Brace yourself

One day left before I embark on a new adventure – one I have been working towards for nearly 8 years. In His great mercy and kindness, God has given me a object lesson to guide me as he often does. He knows I am often too thick headed and he gently and steadily reminds me of his love and care. Due to a car accident 28 years ago, I will need an ankle replacement. Yes, it sucks, but that is the fact of it. A wonderful new ortho has recommended that since the procedure still quite new, I should not pursue this as an option right now. In the meantime, I have been fitted with this new orthotic, so that hopefully it will help me maintain the very slim layer of cartilage that is left in my ankle for 10 years or so until I can get the ankle replaced. It is really pretty awful in looks and in the actual wearing of it.

What shoes will I ever wear? Admittedly, I have very large feet and now we add another couple of inches to them and clown feet in the circus will be my new style. Pride aside, the most difficult part of this brace is that I can’t walk in it the way that I am used to! My normal gait and stride are severely restricted. My doctor told me to let the brace dictate the way I walk, don’t try to make it follow you. “Follow the brace” are the words he used. As I walk, I have to retrain my steps. I do have a very long, strong stride, and walk quite briskly. No more. If I follow the brace, my stride is much shorter, slower and my knee has to bend at a different time and place so that I don’t bend my ankle and it gets the support it requires. So far my entire leg is sore, my back aches and the brace is restricting and confining. Don’t get me wrong, I am not really griping about the whole thing, I am so thankful that this doctor has provided me with some hope, some relief. I know it is the best for my ankle in the long run and I know I will adjust to it, it will just take time. Here is where knowing Jesus makes life so much fun! I am leaving my job after 22 years. As of November 1, I am trusting that God will help me build a biblical counseling practice, right here out of our home, with enough financial means to be able to pay our bills and feed ourselves. The thought of it makes me shiver with terrified anticipation. I firmly and unequivocally believe that God has prepared me for this, that He has taken me to this place and that He is with me, guiding, supporting and leading. I have but one response…. follow the brace. If I think about it, it is how I got here, slowing down, adjusting, trusting, allowing God to shape and mold me. Any time in my life that I have tried to flip it and asked God to fit my plans -- rather uncomfortable consequences have occurred. While it felt constraining at the time, His ways have always far exceeded what I could have planned, given me more than I could ever hope or imagine. Psalm 25 says Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long….. Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness. I am hoping to be a regular blogger in this new season – hoping that I will be able to share how I see God at work in me and in others – hoping that I will be able to encourage others as Jesus encourages me. But for now, I am just going to follow the brace.

Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?

His day started first thing in the morning when a friend’s toilet wasn’t working. Once that was fixed, he was off to work on the church’s manse. Serving, working, helping all day. He comes home, makes dinner and is about to take a shower when he gets my call. I tell him I am stuck with a flat on the entrance ramp to the Turnpike. Here is why he is my hero…..he doesn’t sigh with exasperation; he doesn’t start cursing; he doesn’t complain that he just got home and was starving so I’d have to wait. Here’s what he said:

“Move the car off the ramp, stay inside and be safe. I’ll be there right away.”

And he was. He changed the tire, and insisted on driving the car home in case there was an issue with the tire. I know this sounds so simple, that you are thinking, that is what husbands are SUPPOSED to do. But this is not just a one time occurrence – this is my husband all day every day. He has a true servant’s heart – he is humble, generous and loving. He is my hero.

Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?

His day started first thing in the morning when a friend’s toilet wasn’t working. Once that was fixed, he was off to work on the church’s manse. Serving, working, helping all day. He comes home, makes dinner and is about to take a shower when he gets my call. I tell him I am stuck with a flat on the entrance ramp to the Turnpike. Here is why he is my hero…..he doesn’t sigh with exasperation; he doesn’t start cursing; he doesn’t complain that he just got home and was starving so I’d have to wait. Here’s what he said:

“Move the car off the ramp, stay inside and be safe. I’ll be there right away.”

And he was. He changed the tire, and insisted on driving the car home in case there was an issue with the tire. I know this sounds so simple, that you are thinking, that is what husbands are SUPPOSED to do. But this is not just a one time occurrence – this is my husband all day every day. He has a true servant’s heart – he is humble, generous and loving. He is my hero.

Guest Blogger...

Today's guest blogger: Paul to the Romans courtesy of Eugene Peterson. (Life lesson for me today: don't add to what you can't improve on - he says it much better than I...)

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.

If you preach, just preach God's Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don't take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

Amen.

God is the same

I spend a lot of time telling people how much they are loved by our Lord and Savior and try to help them know HIM better. I often say when the vertical (the relationship between you and God) is off all of our horizontals (relationships with others) are off. I believe this to be biblical – when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandments were, he responded: “Love the Lord God with your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.” Someone far smarter than me interpreted it this way (maybe David Powlison) and I have found it to be true and very practical.
What does that vertical alignment look like though and how does it get realigned? It is through knowing who God is – not who we imagine or want him to be. Since I have been trying to help others know God better, I just wanted to share what I have been (re)learning about him. God is unchanging. Since he is the same as he was yesterday, he will be the same today and the same tomorrow. That is a really big fact--we say it rather dismissively, but think about it a bit. Who do you know in your life that is consistently the same all of the time? Who isn’t in a great mood one day- sad the next, and even grumpy on another day? Ok, even if it is not daily mercurialness – our moods ebb and flow. Yet God is consistently the same….His character is not dependent on MY mood. This is really critical because in Hebrews it says that I can boldly approach the throne of grace. I don’t have to take God’s ‘spiritual temperature’ first before I enter. I don’t have to timidly tip toe my way towards him to see if he is ‘approachable’ today. It means that if something bizarre happens in my life – God is not mad at me and this new circumstance is NOT his way of getting back at me for something.
We can think this way, can’t we? We can feel as though the circumstances in our lives come from a capricious and arbitrary God – so we respond with petulance, fear and anxiety. But here is the truth – Ephesians 1:3-6 (message – thank you Eugene Peterson) says..
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
The truth is that from the beginning of time he had me in mind, and decided to adopt me into his family through Jesus – and that he took great pleasure in planning this. I love picturing God kind of giggling with delight as he mapped out my life! He wants me to enter a celebration of lavish gift giving by the hand of his beloved Son!
Today does not feel like a celebration – my best friend at work, the one that makes my job tolerable put in his retirement papers. In 3 short weeks he will be gone. What do I choose to believe? To whom will I run? What is the truth?
The truth is that all of what happens in my life is preordained by a righteous loving Father. Because I know Jesus, I am the focus of his love and that these next steps, just like the ones that came before, are part of his plan to make me whole and holy and part of his lavish love! Psalm 54 says: God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me. I am eager for the celebration to begin!

Teach your children well

Our children are more than the school systems they attend. We are our children's first and best educators. I recently attended a seminar on education in the state of New Jersey. We toured the schools in the city of Camden and witnessed first hand the atrocious conditions the teachers and students face daily.

We strategized about how to help these struggling schools, but what was far more illuminating for me (as is often the case) is how people in the seminar processed our experience and related it to their own lives. What struck me was that the people who were parents with children in school were extremely anxious about whether or not their children were receiving the best education they could.

One woman actually said that she and her husband could not wait to get out of the town they lived in once their children graduated. "My husband and I HATE this town, " she said, "we only moved here so that our kids could get a good education. As soon as they are out, we are out!" I pressed her for some details and she said that her primary concern was that there was no diversity in this town. All of the kids in town are of the same ethnic, cultural and financial background. She said, "I hate the idea that my kids think that THIS is representative of the world."

I had similar conversations with many, many other people. I found myself trying to remind people that as parents we are still the most influential humans in our children's lives. I encouraged them not to abdicate this to a school system. If "diversity" is important to you, first of all be sure you know WHY it is, but then make friends with different kinds of people and invite them to dinner and let your children get to know them. Take your children to museums and expose them to cities and different ways of thinking. Let your children participate in your service to others. Encourage your children to think critically for themselves - sit around the dinner table and talk and listen!! Don't leave the education of your children to the school systems they attend - school is not the totality of our children's education -ultimately they will be looking at us- the life we live and who we are.

“I feel different – do I look different?” she asked me. She had just returned from leave following her father’s funeral. He had been sick for nearly two years and she flew back and forth regularly between four states to care for him throughout. He decided to stop fighting and asked the doctors to stop all medications six months ago. He had enough.

“I thought I would be ready for this, but I am not. My whole world, as I knew it is different…. I feel different, I am different,” she told me. She even asked me if she looked different! I asked her to talk about her relationship with her dad, but before she did, she said something which was so profound – it really spoke to my heart. “This has changed the way I will interact with people – before I speak with them, I will think – what have they experienced today? Have they had a significant, life changing experience recently that may be affecting them? I want to be sensitive to that possibility.”

As I reflected on this I realized that we, as believers in Jesus Christ, are different. Our lives have been impacted in significant ways, because we personally experience relationship with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords on a daily basis. This certainly qualifies us as people who should be different. The question is - has this experience changed us? Do we feel different? Do we look different?

Are we sensitive to the needs of others because of our interaction with Jesus? Sadly, while it should, I will confess that in my own life - it doesn’t always. I often am more interested in what I am experiencing, struggling with and feeling than thinking about how others may be feeling while I interact with them.

Yet, Jesus calls us to more. He says to us, because I have loved you, go, therefore and love others. How can we practically apply this? Where can we get it? I am reading a couple of books by Dave Harvey right now. He points to Luke 6 where Jesus talks about extending mercy and love to those who curse us. Ouch! We understand this in theological terms, but how do we apply this when that person cuts us off in the car, or cheats us out of our due in the office? Never mind figuring out how to love them! Our basic request is often – Lord – help me not to lose it and tell them off or figure out or revenge on them! But we are called to LOVE them. We are called to be different. How?

By understanding that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. His amazing mercy extends to me, to us, the worst of sinners, demonstrated by his death on the cross. And because we have experienced his tender mercies and love – we can have loving grateful hearts and are truly DIFFERENT. And it is this difference that should be winsome to those who do not know Christ. Not on a case by case basis – we should strive to adopt this as part of our heart’s attitude. Before our interaction with others, are we open and receptive, eager to really look, listen and engage with people? Are we thinking about their needs or thinking of our own pithy response to make us look good or feel good? Have we thought about their lives? Have they recently had a disagreement with a spouse? Bad news from the doctor? Heartache with a child? The possibilities are limitless and yet we are called to give grace and mercy as we have been given.

Be different this day – spend time with your dad and come away different. And then go and be different.