New eyes for someday

Tuesday morning and I’m running late. The weight of worry takes its familiar place on my back as I skim over my mental list of prayer requests. Ugh. It’s so heavy today I don’t want to leave home and face the need I know waits for me at work.


I wring my hands as I wait for the microwave to finish heating my oatmeal. Sometimes life is just so blah I want to scream. I gripe inside and pray for more gratitude.

---But thankful or not the truth is that I can’t shake the longing for a more than figurative resurrection and new birth. I don’t want to “be healed” in a way that means I am still anxious, low, and obsessive. I don’t want to preach about freedom and be stuck watching people I love suffer one more day. In this flurry of worry I think of the verse in Romans chapter 8 that always stands out to me when I catch myself groaning for deeper freedom for all creation:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Romans 8:18-21

I so want to see this freedom—the glorious freedom of the children of God One manifest in creation. Right now we have promises. We all see miracles happen sometimes, but we all also die. We have prayed and prayed and

• he still died
• they never conceived
• she continued to suffer
• he refused to get the help he needs
• our friend just got sicker and sicker.
• we remained broken

Right now too often the miracle we long for in the moment is not the miracle we receive. So Life forces the honest soul to admit, “this is not the script I would have written.” For our faith to stand in this unpredictable and short life it must be found in a resurrecting King--- who promises that death is not our ultimate end.

I can imagine the conversations we will have with each other someday —sitting at a great party, swapping stories of how Christ intervened in history to save us:

• Peter will tell of how even after he betrayed Jesus his Rabbi took him back.
• Paul will share of the Blinding Light on the Damascus road.
• A mother will tell of her worries for a wayward son and how in desperation she turned to Christ who comforted her in her grief.
• One will tell of a life-controlling addiction and Jesus’ intervention.
• Another of growing up in church and the day she fell in love with the Savior she had been taught about all her life.
• I believe that at this table will be my sisters who still struggle in the grip of Anorexia—finally free--- telling of how the Father still received them, even after they rejected themselves.
• I believe at this table will be the women I serve as a companion for--- finally healed--- telling of how despite the inexpressible suffering they experienced, Jesus never, never, never left them.

And on and on the stories will stretch--- resurrected testimonies of God’s glory[… I get chill bumps just thinking of what it will be like.] I so want sit beside my friends who right now hurt so much and know that finally the full healing we prayed and prayed for is here. The hurting is over. We can all finally see how Jesus has the final word in the suffering that it tore us up to watch.

I find tremendous encouragement in knowing that despite all my failures my life will be among the testimonies of His power. My small, unexpected, often difficult story in light of Jesus is likewise miraculous, and glorious. I am surrendered to a process of being made new and will not be God’s first failure--- This promise is what gives me hope when life continues to detour from my girlhood dreams for sharing Christ. It may not make sense right now how small and hidden service is the way I can most fully show His love but I know I am given fully to him. So this is good—a beautiful part of whole I will understand someday.

Me on purpose

Me on purpose.

Recently I have been challenging myself to turn off the CD in my mind that constantly spins,

“You are not pretty enough. You don’t work hard enough. You don’t love God enough. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.”

These messages [in some form and degree] have come against every woman I know, and I have seen how the way a woman faces the feminine insecurity is formative--- shaping the whole course of her life. For me the messages have already threatened to destruction.

Since I first became fully aware of her at 9 years old, insecurity has been the monster on my back, the monotonous lie stuck on repeat playing every day, all day. Her whisper casts doubt on every compliment. Her lies have taken me out with depression and made me run around like a crazy woman trying to make up for all the ways I fail at life. I have tried without avail to reason with the whisper of Insecurity. I would yell back, “It’s garbage. Not true. I’m enough," but whenever I try to fight the lie she bites back—drawing blood every time. So I have found she doesn’t need a speck of truth to make me cringe under her assault,

You are worthless, lazy, ugly. Your friends are more successful. The women at the Y are more attractive. You aren’t trying hard enough… If you were better you would be thinner, you would be closer to God, you would be pregnant by now…”

So how I am refusing to engage Insecurity’s lies in my thoughts anymore? By smashing the lies.

It may seem simplistic but I trying visualization, prayer, and scripture memorization. From now on every time she whispers I am going to visualize myself smashing her CD in my mind and playing a different disk, a higher truth—the Word of God over my life:

The truth is I have spent my life chasing after God’s plan. Like my namesake, the matriarch Sarah, God has called me to a life and a world I had no grid for, and He has promised to be with me in the journey. He has made me who I am on purpose.

Here are the passages I am trying to memorize for October to root this truth in me:

John 15:16 (New American Standard Bible): "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (New American Standard Bible): 17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation 20Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Romans 8:31-39 (New American Standard Bible): 31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? 33Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; 34who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36Just as it is written,"FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED."37But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 1:3-8 (New American Standard Bible): 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him In love. 5He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight

God-stop while painting finger nails

I had a God-stop—a moment where I felt Christ pouring through me. Over the past several weeks one of the women I work with has been in severe pain. Since she is unable to say what hurts treating the cause of her pain is difficult and she feels helpless and afraid. She has periodically become very aggressive or spent hours screaming on and off at the top of her lungs.

Her behavior would be very frustrating if her eyes weren’t screaming her pain, “please make it go away.” Looking at her eyes—I feel her pain and helplessness, and any frustration in me melts into desperate prayer.

It’s hard to handle the fact that God does not just make the pain stop, but I have tried to learn to see His hand in the momentary reprieves while still praying for healing. One thing He has shown me is that He loves this woman so much, absolutely treasures her.

A few days ago Christ met us in her back hallway. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her gently blowing on her nails to help dry the polish I had just applied when I sensed the Holy Spirit speaking to my spirit,

“Look at her. She is my beloved. It is not for you to know why she suffers so, but know this: I have not abandoned her Sarah. I have given her you. Your lips are my lips gently blowing her nail polish dry. Your heart is my heart groaning prayers of intercession before the Father. Know that I will heal her.”

Then in my mind’s eye I saw Christ sitting cross-legged next to my client. Gently cradling her hand in his nail scarred palm, head bent to blow her polish dry.

All resistance in me dissolved. The humility of Christ serving her that way became my evidence that He saw her pain, His heart broke over it all too, and someday He will heal her fully. I felt permission to be as angry as He was at the pain, permission to continue begging for an intervention knowing that, despite what it looks like, God has not abandoned us in this suffering. He has come nearer to mourn and suffer with us. In the dark night of the soul He treats us with greater tenderness lifting our eyes to tomorrow. Whispering in our spirit, “hold on not every day will be like today.”