.: for god is with us

I was getting ready to close the One-Year Bible I'm going through, again, my favorite and one that has helped me to stay rooted and connected with him especially in the midst of difficult seasons, had had a particular verse in one of today's readings that had really stood out to me.

Copied it on a couple of notecards so I could remember it, when all of a sudden these five words, the only ones underlined on the next page for tomorrow's readings, (which is rare if you know how much I underline), and there it was just hanging out there, in the midst of everything:

"for god is with us."

I saw. And it nearly stopped me dead in my tracks.

I just kept looking at those words on the page, surprised that I had never seen them in the context of that book or that story so far (the book of Isaiah), and my interest was definitely piqued.

I had no idea what the context of those words were, but I wanted to read as many versions of it as I could.

I put the bible down and picked up my phone and went to my bible app (youversion) to see more of what these words were about and the different variations of what was happening when these words were penned according to different translations.

I was floored by what I saw. These verses, (various versions of Isaiah 8:10), each one by one spoke to my heart and my life and encouraged me more than words can really begin to express.

First I looked it up in the New Living Translation (NLT):

 Next, the Amplified version (AMP), just for kicks. Sometimes I like to look up passages in this version just for a little of the flare for the dramatic, I want to know loud and clear what a passage/verse is REALLY all about:

Next, the ESV, which was the original version of the One-Year Bible I first found those five words in, but I hadn't had a chance to read the verses before it yet:

Next, the NIV:

Contemporary English Version (CEV):

And then finally, The Message:

Every. thing. about them. I just couldn't believe it, version after version, how clearly and bluntly it was declaring these words, words that spoke to me on a number of levels and about spiritual warfare and a ton of things relating to it that have been speaking to me, wow, wow, wow.

For God Is With Us.

Yes, let that be my declaration of faith, my anthem and my battlecry.
Wrote this post throughout and in-between a few things and getting back to it late tonight, writing the rest possibly another time, but for now, alas, the word and its power. 

.: tear soup | entry 1

Tear Soup, A Recipe For Healing After Loss

"THERE WAS ONCE AN OLD and somewhat wise woman whom everyone called Grandy. She just suffered a big loss in her life. Pops, her husband, suffered the same loss, but in his own way. This is the story of how Grandy faced her loss by setting out to make tear soup.

For many years the custom of making tear soup had been much forgotten. As peoples' lives became more rushed they found it much easier to pull "soup in a can" from the shelf and heat it on the stove.

But several years ago Grandy got a taste of a well-seasoned tear soup. One of her friends made it from scratch after her child died.

As soon as Grandy tasted the rich flavor of that carefully made soup, she promised herself never again to assume that quicker was better."

 - Excerpt from Tear Soup by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen

::

The last four and a half years, we have been learning how to make tear soup. It has been a season marked by winter, hardship, loss, and grief.

And also a concept called the "sacred dance of grief and joy."  I would add to that, the dances of uncertainty and peace, hope and despair, disillusionment and content, sorrow, grief and joy.

For neither of these are mutually exclusive, in fact we often experience two seemingly opposing poles at the same time. Finding that the worlds of peace and uncertainty, hope and despair, sorrow and joy, can and often do co-exist.

::

I realized that a few weeks ago. That this is what has characterized the last four and a half years since we've been dealing with the loss that my chronic illness has brought into our lives. It has been a time marked by and what I'm finding is our dance right now, our song, our story, the "sacred dance of grief and joy."

It is a dance that is at times beautiful, others heartbreaking, exhausting, a dance and a tune that gets old, one that can feel unjust, unfair, at times, one that can bring a feeling of complete and total peace, the steps and the tune is often changing, through a myriad of circumstances and situations, yet the dance is one and the same.

The tune has changed quite a bit over  the last few weeks. And I've found myself struck by its new intensity and presence. I wrote here at length about this new wave of grief, but also this excerpt below from Tear Soup captured much of my sentiments as well, particularly one aspect of my grief that I haven't felt ironically since the beginning of the illness I began dealing with four and a half years ago, now experiencing it at the beginning of a new illness that has worked its way into our lives.
 

"But eventually she ran out of things to add... (to her soup).

Grandy's arms ached and she felt stone cold and empty.

There were no words that could describe the pain she was feeling.

What's more, when she looked out the window it surprised her to see how the rest of the world was going on as usual while her world had stopped."

::

This was so how I felt and so where I was at much of the previous week and a half then I wrote this, feeling that all-to familiar feeling of when I felt as if I was again viewing life from the outside. I would peer into the worlds of real life, the worlds of social media on Facebook or Instagram, the worlds of people living and going on about life all around me, and more and more felt more alone, more puzzled and more angry that my world felt as it was standing still.

But more than anything, when I wrote that "Take Heart" post and something I am still taken aback by, is by the intensity and entirely different, unique nature of this kind of grief I am and we are currently experiencing.

An entirely new layer and experience of grief, one that feels it seems to suck the air out of the room every chance it gets. Yet, a place where the healing begins.

A healing that goes not around, but through the very center of the grief and faces it square in the face, a healing that does not take place quickly or overnight, but one that will come over time, as we learn how to make a new kind of tear soup amidst a house and a kitchen filled with smells of the previous one, leftovers in the fridge and the pot of tear soup we each are still making from that first loss.

This time, while the other burners are still going, we each were handed, whether we wanted them or not, a new big shiny pot of which to make our new tear soup.

Yet, this is a process that is anything but in vain.

Just like making soup, it cannot be rushed.

It is a sacred dance, a sacred journey,
one ordained and orchestrated, led and guided by our Father.

Who alone knows what its like to have to make tear soup, and experience heartache and loss, not once, not a couple times but again and again and again.

If there is anyone who knows what it is like to feel empty, brokenhearted, forlorn, lost, heavy-hearted, sorrowful, and with a head and a heart full of tears, it is our Abba.

One who does not merely empathize with our hardships and weaknesses, yet one who enters in and is with us through the very midst of the pain. Leading us with that of an unseen hand as we follow Him through the dark, hand in hand, knowing He alone can lead us down this healing path.

He alone knows the way and alone is faithful.
No matter how bad or how hard or how scary it gets,
all that matters is He is there.

And there is never a single step of this we will ever have to walk alone.

So we step out again, into that dance, that sacred dance of grief and joy that has become our dance, our dance and the world He would have us live and reside the last four and a half years, yet a world that will not be the same world we will eventually end up in.

For He has overcome.

The Prince of Light has and will overcome this Kingdom of Darkness.

And there will be a day when sorrow, suffering, heartache, defeat, the sting of death, loss, brokenness, illnesses, will be no more.

A day that is coming, a day that is near.
When we will make tear soup no more.

And that sacred dance, our tears will be exchanged for nothing but joy. No more grief and joy. No more sorrow and joy. No more joy in the midst of the hardship and the pain and the difficult and long seasons, but pure unending joy.

A joy that comes in the morning.

When all the suffering and sadness endured on this earth will come to an end, He will wipe away every tear, and within a moment exchange it for a glory that will far surpass it all.

A day that is coming, a Day that is near.

"For He who has promised 

is faithful."

.: the sacred dance of grief and joy

this is our story; this is our song.
:: photo courtesy of andrew abajian 

.: it is still winter

I loved today's talk at church.

(Not the talk of this original sermon series art used above, this photo just represents what the majority of this post is about there was no way I could not use it.)

But alas, back to today's message. It was on God's intended purposes for marriage and how many of those are lost today, but the parts that struck us the most was when they talked about seasons of marriage, going through spring, summer, fall, and winter and what each of those can represent, occur in the lives of our marriages.

I was finally given words to this thing I have been feeling and trying to articulate and express ever since my most recent discharge from the hospital as few weeks ago due to a recent and unexpected setback with my health.

I have been trying to find words to describe the grief, describe the joy, describe the heaviness, describe the moments where things have felt lighter, describe the deep sadness, describe the sense of heartache and loss that at times has been overpowering, describe the sense of whatever it is that we have been walking through this last month and six days. 

An induction into a new season of grief within a current, ongoing season of grief. 

Finally, today, words were given to give voice to that which has been eating me alive.

::

For the last four and a half years, we've been in winter.

Let me back up, for the second half of today's talk on marriage, Kay Warren joined Rick on stage as they went through four different seasons no marriage will be a stranger to.

Real briefly, as they explained them in the overview:

SPRINGTIME... represents those seasons of busy-ness, where you're running non-stop, the two of you seeing each other is more like ships passing in the night, where it feels like life can't slow down.

SUMMER... as they described, tends to be short in our household... "summer is when things are going well, summer is represented in those seasons where it's easy, it's great, everything is going well, etc."

FALL... is when things change. It's kinda messy, just like the leaves changing and falling to the ground, fall represents those seasons in your marriage when things are changing and it's about how will you adjust or not adjust to those changes.

WINTER... and then winter comes. seasons of winter in your marriage are times of bleak sadness, times of deep loss, we are still in winter, Kay says, and we don't know how long it will last (referencing the loss of their son, Matthew).

::

Just hearing about seasons today did something to my heart I can't even articulate.

What I found funny was that for whatever reason, as I've been wrestling with trying to write about and articulate the grief and this new season and the sheer just emotional exhaustion I have felt comparable to how I was even just a month and a half ago or two months ago before this most recent setback. 

For whatever reason yesterday, after running into a photo from our honeymoon four years ago in Colorado on Friday that I wouldn't get out of my mind, something within me had me search for the rest of them. The rest of a set of pictures I hadn't looked at or wanted to re-visit in years.

There is something about my honeymoon pictures that now is comforting. 

Newly, strangely, oddly comforting as I haven't been able to look, let alone post them for nearly four years.

Some of that has been I just hadn't thought about it or had time, was already backlogged on a million other pictures.

But the other part of it are all the emotions that come up whenever we think about our honeymoon and that period of time, a time that felt like that of a cruel joke, I felt better than I had since I first got sick that March 2010 (this was June 2010), on my wedding day by some sheer miracle and then that continued into our honeymoon.

Maybe this really IS over, let ourselves believe, it almost felt too good to be true. 

My body and my capacity seemed it was slowly being restored. Maybe this really would be a fresh start and beginning of a new season for us not only as newlyweds, but two souls already weary from a medical journey they did not choose.

Only for us to come back from our honeymoon and without so much of a moment's notice, find the tentacles of this disease come reaching for us before our car even hit the parking lot. Grief, hardship, and another seemly unending chapter of this season with this dreadful disease was just beginning. Just when we'd thought maybe we were at the end.

When I look back at our honeymoon, much like how I view other periods of our lives the last four and a half years where we've been provided moments of relief, moments that no matter how long or how short or whatever form they would come, this one specifically being our week-long honeymoon, they were moments of respite and relief we so desperately needed. 

Those moments and pockets of relief, like someone coming and puncturing tiny holes in a balloon;

letting out some of the air and we feel like ahhh, we can breathe a little, we can breathe right now...

Similar moments, those moments, beginning with this picture, the start of a new season of winter in our lives, yet one of the moments of summer and spring in the midst of this new current winter.

Then just the next day, another moment of respite at our first Mizzou Alumni event here in California.

While we are living in winter, He alone is the One who provides for us light in this present, seemingly unending darkness, streams of life and living water in the desert, and hope. Hope, in the midst of desolation and despair. 

He provides, like manna from heaven and streams breaking forth in the desert, times of relief.

We all need relief. 

Those pictures were some of those moments. This picture taken in the midst of the beginning of our new season of winter within our winter, were precious moments above the ground and the trenches of the reality of life here in the wilderness and the desert, moments were time seemed to stand still, and for just those moments, everything was okay, everything was at peace, it was well.

I think it's anything but ironic the level of deep joy we were experiencing in this photo and finally being together after a week apart through some of our worst nightmares.

This was when grief, sadness, hardship, and came into our lives in the midst of our already winter, bringing a storm with a strength that left us literally flat on our backs, completely knocked off our feet and overwhelmed by its intensity, a winter storm that came with the strength and power of the current winter we'd already learned to live in.

Moving to California has been part of our respite.

Just like the temperatures here make for a mild "winter," it's still winter in that our problems and my illness and the myriads of ways this still affects our lives, etc have not gone away, but we've been provided a bit of relief from the bitterness of the cold.

I don't mean this literally, but figuratively, its only coincidence that temperature-wise this is true as well.

::

STILL IN THE DESERT | I remember numerous times feeling I thought we were finally, FINALLY, entering the promise land, only to find, we are still, we still have miles, years stretching before us of wandering through the wilderness of the desert.

But we have been here once before.

It's like circling around a trail, thinking you're getting back to where you began, meaning you were done and you'd now get to go home or move on to the next thing and then instead of coming up again with the entrance, you come across a clearing that is cloaked in total, utter darkness, it's ten times colder here than it was in some of the darkest coldest nights you recall in the wilderness.

 And worst of all, the trail and path that you thought you were coming in close on that you thought was near the beginning and thus your exit, you are met with a sign that says "Now entering Death Valley," temperatures, living conditions: bleak, and instead of being close to the finish, you find you have hundreds, thousands more miles to go.

Yet all you know and see is how much this is like the beginning, as you step into that forest once again, entirely blinded and stunned by the harshness of the winds and the bitter cold cutting through the last bit of exposed skin on your face not wrapped up in etc etc

Knowing you've been that place before, yet things are only just beginning.

A week in right. travel separate paths then finally reunited again, it was still winter, it was still scary, we were still shook up, but the events of the last week have broken, striped and changed us. being united again felt like Christmas.

It didn't matter the temperature, it didn't matter the circumstances or the nightmares of the last week we'd both been through.

All that mattered is that finally, we were together.

And we weren't alone.
And sometimes that is all you need.

That night was a gift of springtime and summer.
As are times we go to the beach.
As are times the nice weather offers a bit of relief, one less thing to worry about, have to suffer, deal with, he's taken out the variable of weather...

But, it is still, winter.

Our honeymoon was what we hoped, the beginning of a new season with my health.

I felt tricked, I felt amazing on my wedding day, on my honeymoon, slowly beginning to let our earned skepticism guard down, maybe, just maybe what the doctors were saying this time was true. maybe this thing really IS over and just like the most recent doctor had said, this should clear up in 6-8 weeks.

Only to be met with this evil monster, grief, and all its companions on our doorstep the minute we came back.

Our dating period seems like a dream.
Yet I'm so glad we had that.

I'm so glad we had a taste of life in the context of our relationship and marriage, where things aren't always as hard as they are now, as they've been the last four and a half years living with chronic illness in our home. 

Today as Kay was praying, my eyes filled with tears as i was thinking of the joy and things we experienced in our short dating period that were only supposed to continue into our engagement and our first few years of marriage, yet a bliss and a newness and a spirit of celebrating, a season of summer and spring, a season of rejoicing that we got to experience amidst the hardship and grief but never without it.

Today my heart was reminded of the ways He's done this in the past and made me start a new prayer and resolve to see how He will, in this, in the context of the last four and a half years, begin/continue to restore what the locusts have eaten.

::

We longed to be like "normal" couples.

To get to experience the feeling of being newlyweds, while our experience was catapulted to that of an elderly couple, as many of our counselors and mentors and physicians would echo, with me being completely unable to hardly move, let alone be out of the house for more than 15-30 minutes at a time, unable to be on my feet longer than 10 minutes without getting dizzy, unable to drive.

Or go for a walk, like a normal couple, but my body couldn't make it down the street, let alone back.

Instead of newlyweds, we were living the lives of an elderly couple where one of the spouses is now caretaker.

Going through as my counselor would tell me and help me process repeatedly, how many of the things we were dealing with and going through were things that married couples typically experience towards the END of their marriages, yet here we were, having to deal with it in the beginning and in the context of a new marriage.

Just like this image of a tree for Saddleback's "50 Days of Transformation" series from the beginning of the year, while it has still been winter, there have been periods, moments, days, afternoons, sometimes weeks of summer/spring as depicted by the half of the tree to the right. Yet, notice how it is the same, not a different tree.

Just the tree in a different season or aspect within a particular season.
And somehow just seeing and hearing about this today at church, this reality of seasons that have taken on new meaning for us in some of the first and most formative years of our marriage, today, hearing about these seasons especially from those experiencing a winter of their own, reminded me that nothing is wasted, these times and seasons, as difficult as they are to live and walk and survive through as I find myself feeling now, these seasons never are intended to last forever.

We are just passing through.

::

The reality is we both know, believe it or not as this last setback was and is still hard to believe, it is still winter.

Yet, ever since listening to the message and running into photos from some of those different seasons we've been in , everything from our honeymoon to our moving out to California, my heart was ignited with a hope, a hope in this present darkness that nothing in this world can ever take away.

My mind was soon flooded with images and hopes and dreams and desires,

of how my God will restore what the locusts have eaten, of how He plans to continue to use and redeem the pain, of all He has done and will continue to do,

this God, who has anything but forsaken us, nor forsaken me.
this God who enters into every single season and hardship and joy and pain,
who is present, who is faithful.

::

For whatever reason, for the first time just looking and posting pics from my honeymoon has been healing for me. I no longer feel the intense feelings of hurt, lament, loss, and betrayal those images and memories would once bring. Anger, hurt, loss, lament, feeling completely and utterly betrayed by the One who allowed us to experience such respite, only to come home from our honeymoon feeling tricked, tired, but ready for a new stage in my battle with chronic illness, where I could just start to get better on my own.

Yet, now I look at them and there is a much different set of lens at which they're being filtered and processed through. 

I no longer feel hurt, betrayal, or disappointment from God who I felt was leading us in another direction, I see the very hand and presence and faithfulness of God, of a God who is present in our suffering and in our weakness, of a God who never ever abandons His children, no matter how hard the winter gets.

A God who does more than merely sympathize and emphasize, but who enters into our pain. In a way more real than anything on this earth we have ever experienced nor imagined, this God who is coming, this God who has come to restore, reclaim, and redeem life.

Life as it was intended to be, not life as we know it.
A God who is coming back to reclaim Eden.

This God who is truly a God who "laughs when we laugh, and cries when we weep."

One who does anything but sit idly by when His children, His beloved are suffering, this God who takes us by the hand and gently whispers time and time and time again to our hurting, feeble, and broken souls,

"I will carry you."
Through and in every season.

.: children of the light

I can't get over those four words: children of the light. I'll be writing more on the significance of those words to me these last few weeks and a time in which I've been given an entirely new mental image of the Kingdom of God, heaven, hell, light, darkness, a new heaven, a new earth, His glory waiting to be revealed, yet the two poles between light and darkness, day and night and its meaning and symblosim have never been more real to me.

Grateful to be called to be part of the community of my brothers and sisters all around me and around the world, living and fighting for the Kingdom. We are a vast and mighty army, our work is not unseen, we are children of the Light. Chosen , Empowered by God. Chosen, fought for, and dearly loved by He who is our Light in this present darkness.

We are not alone and our fighting and hopes are not in vain. Soon will come a day when within a moment, within a flash, we will be taken to an entirely new place, a place our hearts alone will recognize and within a moment, all our pain, all our suffering, all our teams, all our hardship we endured here on this earth, will be sucked up into this moment, a moment that alone undoes years of pain, suffering, heartache and loss. A moment in which we are brought to this wide open place where we are in His presence and find our hearts are fully satisfied. For we are a family and an army, a people set apart, His children of the light.

::

"For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don't belong to darkness and night." [1 thessalonians 5:5, NLT]


" 'The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light.' " [luke 16:8, NLT]


" 'Put your trust in the light while there is still time; then you will become children of the light.' After saying these things, Jesus went away and was hidden from them." [john 12:36, NLT]

:: photo courtesy of jimmie presley during his time in sudan with ben lewton

.: faces of sudan, I

"Esther, 16, with her parents, was abducted for four years and forced to be the wife of the fifth most senior member in the LRA. For three of those years she ate and lived with LRA leader Joseph Kony."

:: photo and words by freelance photographer jimmie presley during his time in sudan.

.: faces of sudan

Got up this morning with a lot on my heart. A lot that I couldn't wait to even stay in bed another minute longer, something was calling, awakening my soul. Raising my heart from its slumber.

Side note, I was just reminded of this quote as I was typing a while ago, about how crazy it is in the times we find ourselves most broken are the times we find ourselves most alive.

"To be alive is to be broken... we are never more alive to life than when it hurts."

But alas, as I was saying, as I sit here feeling exhausted, yet I can't go back to sleep having experienced yet another encounter with Him that I cannot deny. I am reminded that the days and the time are short. And so because of this, I write.

And decide to let go of my shame and insecurities and trust Him.

I came on Facebook a bit ago in Ben's account so I could look up one of his old buddies from Samaritan's Purse (SP), one of his buddies during his time out there with SP. I have had a phrase and set of words, and a verse that I haven't been able to get out of my mind the last few weeks, got up this morning with the resolve to do a bit of research on it and was floored by what I saw.

I needed a photo, a way to illustrate and communicate the message of these verses, this saying and phrase that have almost become inextricably linked with my heart, part of the new ways in which I commune with, experience, and encounter God.

For whatever reason, God put Jimmie on my heart. He's also a fellow Missouri School of Journalism grad, he majored in photojournalism, and his pictures are just out of control.

Ben showed me a bunch of them when we were dating and then into the first few months of our engagement and then marriage, yet I haven't looked at them for a while and was glad to have found him on there.

The photo quality is lower than usual because he posted many of these in Sudan with limited data, internet and computer access, so he had to make the pictures small and it gets distorted a bit.

Anyway, getting back to this post. I needed something specific, a photo that could most accurately articulate what I see and feels when I think of this verse and set of words. I was remembering some pics of Jimmie's latter half of his time in Sudan, long after Ben and some of their other team members had returned to the states.

I ran into something entirely different than the post I was searching for images for, yet something that continued to stir and move my heart.

Ben and I share many things in common, one being: our love for Africa and the beautiful people who call that beloved continent Home.

 ::

I featured some of these pics on my blog in the past, but never the stories. Here are some of the faces and stories of Sudan, captured by Freelance Photographer, Jimmie Presley:

"I interviewed these people photographed today on how LRA attacks in their villages changed their lives. One girl was abducted for four years and forced to be the wife of the fifth most senior soldier in the LRA. She witnessed continual murders of abducted children and adults attempting to escape or refusing to kill as ...part of their initiation. She was also continually beaten.

One woman fought off an LRA soldier after her two daughters were beaten to death. She now takes care of three of the four children of those daughters. One grandchild was beaten and left for dead but survived. However, the child later died from those injuries. The only reason she figures God kept her alive during the attack is so she could now take care of her grandchildren.

Another woman's husband was shot by the LRA near her and her daughter. He survived the initial attack but died on the way for help. And the young boy's father was also killed during an LRA attack. All of them now live in Maridi town for fear the LRA will return and because there is no military or police protection in their villages."

:: Photo and words in quotation by Jimmie Presley

{ my heart needs what beauty speaks }

Okay, this just straight up ministered to my heart it's not even right.

Still one of the most breathtaking routines (for me anyway) and dance that still continues to move me.

Wow. Pure piece of art.

.: dance speaks

And holy cow, totally had forgotten about this routine I just ran into after watching that other routine on youtube. You've got to be kidding me. Forgot about this dance and this is what made me fall in love with Caitlynn early that season on SYTYCD. Homegirl killed it up. Holy cow. This just made my heart so happy.

Also, this makes me love and appreciate Sonya Tayeh so, so much. Crazy, beautiful choreographer and artist that woman is. 

And while we're on the subject of throwbacks, currently watching this one too. Seeing all the dancers from that season made me want to look up this dance, mostly just to watch Melanie. Gotta keep it real.

.: a heavy heart to carry

sometimes dance can truly fulfill a volume of words better than anything else i know. where i have no words, this dance gives me thousands.

.: brave

Okay, so this song is amazing and everything, but at about halfway through, 3 minutes in, or if you want to give yourself a little lead room, I sometimes fast forward to about 2:40 in just to give myself some time before it really gets real.

Anthem and battlecry, this song, this refrain, in so many ways and for so many reasons. I can't.

::

.: cause you make me brave - you make me brave
YOU CALL ME OUT BEYOND THE SHORE INTO THE WAVES

.: you make me brave - you make me brave
NO FEAR CAN HINDER NOW THE LOVE THAT MADE A WAY

.: you make me brave - you make me brave
YOU CALL ME OUT BEYOND THE SHORE INTO THE WAVES

.: yes, you make me brave - you make me brave
NO FEAR CAN HINDER NOW THE PROMISES YOU'VE MADE

::

oh, you make me BRAVE, you make me BRAVE
you call me out BEYOND the SHORE into the WAVES

you make brave, you make me brave
no FEAR can HINDER NOW the PROMISES you've MADE

::

.: worship

our hearts were made for worship.

i'm hoping, no, i'm actually pretty certain that in heaven my dreams of being a worship leader will come into play. i can't tell you how much despite the tiny little fact that i can't really sing, oh, the passion and heart is there.

maybe its because i love my little jesus worship jam sessions and get my hillsong on as if i really could do something with this voice coming out of my mouth like i know something.

in heaven, i'll get to be like kari jobe. worship to my hearts content AND have it sound good.

for now, my singing/worship leading/experiencing is confined to that behind closed doors, the eyes of any public including sometimes my husband, yet there's something deep within me that i can't deny in these times as i am overwhelmed with tonight as we speak as i haven't been able to stop listening to or playing "You Make Me Brave" by Bethel.

i'm so glad mere gave me this cd. yet another worship cd that has just hit the spot. been a godsend and an answer to prayer in ways she will never know in this life, the timing and the content, always so what only the lord knew i needed/would soon need.

all of this to say, regardless of our actually singing ability, what i love is we're all called and made to worship.

my soul is taken to an entirely new place where i can belt it out cause i'm singing to my King and nothing else matters.

a place our soul alone needs and can dwell, find peace, nourishment, and rest.

yes, we were made to worship.
our hearts were made to sing thy grace.

:: photo courtesy of the interwebs

.: father

 

Another song I ran into today from Hillsong United's "Aftermath" album, "Father." Another anthem of today.

.: take heart

 

Today was one of those days in which the grief was heavier than the joy. Heavier than in the last couple of days, yet what struck me the most is being so surprised by not only its appearance, its consistency, strength, and power.

"Crashing waves of grief." 

One of my dear friends and mentors coined this term during the beginning of her season of hardship with illness and its affects on her family, stating in a blog post those moments where this tidal wave of grief can catch you unaware, come crashing to the surface of your reality where there is nothing within you that can keep it at bay.

I remember hearing one of my old pastors say, grief has to be dealt with, we have to process the grief as it comes.

I didn't know how true those words would be, but I'm finding more and more the longer I am in this current season of hardship and grief, the importance of this call.

I'm an avoider. To a T. If I could keep grief and all its furry little friends at bay, my life would be much different now and the last several years.

But like the strength of the waves in the ocean, the ones and the times in which I am standing there with my feet seemingly firmly planted in the sand, in the water, at any moment, without so much of a moment's notice, those crashing waves can come. The kind that threaten to sweep over you, carry you completely away.

See I believe it is this precisely that we avoid pain, grief, dealing with the two at all costs. Or crying. I've felt and I've heard before an unwillingness to cry, for fears that if one starts, one may not be able to stop.

The same can be said of pain, grief. Oftentimes we don't want to go there, we don't want to deal with it because we're afraid if we begin to re-live and re-visit that pain, we will never be okay again.

Yet, what I've found is unlike with the ocean where you can see the waves and the tides coming, grief can come knocking on your doorstep, no grief doesn't knock, grief barges in without any announcement or warning, blowing through our homes and very existence and leaving in its wake that which we now know and recognize as life as we now know it.

Life in which the sacred dance of grief and joy is now our current reality, life amidst and within the tensions of joy and grief, peace and uncertainty, hope and despair, a life lived amidst the poles of sorrow, heartache, and rejoicing, life as we never knew nor imagined it before.

Grief doesn't knock, it crashes in.
Today, I was surprised by the length of its stay.

It arrived last night.
I was thinking it would be gone by morning.

Yet all day I couldn't shake the sadness nor the heaviness I felt.
Everything was feeling just a little too real.

The reality is while I've spent the last few weeks largely not living in the pain cycle of this current source of grief, it is as if the last two days all of those aspects of my current reality are now hitting me.

I was in this euphoria and place where it felt grief wouldn't affect me this time.
I plan/hope to write about this soon, but I've encountered God as I never have seen nor perceived nor known him before. And since then life has never been the same.

I was given a completely new mental image of who God is, how He feels about us, how He wants to relate with us, things like heaven, a new heaven, a new earth, the kingdom of God, so many of these things seemingly once known, I have come to see in a new light.

I pray, I pray, I pray I will be able to articulate them soon.
Right now, I'm just starting at the only place I know how.

Where I am right now.

A day in which grief is present; strong and mighty.
A day in which I wish that I'd wake up and this would all be over.
A day in which I can't wait to be Home with my Father in heaven, where I can't wait for all that awaits me in my true Home.

A day in which I lament and cry out, begin to feel the weight of all that has happened, all that will never be the same.

A day in which I long and I dream of a world with no heartache, sickness, separation or pain, a world, life as He also intended it, for as one of my mentors always says, "Our hearts were never meant to experience death," sickness, illness, separation, etc.

"Death, sickness, they were never a part of God's plan."

We must grieve. When the waves come.

No matter how much we fear or they will sweep over us, there is so much we miss, so much Him and who He is we miss when we don't allow Him to sit with us in our suffering, in our hardship and grief.

He does not fix, He does not scold. He does not criticize, He does not judge.

If there is anything the ups and downs and trials of he last several years and now looking back at years of hardship before then, I have come to find that as Matt Rogers says in "When Answers Aren't Enough,"

"Our God is a God who laughs when we laugh, and cries when we weep."

No other words describe this God I have encountered in the midst of some of my deepest pain, no other words describe the heart of a Father whose heart breaks when it sees the hearts of their children breaking.

He doesn't sit idly by. He doesn't push us away from that place, that place of vulnerability and pain, but deeper into it, knowing that journey and that journey alone will lead to our healing.

He enters in the midst of our grief, with a voice like no other, sits, weeps, laments, cries out and comforts and soothes the hearts of His beloved children by reminding and urging them to take heart; 

for He has defeated the night, He has overcome.

::

I don't know exactly why I decided to look up this song again today, a song I remember hearing when we were visiting a number of churches last fall.

But it's not an accident or coincidence this song was on my heart this morning and that I spent a number of time looking for just the right version that fit the song I kept hearing in my heart.

This song pierced my heart today. Was like/is like balm and water to my soul in ways I don't have to but wish I could explain.

So powerful, especially the bridge I'll share below. Words that ignited and planted seeds of hope within my broken and hurting heart.

All I know is He is with me.
He is with me, He is with us, and He is faithful.
He has overcome.

He is so much bigger, so much greater than all our suffering and hardship and crap and pain we have to deal with in this world.

I was given a glimpse into His heart and like I mentioned, have had a huge shift in how I see and view this God I already thought I knew and loved, these words could not resonate deeper nor be more representative of the truth of who He truly is.

I love how this part of the song is like a battlecry and anthem.
He has overcome.

::

All our troubles
And all our tears
God our hope
He has overcome

All our failure
And all our fear
God our love
He has overcome

All our heartache
And all our pain
God our healer
He has overcome

All our burdens
And all our shame
God our freedom
He has overcome

God our justice
God our grace
God our freedom
He has overcome

God our refuge
God our strength
God is with us
He has overcome 

::

I noticed this one of the million times listening to the song today, yet the majority of the times I was listening to it, I was working on other things on my computer so I was listening to, not also watching the video. But again, for whatever reason, I turned to the video at one particular moment and saw this verse and it was one that became one of several battlecries during the first couple years of my illness that I spent at home. To see it in the midst of this song, I have no words.

God, our Hope, He has overcome.

::

My salvation and honor depend on God

He is my mighty rock, my refuge,

Trust in him at all times, O people,

Pour out your hearts to him, 

For God is our refuge

:: psalm 62:7-8