Broken

I have spent the last two weeks sick. Very sick. Not literally dying kind of sick but the I wish someone would shoot me and put me out of my misery kind of sick. Week 1 was the flu. It started on a Sunday night and pretty much wiped out the majority of the rest of the week. I took myself out of everything I had scheduled to rest and recover so that by the next week I could be back in the swing of things. Week 2 arrives and I am feeling better- still a little tired but I am re-entering life. By Wednesday I was able to shower, fix my hair, and get dressed without having to take a nap immediately after. I actually left my house and interacted with people for a large part of the day. I was feeling confident. Then Wednesday evening it hit. The stomach flu. Oh and it hit hard. I was quarantined to one corner of the living room and the downstairs bathroom in hopes the rest of my family would make it out unscathed. A good plan- an isolating plan but a good one. It was just me and the cats against the army of germs that had invaded my intestines. My assumption is the cats know they have nine lives and their curiosity about my condition was enough to warrant the possibility of sacrificing one to be witnesses to the horror that was the next 36 hours of my life. That may sound a bit dramatic but it is not. I reached a new personal low about 8 hours in - at this point I was too weak to walk from the living room to the bathroom so I sat on the bathroom floor with my head laying on the toilet seat like a pillow. If you know me you know that I detest public restrooms. I also consider my downstairs bath to be a public restroom because it is only used by guests and the only guests I actually have are teenage boys coming to visit my son. SO this is not the cleanest bathroom in my house. But I have lost all sense of pride or sanitation- I am just trying to survive this thing. Then it gets worse. As I lay there- exhausted and lifeless, one of the cats comes to check things out. It's not enough for him to circle me and paw at my lifeless body- he decides he needs a better vantage point from which to view the situation and proceeds to climb up my back and perch on my shoulder like a bird and peer over my head into the toilet. I am too weak to do anything about it. I sit there hugging the toilet with a cat (20 pounds of cat I might add) perched on my shoulder and I think "This is how I'm going to die." 

Obviously I did not die. Unfortunately I still had a full 18 hours of sickness ahead of me but I made it. And thanks to my husband's unwavering commitment to rubber gloves, clorox wipes, and lysol the rest of my family escaped my same fate. Friday I was trying to recover - I could barely eat and had no energy and I remember thinking I was just so tired of being sick. I had just been through sickness the week before and now here it was again just in a different form. And I was tired of it. I was tired of being broken. I wanted to be well. I wanted to do all the normal things we take for granted like eat and drink and walk without needing to rest. Honestly I have felt this way a lot in my spiritual life as well. I get so tired of being broken. I want to be well, to be whole. I imagine what my life would be like had I not made so many mistakes and lived out of so much sin- and it makes me sad. Sometimes angry. And ashamed. And I start to think if I feel this way, God must feel the same way only more so. I mean what could He possibly think as He looks at the life He meant for me compared to the one I have? All the mistakes and wrong turns, all the wasted opportunities, all the death and destruction I have chosen over life- how could He not be disappointed? 

I saw this the other day by Billie Mobayed- "When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful."   Aggrandize means (I had to look it up) to increase the power or status of something, to enhance the reputation of someone beyond what is justified by the facts. When the Father looks at the broken mess of my life, because of Jesus and His work on the cross, His thought is not what a disappointment I am but how He can aggrandize the damage in my life- how He can take all the broken, damaged places and fill it with the gold of His love and redemption and not just restore me to what I was before but to increase my value and my worth through the very damage I had done to myself, or maybe the damage someone else had done to me.  He doesn't give me what I deserve but what Jesus deserves. He enhances my reputation beyond what is justified by the facts of my life- my sins, my failure to love, my lack of faith- and He makes me valuable, worthy of love and honor. I don't even understand this. I don't understand this kind of love. I cannot even fathom that I am never a disappointment to the God of the Universe, the Creator of the World, the Alpha and the Omega. He stoops down to lift me up. The only response that I can have- the only response He deserves - is not for me to refuse because I know I am unworthy but to accept His beautiful gift because I know that He loves me and this is what He wants. Jesus left heaven for this, He walked the earth for this, He died for this, and He rose from the dead for this. How can I refuse an invitation like that? I can embrace my brokenness and fall into His arms as many times as it takes. He never gets tired of saving me. He never runs out of patience or mercy or resources. And one day when this life is over we will look back together not at the mistakes I made but at the beautiful rescues He offered me freely and frequently. It will be His story of saving, not my story of failing. And it will be a very, very good story. 

Substitution

My family is in full recovery mode from a month of Christmas celebration. Which in short means we are coming off 31 days of all things chocolate. When you are cutting out sugar and carbs in an effort to convince your metabolism that you really do like it and want it to keep functioning for you- you start looking for substitutions for all the delicious foods you have been eating. And here is where the problem lies.
For most foods there are suitable substitutes. But I am a sugar girl. I like sugar, I believe in sugar, I may campaign for sugar. You know the advertisements.. Brought to you by the corn industry, beef industry, etc? I may launch my own personal promo for the virtues of sugar. And the top one is there is no substitute. Please do not say stevia. I have tasted it. If there is an aftertaste - it's not sugar.
And then there are the more natural substitutes like applesauce. In brownies. No. Just no. You know how there is no crying in baseball? Well there is no fruit in brownies. It violates laws- maybe not laws of nature- but certainly laws of chocolate.

While I have come to the startling realization that I like sugar entirely too much, I have also noticed some other things. Like how much of my day I can fill with things that completely do not matter. Now our meal times are paired down to a minimalist state. The first few days of doing this- I was sad. Actually sad. Because I couldn't think about what I was going to eat or drink that day. That got me thinking. What if I didn't spend my days preoccupied by food? Or clothes? Or what my kids need? Or what my house needs? Not that there is anything wrong with thinking about and taking care of these things but I'm telling you most of us have taken it too far. If we really take an honest look at our lives- we spend our days worrying and working to provide ourselves and our families with what we need. And we don't realize it but somewhere along the way we substitute all this worry and activity and striving for Jesus. What a terrible substitution! We have been given the Prince of Peace and we trade Him in for what we can manage or think we can manage on our own.

"So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."   Matt. 6:31-33

Jesus knew it would be our tendency to run after the things we need. But see He doesn't deny that we need them. The Word says He knows that we need the things. He just knows there is a better way that is not so frenzied and chaotic. There is the Way of the Prince of Peace. His Way is always the best way, the holy way, the way of love and truth and hope. And He says we don't have to live in fear or distraction or busyness or obsession. We can live in peace. We can live in Him. So how?

I am still learning the how. I think it begins with the dailyness of Jesus. We can't stock up on Jesus like a weekly trip to Costco. He gives us what we need day by day. And we only receive it when we make room for Him- to meet with Him. To invite Him into our day and ask Him to show us on this day - how do we seek Your Kingdom? How do we receive Your provision?  And we invite Him to show us where we are substituting anything for Him.

Jesus, show us where we are filling our lives with things other than You. Teach us how to fall at Your feet and not run after the things You want to freely give us. Teach us how to bee seekers of Your kingdom and not rulers of our own small worlds. Thank you that You love to teach us and that You are the giver of all good gifts.    Amen. 

First

first. The first day of the year. The first journal entry. It's all so fresh and full of promise. But also full of unknowns. What will 2015 hold? Didn't we hold our breath as 2013 ended and 2014 began- hoping it would be full of everything the previous year was not? And now 2014 is over and we find ourself hoping and praying that the difficulties of the past year, for some of us- the past decade, are truly behind and that maybe THIS year will be better. Do this too many times and futility starts to set in. Atleast it does for me. 

As I type- my son is mad because the ESPN app is set to spider cam (??) so he can't watch replays of the Alabama game. My husband is trying to convince my youngest daughter to play Wii in a vain attempt to keep her from growing older or atleast keep himself from realizing his littlest girl is growing up. The dogs are pretending they want to go out- but I no longer believe them because I have let them in and out about 50 times in the last 2 hours. This new year is not feeling much different than the last year. The dailyness of life. What happened to the glittery promises of midnight as we rang in the new year? I am entering in to 2015 carrying the regret of a few hundred too many sugar cookies and the mind -set of all I will do differently the next 12 months. But will I really? If I could muster up the self-discipline and willpower I am hoping for this year- why did I not do it last year? Or the year before?

As I think about all these things and try to put pen to paper with a plan to be a better me- the infinite grace of God finds me in this place of futility and performance- and He speaks.

"Look at the birds, free and unfettered, careless in the care of God...And you count far more to Him than birds"       Matt 6:28  The Message

I could weep. I could literally lie down in the floor and weep. He doesn't ask for my plan for this year. He doesn't ask for my assessment of myself from last year. He calls to my heart to rest in His arms. He whispers hope to the dark places of my life. He dares me to believe Him. Will I dare to live careless in the care of my God? Can I trust Him to create and lead and heal? Or will I try to control and perform and fill with busyness another year? 

This year my prayer is to live free and unfettered, careless in the care of God. And that is all. And I ask Him to help me every time I try to pick up worry or performance- to sweetly speak and remind me how much better it can be if I will only believe.