

Seventy-Three

/ amylynw / 3 Comments

If I waited until things got perfect around here to write, this blog would end right here and now.  Lately I’ve been on the edge of a huge deep ravine into which I  felt a bit like I’m slipping.  Then the Wonderful Counselor brought this Psalm to my mind.  It reminds me that I’m not the first one in history to think these thoughts.  He also offers a solution to these downward spiraling emotions.  My feet had almost slipped.  I had nearly lost my foothold.

It’s so easy to wish for more.   For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

The latest bloodwork and CT scan shows that Matthew’s sinuses are still being a pain and he will have to have another infusion in the near future.  At times I feel like They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.  They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. 

But then I remember that  They say, “How would God know?  Does the Most High know anything?”  And I am blessed to know that He DOES.

But I’m still doubtful and compare myself to others.  People who seem like they have it all together with their laundry piles, bank accounts, child-raising, meal-planning, body type and choice of vehicle.  When I stay in this place, though, it’s a scary, slippery place to be.  I have to get out of here.

When I tried to understand all this,  it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God;

That sanctuary often becomes the place where I stop and stand on the outskirts.  All of a sudden I notice the muddy shoes, the messy hair, the worn out clothes on my not-perfect body.  So many times I walk away when I’m just one step away from entering His presence.  I let doubt overtake the truth.  I’m not good enough, I believe.  What I’m really saying is that Jesus isn’t enough.

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.  When I realize my error and take in a little bit more of the depth of Christ’s love that has clothed me in perfection… I step inside His sanctuary.  The surroundings are always different.  I used to imagine that the ideal place to meet with God was on a sunny window seat with fluffed pillows and the perfect cup of tea in hand.  If I wait for that, though, I will forever stand on the outskirts of God’s presence.  Right now it’s in the middle of our house with car noises in the background and the smell of baking banana bread wafting through the air.  There is noise, so often noise, in the sanctuary.  That is when I excuse myself because I can’t possibly be in the presence of the God of Heaven.  He can only be where perfect peace and quiet exist… not clutter and mess and unbelieveably loud decibles.  When I think that way, I never live in His presence.  I slip into behaving like He’s not around, and I hurt my kids and disgust myself.  The heart of the sanctuary can be quiet, when everything around me is loud.  I’m learning.

Yet I am always with you;  you hold me by my right hand.  Hold it tighter, please.  Don’t let me forget.  Keep me from slipping over that edge.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.  Not the best thing earth can offer compares with the peace that passes understanding.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  

Those who are far from you will perish;  you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.  But as for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;  I will tell of all your deeds.  I will not pretend that my life is perfectly put together.  But I can confidently say that when I live in His presence, it is a safe place to be.  Safe from discontent, despair, and doubt.  I WILL tell you about the great things He’s done for me.  I will keep on telling His deeds until I have no more breath to speak.