Anger

When difficult circumstances arise in life we expect the overwhelming flood of emotions that follows.

Grief.

Sorrow.

A little self-pity.

But there's one emotion that sneaks up on us unexpectedly tainting the corners of our heart with a fiery red heat.

It begins with a lingering question. A lack of understanding. A why? that goes unanswered.

The nagging thought grows into an all-consuming fire and leaves us angry.

At the circumstance.

At the pain.

At God.

Before we know it, we find ourselves asking questions that few people seem willing to voice aloud.

Is it ok to be mad at God?

Are we mere humans allowed to question His goodness and mercy?

Does our anger at God make Him angry at us?

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I have been angry at God. More times than I care to admit.

I have turned my eyes toward heaven with tears of anger streaming down my face and asked God how He could possibly claim to be good while allowing the things He allows.

I have laid in my bedroom floor and had a temper tantrum that would put any three year old to shame.

And I have found that our Father -- the One who created us with emotions that rage like an uncontrollable flood in our lives -- can handle our anger.

Even when it's directed at Him.

He can take it.

And, when we are ready, He will teach us through it. He will reveal Himself to us more completely.

And we will experience, firsthand, the goodness and mercy that we doubted was there.

The Old Testament man of God, Job, went through circumstances that most of us can barely begin to imagine, losing his children, his wealth and then his health. You will hear many people say that Job never cursed God, which is true.

But if you read the book of Job, you will find that he got a little hot under the collar.

At God.

Job questioned God. He even challenged God to prove to him why he deserved the bad things that had happened to him.

Job ranted and raved.

A lot.

Then, when Job was all done.

God did something remarkable. He answered Job. He revealed Himself to a mere human.

Job sat awestruck in the presence of God. His anger was silenced. He listened. I imagine he learned a lot about God. About life. And about himself.

And, in the end, God rained good things down on Job once more.

God met Job's anger with mercy.

The same mercy that flowed from Calvary.  

Jesus bore the anger of those who spat on Him.Those who beat him. Those who finally nailed Him to a cross. And as He hung there dying with some of His final words, He begged forgiveness for them.

Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.

He does the same for us.

In our worst moments, He intercedes on our behalf. 

Forgive them Father.

God can handle our anger.

He understands our lack of understanding. He understands our humanity. And the raw emotions that sometimes get the best of us.

He will listen to us rant and rave.

And when we're ready to listen to Him, He'll reveal Himself to us and leave us speechless.

At His goodness.

At His mercy.

At His lack of anger towards us.

Moments

You know that family in your life that has had one storm after another blow through for years on end? We are that family. There are a lot of families like us out there, but this is our story.

Several years ago my husband’s grandmother Lenora died unexpectedly when a doctor made a simple mistake.

His dad, Jirden, died a little more than a year later after a very short battle with a very aggressive cancer.

His sister, Laura, found out she had cervical cancer just a few months later. The cancer was removed but returned 15 months later.

Then a couple of years after that my husband lost his mentor and cousin Bryan in a tragic accident.

And now, less than two years later, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle for Laura’s life.

There are good days, and then there are days filled with pain and sorrow and a fear of what lies ahead.

There are nights when the sleep is sweet, and there are nights when sleep barely comes and night runs into the next day, like a cloud hanging low overhead waiting to swallow us up.

There are moments when tears of joy flow over the goodness of God and the kindness of friends and family in the midst of the difficulties. And there are moments when tears of doubt flood us and we wonder how the goodness of God could lead us to such a painful path.

If God is the giver of all things good, we wonder, why does the bad come calling? The answer doesn’t always sound the way we’d like it to.

The c-word, wrapped up in a pretty teal and white ribbon, is a gift we’d rather give back. Not to anyone else, heaven forbid, but to the darkness that seems to come with it, and threatens to overwhelm us by its power.

As we look back over the past several years and mark the major losses, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the struggle that life sometimes seems.

But there are other moments peppered through these years.

Good moments.

The baptism of family member after family member at Shady Grove Baptist Church.

The moment when we gathered around Lenora’s lifeless body one last time and my faith filled husband reminded us all with a laugh that if she didn’t make it heaven, none of us stood a chance.

The story Jirden woke up from a near death experience telling about his brief visit to heaven and his living hope that he’d return one day soon.

Countless words of wisdom shared by Bryan throughout his life, that Toby relies on every day at work and at home, as he strives to always do the right thing.

And then there are all the many fits of laughter shared with a sister who refuses to allow cancer to take from her the things that are rightly hers. Like her favorite poem says, cancer will not steal her faith, her love, her friendships, or her hope.

Cancer is limited by the spirit of the one it attacks.

And Laura’s spirit is stronger than cancer.

And like Moses in the battle against Amalek, she is flanked by those willing to lift her up when her strength falters.  

So, though we may have good days and bad days – beautiful moments and the most awful moments you can imagine – we’ll try to remember to keep our chins up, our eyes on God and our arms wrapped around each other.

And when you see our strength falter, I hope you’ll lend us a hand.

Presence and Peace

As I saw the sun rise above the horizon this morning, I wondered for a moment why it was rising.

The last few days have made it seem to me as if the world should have stopped.

We just learned that my sweet, amazing, courageous, awe-inspiring, beautiful sister Laura will be fighting cancer for the third time and that the road ahead will be unbelievably difficult.

It seems to me like the world might just be spinning out of control.

But I know that it's not.

God is still in control.

The sun rose in the east this morning, at God's command, just like it does every day. I know because I watched it. I even snapped the picture above as evidence.

I've been reading in Job this week, fitting I know, and I was thinking this morning in the light of the sunrise about how God responded to Job's lamenting.

God asked him, Have you commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east?

God reminded Job that the whole world was in His capable hands.

That He commanded the morning.

And that He caused the dawn to rise in the east.

I'm certain that Job, like me, had watched the sun rise in the East on days when he thought that perhaps the world should stop spinning

I'm sure that he, like me, had mulled over things that he simply could not understand in the early morning light of day.

Life gets tough when circumstances are beyond our control.

When things happen that we just cannot understand.

But God knew that we'd have days like today, and He made a plan for them.

He wrapped up the perfect present of His presence in our lives.

And gave us the gift of peace for our hearts and minds.

God breathed onto the pages of scripture these words, In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

God doesn't promise us understanding in every situation, but He does promise us His peace, that transcends our own understanding when we turn to Him for the kind of comfort that only He can give.

When we make God our hope, and place our trust in Him.

When we present our requests to God in prayer, He promises that His peace will come to us.

Even if understanding doesn't.

An Outlook of Looking Out

The pictures above were taken within just a few minutes of each other, but the difference between the two is remarkable.

As I watched in awe that cold January morning the wind suddenly and violently blew dust across the painted sky transforming it from pastel hues of blue, pink, and yellow to a dusky orange.

I was amazed by how quickly the darkness of the dirt flying through the air overwhelmed the brilliant light of the sunrise and changed my view.

It seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.

And it reminded me of how quickly my outlook on life can change in response to the dark circumstances swirling around me.

Tragedy strikes too close to home.

Sickness attacks the ones I love.

I find myself walking in the shadow of death.

And my perspective changes with the wind.

Most often, I allow the dust of life to overwhelm my mind and taint my outlook with negativity and doubt. I find myself tumbling from a mountaintop of peace and contentment to valley of discouragement and despair in the blink of an eye.

But it doesn't always happen that way.

Sometimes the darkness twirling around me opens my eyes to the extraordinary beauty in my everyday life and I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for the simple things that I tend to take for granted.

I've noticed that when difficulities blow into my life, my perspective seems to be affected most dramatically by whether I am looking inward or outward in the midst of the storm.

When I allow the dusty circumstances of life, to block my view turning my eyes back towards myself, I get lost in a whirlwind of negativity. When my life's focus is myself, I spiral downward into a gloomy pit of bitterness and self-pity, and my outlook on life is colored with dread.

But, when I turn my eyes toward those around me weathering their own dreadful storms, I'm overwhelmed by a selfless hope and an immense desire to do all that I can do to ease their struggles. When my life's focus is the need of others, I'm filled with gratitude for the many blessings in my life, and my perspective is brightened by love.

Our outlook on life is determined by how far outward we're looking in a given moment.

The further we gaze into the world around us, the brighter our view will be.

There's beauty in life even when darkness threatens to snuff out the sunlight. And we see that beauty most clearly when we take our eyes off of ourselves and look out.

Toward loved ones dealing with worse circumstances than our own.

Toward friends enduring heartbreak that we can barely begin imagine.

Toward a world in desperate need of the love of Christ.

We can change our outlook on life in an instant, if we'll remember to look out, past ourselves, toward those around us.

 

First Love

They say that time heals all wounds, but, in relationships it seems that time has a way of opening up treacherous pitfalls beneath our feet.

The fifth year of marriage proves perilous for many couples. I, personally, learned this truth by experience.

I hear that the fifteenth is comparable. I sincerely hope not, because Toby and I are getting so very close, and I still have nightmares about our fifth anniversary.

It seems to me that as time passes by us, though the bonds of love grow deeper in so many ways, there is an inherent struggle in every relationship to hold on to the passion that initially ignited the flame of adoration in our hearts – the first love.

Itis so very easy to fall into a passionless pit of routine. Not only in our marriage, but also in our relationship with God.

In His letters to the churches, Jesus in the book of Revelation disclosed the one thing He had against the church at Ephesus....They had abandoned the love they had at first.

In response to this revelation, He encouraged the church to consider how far they had fallen and to commit again to do the things they did at first.

People talk all the time about falling in love, but the truth is that,if we're not careful to guard against it, we can fall out of love.

We run into love purposefully and passionately. Weseek out love. Because our heart's desire is to be in love.

But,when the newness of a relationship wears off, it's possible to fall head over heels out of love. Tumbling from the heady heights of romance to the despairing depths of a seemingly unremarkable relationship marked by everyday responsibilities.  

Jesus said when this happens, as it sometimes does, in any relationship, we should consider the heights from which we’ve fallen and commit to do what we did at first.

That begs the question: what do we do at first that ignites the passion of love in our relationships?

And, I think the answer is that we exercise faith.

We run headlong in to love because of our faith in the object of our affection. We trust them with our heart. We believe in them. Because they haven’t disappointed us…yet.

After a while, however, love sometimes grows old, because the person we believed in doesn’t seem to be all that we believed they were. Love fades because the person we trusted doesn’t seem to be completely worthy of our trust.

It happens in every relationship. Even in our relationship with God.

We feel betrayed, hurt, and misunderstood. Our faith crumbles down around us.

And we vow to protect ourselves. We lift our sensible head above our emotional heart, for our own good, we reason,and we become unwilling to believe or trust that person with our whole heart....again.

But that’s not the way love is meant to be lived out in our lives. Love is meant to overwhelm our heads with the fevered passion of our hearts. Love is meant to be an irresistable ocean that stretches out before us beckoning us to wade deeper and deeper into waters that rage beyond our control.  

To ensure that our love doesn’t grow stagnant in shallow waters of doubt, we must choose to trust someone even though we do not understand everything they do. We must choose to believe in someone even though we may be hurt by them…again.

We must continually wade into deeper waters so that we don’t drown in the superficialityof an insincere love.

We recapture the passion of our first love by doing what we did at first.

Exercising faith….again.


And again....


And again....


As often as it takes to keep our love like new.

Breath-taking Beauty

As I sit at my kitchen table, coffee in hand, and drink in the beauty of the early morning light bouncing off the pure white scene around me, I find myself awestruck.

A landscape that only yesterday appeared as a muddy brown and dreary mess, today, is covered by the soft white light of a freshly fallen snow.

And it is absolutely breath-taking.

Everything on the farm looks fresh and new.

The old piece of equipment that long ago outlived its usefulness and now sits half-buried and nearly forgotten in the fence row could just as easily be a new plow with freshly sharpened blades ready for the warmer days of spring.

On this marvelous morning, it’s hard to tell what ugliness lies beneath the thick sheet of wintry wonder. It’s difficult to believe that anything dark or dreary could be looming just below the surface.

I know it’s there. Winter has left its mark on the landscape around our home turning fertile fields into bleak and barren wastelands of mud and death. But for today, at least, everything looks bright white and new.

The scene reminds me of the way we must look in God’s eyes when the blood of Christ covers us and makes us clean despite the mud we’ve wallowed in throughout our lives.

No matter how dirty our sins might be. No matter how deep the darkness we’ve hidden in our hearts. The blood of Christ makes us pure white in the sight of God.

Our heavenly Father sees us through the lens of the love He poured out on Calvary. The dark stains in our lives have been erased from His vision.

We are covered in a pure white snow of love and grace.

And He is awestruck by our beauty.

God is as enraptured by our beauty as we are by the beauty that surrounds us on days like today.

He thinks we are absolutely breath-taking.

And He wants us to know it. He tells us over and over in His word. He whispers it to us every day in the sunrises and sunsets and the stunning beauty of His creation.

Our Father longs for us to see ourselves in the soft white light of freshly fallen grace. Wrapped up in the splendor of His forgiveness. Covered in the radiance of His mercy.

Oh, that we could see ourselves the way He does.

Chosen.

Accepted.

Forgiven.

Loved.

As pure and white as the scene that surrounds us today.

Because when the pure white wisdom from above falls on our hearts and minds and we see ourselves in a new light –a gentler light of mercy – we begin to walk through our lives with the confidence of beloved children.

Resting in the knowledge that God’sgrace has washed over us and made us lovely in His sight.

Assured of our Father’s love for us.

Bold in our belief that His love candrive out the darkness of the world around us and bring hope to even the most hopeless among us.

When we glimpse ourselves throughour Father’s eyes, we see the whole world in a new light.

And we become a light that illuminates the dark landscape around us with the pure white light of hope.

On behalf of the Christians everyone loves to hate

I'm pouring out my heart today on behalf of Christians.

Yes those Christians.

The Christians everyone loves to hate.

The ones, who sit in the same pew every Sunday with their perfect hair and perfect clothes and their hands folded neatly in their laps, while their eyes seemingly searching out every fault in the lives of their fellow Christians and the world around them.

The religious-minded Christians who have become modern Pharisees. Every church has a few.

Why would I stand up on behalf of these Christians, who most would argue rightly deserve every bit of hate that comes their way?

Because in our zeal to follow Christ's example of unconditional love toward the world around us, so many of us seem to have forgotten that these brothers and sisters in Christ, flawed though they may be, need that unconditional love poured out on them as well.

We have taken the easy path of love.

 

We zealously proclaim love for all mankind, but fail to love these brothers and sisters in Christ.

In truth, loving a stranger is easy. When we haven’t seen a person’s faults, up close and personal, love flows naturally from the heart of a Christ-follower.

Maintaining a loving relationship, on the other hand, with someone, who is sometimes hateful, irrational, or judgmental, is extremely difficult to do.

But, as members of the body of Christ, His church -- whether you want to be identified with these Christians or not -- that is exactly what we’re called to do.

Love.

Beyond faults.

Beyond sins.

Beyond religious and judgmental attitudes.

We are called to be members of a unified church.

And yet, with an uprising of proclaimed love for the world around us, the church, itself, seems to be falling apart at the seams.

Lovers of Christ seem to be leaving in droves.

 

Walking away in disgust of deeply ingrained religious practices that, no doubt, need to be addressed, but never will be if those of us who see through the lens of love leave congregations in a mass exodus.

If we give up on the church how are we any better than the religious-minded Christians who seem to have given up on the world around them?

We’re not.

Is our stance of loving Christ but hating Christians really any different than their failed stance of hating the sin but not the sinner?

No. It’s not.

I read recently that the church, as a whole, should change that phrase to read love the sinner, not the sin.

I whole-heartedly agree.

And while we’re at it, perhaps we could attempt to love the Christian, not their religion.

Perhaps we could attempt to love even our judgmental and harsh Christian brothers and sisters with the same passionate love that we so desire to see poured out by them on the downtrodden world around us.

Love is certainly the answer, as we all love to proclaim.

But love isn't really love if it doesn't extend to all humanity.

That includes the church. The whole church.

In our efforts to love the world around us, let’s not forget the Christians that everyone loves to hate.  

You never know. We just might warm some cold hearts.

After all, even some of the Pharisees, were changed by the love of Christ.