Sorry I'm Not Sorry

A few years ago I heard Colin Powell describe what it’s like to visit hospitals full of recovering soldiers who’ve lost an arm, a leg or sometimes both.  He said, “I never say to them: ‘I’m sorry that this happened to you.’  These men don’t want pity and misery—they want to talk about their battles.  So the first thing I ask is always ‘Were you a good soldier?’  That’s the perfect opportunity for them to talk about their battle.”

Profound.

Today a sweet, sweet friend of mine told me that her heart is completely broken.  Knowing her circumstances, I believe it.  The Lord put her into the fire two months ago, and last weekend He unexpectedly put her into a whole different kind of fire.

Everything in me wanted to respond: “My sweet friend, I’m so sorry!  I see that this is extremely painful, I hate that you’re going through pain and I wish it were a different way.”

But I see four things are true here:  The Lord is in control.  He has my friend in His arms.  He uses suffering to forge immaculate character.  And she is already trusting Him in a radical way.

Certainly it’s comforting if she knows that when she hurts, I hurt.  But I don’t want to empathize to the point of leading her to lament what God is doing in her life, even (especially) the sharp turns that He takes.  So maybe instead of offering her my pity, it’s more helpful to offer her our Jesus, who is far FAR more compassionate than I can be or even understand.

Tough times are often paired with spiritual battles.  I don’t want to be a fellow soldier who comforts my friend on a physical and emotional level, yet works against her in the spiritual battle that’s still in the thick of fighting.  I want to hear how the battle is going and help point her to Jesus who is our physical, emotional and spiritual Savior.

Stars in the Night

Earlier this February, a riot exploded between two drug cartels inside of a prison in Monterrey, Northern Mexico.  They grabbed homemade weapons and after it was all over, 49 inmates were killed.

The first riot sparked a second.  This time it wasn't between the drug cartels, but between the family members of inmates and the prison itself.  They surrounded the building, threw rocks at the gates and even created human bridges around cars to keep employees from leaving the parking lot.  The prison hadn't announced who'd been killed, and the people were desperate to know if their family member inside was alright.

In the midst of the heartbreak of this news report, seeing the families' love has stuck with me.  Even in one of the darkest situations on earth, a riot in a prison, love extends there.  Love ties us with inseparable bonds to someone else no matter where they go.

One frantic mother told a reporter "there are children in there" desperate to hear if her daughter was still alive.  Whether she means "my child is in there" or "my daughter's inside and under 18", it's clear that she doesn't see the people inside as inmates, she sees them as people who have mothers and fathers.

It's incredible that the drug cartel divide didn't seem to divide the family crowd.  Surely there were members of both sides in the crowd and they all knew it.  Instead they literally joined to hold hands to unite under one goal.

There's so much darkness all around us that it's scary to open my eyes and look around.  I don't know why the Lord allowed this story to unfold with 49 deaths, or why a tornado killed 3 people yesterday, or why 32 Virginia Tech students were killed at random in 2007.  So much darkness.  I can't see the right way to think or react to the utter brokenness, and I'm stumbling in the dark.

But in the midst of that black sky, the Lord seems to intermingle the darkness with love.  Love--pushing people to unite with enemies, forgive shooters, or rebuild a stranger's home.  Each time love inspires an action, it's like a star hung in that black sky.  The Lord doesn't leave us in the dark.  He gives us a host of stars to help us find our way through the night.

Our Rhythm

THE RHYTHM OF OUR LIVES

Day 1: Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for man.
Day 2: I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.
Day 3: The Lord is my strength!  He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights.
Day 4: With my God I can leap over a wall.
Day 5: As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart.
Day 6: Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

Day 7: CEASE striving and know that the Lord is God.


And repeat.

The Lightmaker's Gift

The Lightmaker had a Son.  He loved his Son so much he gave him light.

The Son loved his Father and so was honored to get this gift.  The light shone on everyone around.  As people marveled at the brightness, the Son told the story over and over about how it was a gift from his Father.  The more he told the story, the bigger and brighter the light became.

Then the Son fell in love.  His bride captured his heart.  Marked with the same generosity from his Father, the Son gave the light to her, the woman he loved.  Now she shines with beautiful radiance because of his gift.  The Son and his bride are always together now in the light, watching it grow as they tell everyone the story of his Father’s incredible gift.

Jesus said, "The glory that You, Father, have given Me I have given to them...”  John 17:22a

20 Tips to Change a Person's Life

1. Never allow yourself to complain, even about the weather.
2. Find a tree you like and spend 15 minutes a day watching it grow.
3. When you first wake up in the morning, surrender your day to God.
4. Sit down with a cup of coffee and some paper at the beginning of each week.  By praying and brainstorming with your schedule, answer these questions “What’s the best way to spend my time?  What should my pace be each week?”  Then once you have a good sense of those answers, start adjusting your life accordingly.
5. Modest is hottest.
6. When making a decision, try to take the longview; think years down the road, not minutes.
7. Keep all your prayer requests for yourself and for other people in one place.
8. Establish a Sabbath day for you to rest and guard it like a hawk.
9. Study the Bible systematically all the way through.  If it gets boring, keep reading.  You’ll be so glad you did.
10. Try showering with the lights off.
11. Think of the 10 closest people in your life.  Now think of 3 ways to bless each of those people.  Next spend the next month following through on those blessings, one a day.
12. Don’t buy cheap jeans.
13. Pray big big prayers.
14. At the end of the day, write down your favorite part about that day in a favorite things journal.
15. Fight hard to build deep and rich friendships with your siblings.
16. Befriend the person who is the most different from you.
17. Every time you walk through a doorway, pray.
18. Hold your future with an open hand.  It won’t be what you’re expecting.
19. Stay really really close with your mom.
20. Memorize as much Scripture as humanly possible.

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the Stable Still Astonish by Leslie Leyland Fields

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw--dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.

Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: "Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and the earth
Be born here, in this place"?

Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fowler rooms
Of our hearts
And says, "Yes,
Let the God of Heaven and Earth
Be born here--
In this place."

Courage to Fall Down

I'm reading a novel called The Winter Garden about a woman named Meredith in her 40's.  In the midst of a cold relationship with her mom and a distant season with her husband Jeff, her father dies.  The first half of the book walks us through how she processes that loss.  

Unfortunately, Meredith doesn't grieve well.  Instead of letting the pain and sadness flow through her, she dams it up by running to productivity as a distraction.  When Jeff leans in to comfort her, she brushes him aside (this was agonizing to read since my husband is named Jeff too) and cleans the house.  When she feels the waves of sadness approaching, she frantically finds something new to fix and organize.  Dishes, running the family business, packing, running--all these chores are her safe haven from grief.

This goes on for months and Meredith is still completely blind to how she's refusing to grieve.  Things have gotten worse.  After being ignored and rejected for over 6 months, Jeff separates from her and stays somewhere else.  Before he leaves, he asks her one last time, "Do you even love me anymore?" and she brushes him away again with a newfound coldness.  She becomes a sort of terror to be around.  Her lens has darkened and now it seems that no one is doing enough for her.  She resents her family and coworkers for leaving so much to be fixed and an unending amount of work to go behind and do.  But her mind is really playing a trick on her because she desperately needs the work.  Whenever it ends, that's when the sadness comes that she can't give into.

Thinking about this makes me cringe inside with nausea.  It all started for her when she chose to run away instead of to fall down with courage and let the sadness wash through her.  And the more often she chose to run, the blinder and colder and more cowardly she became.

I see a seed of this tendency to run to productivity in my heart too.

Last night after dinner, my wonderful husband and I were talking about something that was starting to get really hard for me to hear and I was starting to cry.  After a pitifully short time, I gave into the urge that being so close to this conversation and holding his hand was too stifling.  Then my heart was relieved to remember that there were dishes that needed to be done.  "Getting work done and serving like that would make me feel better about myself" I thought.  So away I went right in the middle of the tough conversation, surely leaving Jeff really confused.  But the Lord is so good to me.  When I got on the second dish, the Lord or the memory of the nausea from that book came back to me and I heard a whisper that I was being a coward.  I needed to have the courage to fall down.

So I came back to where my man was and pretty much immediately started crying in that way where you just hate having other people around.  But the Lord used it!  He shined His light into that conversation in a new way from that point on, and inspired both of us with great ideas.  The Lord didn't leave me fallen down--He helped me back up to my feet.  Now I don't have this giant pressure I'm holding back.  He helped the sadness to wash through me and now it's out of me.

I want to scream inside thinking through what could happen in my life were I to let that seed of cowardice grow up in me.  This is why I need the Lord not every hour, but every moment.

Thank You for how You're helping me, Lord.  Please don't ever stop. 

Fear is a Chain

"I prayed to the Lord and He answered me.  He freed me from all my fears."  Psalm 34:4

Fear makes a life small.  Fear is a chain wrapped around an idea.  And once set, the chains tend to grow and affect bigger and bigger sections of your life until you're so confined that life is little more than a heartbeat.

The Lord sees into our hearts.  He sees our chains and loves to break them for us.  Fear easily overpowers us, but it's no match for the Lord's light.  It must be so gratifying for the Lord when He gets to break fear's hold and set us free.

Do you see fear in your life?  Don't settle.  Follow David's example.  Pray to the Lord and then listen for Him to answer you.  Punishing yourself (or someone else) by letting fear linger is not a decision inspired by the Lord.  Root it out as quickly as you can.  

Pesky Distractions

Although he's still in a suit, the man with the clear rimmed glasses filed away his tie hours ago.  His salt and pepper hair is ruffled, showing that it's been a long day.  One more flight till he's home.  He got to the correct gate a half hour before boarding, so he sat down to run through his emails.  As he jumped through the hoops for wifi, a flicker out the window showed the plane attaching to the extending jet bridge.  For a hair of a second, he envisioned himself as the driver maneuvering that massive engine.  'Imagine the horsepower,' he thought.  'How much maneuverability would I really have with such small wheels?  I wonder...' but then came a firm yet almost imperceptible "No" in his head and immediately his mind jumped tracks back to his email.  

The overpowering "No" guarding his attention span enables this man to focus in his life on what he wants instead of what he experiences.  Cutting his imagination off at will means that he can walk a linear road and be a linear person.   Smart.  Totally necessary for any kind of focus.

I've noticed lately that those hair of a second moments seem to be growing dimmer in my life.  And all the sudden I want them back.  I want the pesky distractions.  I've let my "No" grow into too much of a bully.

Now I'm on the alert searching for those random flashes of imagination in my life.  And when they come, I want to feed them.  What you feed grows.  After all, the Lord created me to be a human being not a machine, and that wasn't an accident.

And who knows what those spotty flashes can grow into?  I honestly don't know, but maybe one day it'll grow to be a steady blink flashing like a camera on the Lord's beauty.

Me vs. God

In the latest Rocky movie called Creed, Rocky is training his greatest rival’s son Adonis.  As they’re going through the grueling conditioning, at one point there’s a powerful scene in front of a mirror.  Rocky told him: "You see this guy right here [in the mirror], he will be your toughest opponent.  That's true inside the ring and that's true in life."  

Months later as a rookie, Adonis is matched to fight Ricky Conlan, the #1 heavyweight champion of the world.  After 10 out of 12 violent rounds, both fighters are bleeding and completely exhausted as they take a 30 second break.  In his corner of the ring while medics drain blood off his face, Rocky reminds him: “Don’t look at Conlan!  It’s you against you, Doni.  You’re your biggest obstacle.  You can beat this!”

Man, so inspiring.  It encourages me to own up to problems myself instead of blaming other people or uncontrollable circumstances.  So good.  

I think Rocky would say that you’re fighting against yourself your whole life.  As I’ve thought about it more deeply for myself, it’s a pretty big let down.  Deep down I know that I’m not that tough or that muscly on the inside or the outside.  I’m not a great fighter.  But then in the middle of my disappointment, a beautiful, beautiful thought has whispered in:  “It’s not me vs. me in my life.  Now that I have Jesus, it’s me vs. the Lord.”  I find my Rocky-sprinting-to-the-top-of-the-stairs moments not by mastering myself, but by letting God master me.  

So when I’m up against something unbeatable and it’s the 10th round with pain everywhere, I can remember what Rocky said and then add this new truth:  Don’t look at the opponent—its me against God and God can beat this.  God is ultimately the One I’m struggling and wrestling against and He gives me the strength to fight.   

The Nutcracker Masterpiece

Stretching limbs
Tightened strings
Dust in the air
Endless run throughs
Frantic practicing
Directed prayers
Unbroken focus
Feeling the time slip
Wishing for more
Deep breaths
Reassuring glances
An orchestra in tune
Antsy stage managers
Adjusting costumes
Stepping into place
Perfect positioning
Feeling the fire inside.

On the other side of the curtain
A crowd wiggling their coats off
Finding their seats
Whispering excitement
Picture taking
Settling in
Feeling the excitement
Deep breaths
Eyes are big
Trying to absorb it all
Waiting for the music to start
The lights to fall
And the curtain to raise
Ready to lose themselves in beauty
Feeling the fire inside.