He Restores My Soul: Part 3

Read Part 1  |  Part 2

You know what makes me stay up at night? (Well, aside from my worst-case-scenario anxiety, desperate need for alone time, and good books.) What keeps me awake is the desire to make a difference. I want to believe that by working and reworking I can create something that changes things.

It’s a desire that is core to my personality, but it’s a desire that has also fueled my doing tendencies. It can turn that passion into frantic, required motion meant to prove and accomplish.

The chorus of the song by Sleeping At Last I quoted in part 2 says:

I, I wanna sing a song worth singing
I'll write an anthem worth repeating
I, I wanna feel the transformation
A melody of reformation

When I first heard that chorus I ached with sympathy. Yes! I know that feeling. I want so desperately to know that what I do will be worthy and worthwhile. It’s what motivates me to perfect things, to keep going when other people give up.

But in his beautiful and uncomfortable way this year, the Lord brought me back to Psalm 23 when I heard another song several weeks later. Internally the Spirit pointed directly back to the previous song while I was singing:

Let the King of my heart
Be the mountain where I run
The fountain I drink from
Oh, He is my song
Let the King of my heart
Be the shadow where I hide
The ransom for my life
Oh, He is my song

(King of My Heart)

The song that’s worth singing is Jesus. The anthem worth repeating is Jesus. The melody of reformation is Jesus.

The story isn’t really about the sheep and our clumsy adventures. The story is about the Shepherd. And what a Good Shepherd he is.

If I stick close to the Shepherd, he’ll lead me into paths of righteousness…paths that bring reformation and transformation.

The worth-earner in me is tempted to feel desperate and demotivated by this revelation. Like, what am I supposed to do now? I could literally sit and do nothing and still receive God’s love and grace. But of course, accepting unconditional love makes you want to reciprocate. In that way “doing” isn’t something that is required of me to measure up, it’s a gift I can give back. When the gift is something you know the recipient will love, it’s a joy to give—it’s restorative and replenishing.

So I’m going to keep trying to be a sheep that knows I’m loved and to follow the Shepherd and I’ll keep you posted.

He Restores My Soul: Part 2

Read Part 1

There’s a song by Sleeping At Last that says:

The list goes on forever
Of all the ways I could be better
In my mind
As if I could earn God's favor given time
Or at least "congratulations"

Now I have learned my lesson
The price of this so-called perfection
Is everything
I've spent my whole life searching desperately
To find out that grace requires nothing of me

Grace requires nothing of me. Gut punch.

As I’ve been really honest with myself, I fear that God is like every other area of my life and relationships and I need to try to be worthy, I need to have done the right thing to get his favor. And if I can’t get his full favor at least I might be able to earn a “congratulations.”

Maybe I can’t truly be loved, but I can at least be respected for a job well done and that can almost be enough, right? You know what the price of that kind of thinking is? Everything. It’s cost me relationships. It’s cost me sanity. It’s cost me peace.

This song settled in my soul and has walked me through Psalm 23:1-3 by the hand of grace. I don’t have to DO anything to receive God’s grace. I know that, but I have the hardest time really believing it. I’m working on believing it now.

The work I’m doing this year, my job as it were, is accepting. It’s a terribly vulnerable job, to just sit with arms outstretched and dare to hope that I can receive just because I am who I am and God is who he is.

I can be a stupid sheep, sitting on my wooly butt, and still have the Shepherd's love and favor. I can wander away and fall off a cliff and his opinion of me won’t change. That really makes my eye twitch.

But you know what? It’s also been a little bit delicious.

Instead of feeling like I need to “do” to walk with the Lord this year I’ve started just trying to be. I’m trying to embrace the fact that my spiritual self is not made up of a check list and progression chart. Part of finding restoration of the soul is acknowledging who God made me to be, who he delights in, and accept enough grace to just BE that.

I’ve found green pastures in late night fiction reading. I’ve found still waters in an obsessive and fascinating research project. I’ve found plenty when I’ve decided to say no. I’ve found freedom in my soul when I’ve relinquished control. I’ve been restored when I sit quietly and listen.

Grace requires nothing of me.

Read Part 3

He Restores My Soul: Part 1

For the past few years I’ve prayed for, and received, a spiritual theme for the year. Usually it’s an idea that’s crystallized before the new year, I feel like I have a handle on its potential impact and then I write about it. It feels neat and tidy and I just unpack the outline throughout the timeline.

This year, it didn’t come to me until several weeks into the year, and I’ve felt like it is a message, a work in me, that is still so much in process that I haven’t quite known what to say about it. Here we are six months later and I feel like I’m just now beginning to put words to what is happening in my soul.

I think it is a profound shift for my life. One that will take a lifetime to grow into and one that humorously has required the least “doing” of my entire life—humorously, because I am a doer. I do the heck out of things. I earn every ounce of my self-worth and relational respect by doing the right things the right way, so in some ways, I felt a little gipped out of a job. And yet, I also felt hope of relief.

This year my theme is Psalm 23:1-3: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

As a tired, over-extroverted, over-scheduled mom, the initial appeal of these verses was the imagery of rest. How amazing it sounded to lie down in cool green pastures instead of having to move a pile of laundry just to lie down in sheets that hadn’t been laundered in far too long, only to have someone yell for you to get up and wipe their butt. How refreshing it would be to be led to a source of life instead of feeling the pressure to lead everyone else in life.

A little rest, a little fantasizing about being a sheep without responsibilities and voila—my soul would be restored.

How I underestimated this year’s journey.

Read Part 2

The Joy of the Lord is your Strength

Early last year the Lord gave me the phrase "Work smarter with a heart at peace." It spoke to the season I was in of needing to prioritize life and ministry in order to survive and my desperate need to embrace the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding in the face of life's constant transitions and anxieties. I still have so far to go in these areas but the practice of using this phrase as an encouragement, rebuke, and guiding principle for the year fostered so much growth.

I didn't intentionally choose a new focus for this year, but in the past couple of months the Lord has been unmistakably speaking to me of joy and its connection to my strength for the day. 

I'm in a tough season of life for me personally: a task-oriented introvert deep in the chaos of young children and homeschooling, with a newborn arriving imminently and household and ministry responsibilities leaving a growing line of check boxes that glare at and goad me with their emptiness. 

Most days I feel like I am just surviving. I get frustrated and angry and resentful and feel so alone...and yet NEVER ALONE. Deep, pervasive joy is hard for me to imagine in the face of daily monotony and zombie exhaustion. Oh sure, there is joy in listening to my kids' laughter or seeing the Lord do a mighty work in a ministry event but the strength to meet each moment of the day with determined joy? It seems an impossible dream. And then I worry that by my example I will teach my children that following the Lord is a joyless and impossible task, and parenting is a burden best just gotten through--neither of which are the truth. 

And then one day a few weeks ago the Lord brought to mind Nehemiah 8.10 - "The joy of the Lord is your strength." I felt the words rush in and settle down through my body and into my soul and I felt desperate for the hope of it. 

Joy.

Strength.

Yes. I instantly recognized the deep need for these in my life.

And so, in the weeks that have followed--being 8 months pregnant, moving, homeschooling, mothering a challenging toddler, and stepping into new life and ministry responsibilities--I have found myself breathing this verse out as a desperate prayer and life-saving promise when I have felt too inadequate and burdened and exhausted to conquer the task at hand. It is followed quickly by the prayer, "Lord, teach me what that even means" because it is clear that I don't understand it yet.

As I meditate on this verse throughout the year I'm asking the Lord to show me what it means to live into His joy and to be able to look at the future (whether it is the hours, months, or years ahead of me) with strength and joy instead of panic and discouragement. 

I trust that He will answer my request because He is a good Father. And, so, I am going to rest in the knowledge that this isn't just one more thing I have to do this year, but something that can, and will, be poured into my weary self as I draw near to the Lord.

With that, my few precious moments alone are drawing to a close and as I get back in my van to drive back to the responsibilities of the rest of the day I am tempted to feel discouraged, but instead I will repeat "The joy of the Lord is your strength."

Amen.

____

Image from French Press Mornings

Pasta Weekend and Other Gold-Star Mom Moments

This weekend Andrew was working at a Men's Retreat, and so, it was me and Little Nut mostly on our own.  Thursday night our family went to Olive Garden because they now have a "Buy one entree and take one home" deal and, hey, we're missionaries...and I hate to cook.

I calculated that if the three of us shared two entrees on Thursday night, Nut Boy and I could share one take-home entree on Friday and one on Saturday, thereby eliminating the need to make dinner for two days!  Mmmmm....we love pasta so much we'll eat it for three days!  And that's just what we did.  I mean, of course, I microwaved some canned green beans as a side one night and even cooked some carrots the next!  And, Olive Garden provides a nice microwaveable bowl and lid to reheat the pasta, which also double nicely as plates (Nut Boy with the bowl, and I with the lid).  And that is the tale of our delicious, although not very nutritious, Pasta Weekend.

Also, having been Andrew's birthday (he's old, I mean, 35) this weekend we made the most ginormous ice cream cookie sandwiches you have ever seen.  Mainly they turned out that way because I rarely bake and overestimated the size needed for a slightly larger than normal sized cookie!  And, like any good Mom who knows the risk of salmonella and yet still feels the joys of eating cookie dough are worth the risk for her children, I allowed this...

And, all of this pasta eating and salmonella risking, was done in between copious amounts of movie watching.  That thing about TVs corroding your brain...totally a myth.  I've been fighting a cold all week and, considering it's about the only time Nut Boy will sit still and stop talking (I mean, seriously, I think he has a secret stash of coffee beans somewhere), I've had him spend more time than usual in front of the Boob Tube.  So much apparently that the other day he actually ASKED to do "School Time."  I choose to see that as if I have instilled in him a great love of learning, that in the face of watching yet another movie he chose tracing letters and doing flashcards!  He passed the test.  Me on the other hand?

And then there is Halloween.  I grew up not celebrating Halloween and never really gave it much thought until we had a kid.  I've decided that there is much freedom in Christ, and I have no moral qualms with dressing up and eating candy...we don't celebrate evil...Jesus is Lord every day in our home.  But, I have found that in this freedom I now find myself in a quandary.  The truth is, I don't really feel like expending the energy to make a costume and do one more thing...ministry and chores and other activities for the child make our days full.  So, my kid is not dressing up today, not because I believe it's wrong, but because I choose to do other things with my time.  Is that bad to say out loud?

So, let's review...

Abuse of take-out food and relying on canned veggies to provide nutrition.  Check.

Only feeling a tiny twinge of guilt as my child licks potentially life-threatening cookie dough.  Check.

Using TV to babysit my son when I'm sick or trying to get a moment of life-saving relative silence.  Check.

Depriving my kid of the childhood joys of Halloween dress-up and candy for my own sanity.  Check.

Yeah, I'm that Mom. Whose handing out the gold stars??

Work it Out

I am task-oriented and I love a good project.  Work to me, at least work that involves something I find interesting, doesn't really feel like work.  There have been seasons of ministry where I have worked from 7 in the morning until midnight on a regular basis because there were project deadlines and programs to run, and while it was a season in which I experienced tremendous burnout, it wasn't so much the long hours as the projects themselves and the baggage that went with them that wore me down. 

Needless to say, "work" can become my life very quickly.  I am energized by production.  Unfortunately, during the insane and crazy season of ministry (and the accompanying burnout) my marriage became second priority...the INTJs default, "Tasks over people!" 

At the bottom of burnout hell I realized a lot of things had to change.  I took a step back and tried to set some healthier rhythms in place, not just for me, but also for my husband.  Now we have a son, a nutty three-year-old bouncing off the walls who craves attention.  It wreaks havoc on my productivity. 

I'm currently back in a ministry setting where projects are numerous and I am getting a serious itch to be insanely productive.  I can hardly stop thinking about the To-Do list sitting on my desk...not in a bad way, but in a sick and twisted, I-can't-wait-another-second-to-go-finish-my-project way. My preferred work style is "work straight through until it's done."  But, three-year-olds don't feed themselves, and, oh my, where did our kitchen counter go under all those dishes?

So it's a constant give and take, take and give rather...take 5 projects and give 3 back.  It's hard for me to keep in mind that this is a season.  But, my zany little boy won't be running around the house saying "Mama, look at me!" forever.  I'm comfortable with being a work-aholic, but life isn't just about how productive we are.  Mostly it's about how faithful we are to steward the gifts God has given us for His glory...and the relationships He's given us are a part of that too.

I won't give up on projects, and I'm always going to push the edge of being in full-time ministry AND being a wife and mother, but for now, I need to grow comfortable with a new level of productivity, one that includes playing pointless board games from time to time and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.