psalms

As My Foot Slips

/ shawnheather96 / Leave a comment

This weekend I dropped one of my favorite people in the whole world off at college for her Senior year after our whole family being together for the last year and a half of Covid. It was 18 months of craziness, hardship, uncertainty, fear, anger, and loss for most of us. But for our family it was also a time of redemption of loss from when we lived overseas and had to break our family up across the world. Suddenly we were all together, living life, eating meals together, working through the hard as a unit rather than individuals going a million different ways – and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was beautiful, messy, sometimes hard, but also such a time of full circle closure. I am thankful.

But life moves on, as it does, and she is back at school. Next year our oldest gets married and moves out and our second son will go to college. Both wonderful, right things. Yet we continue the cycle of holding our kids lightly, as we were told when they were babies and we dedicated them to Him. It’s hard.

But as I drove home naming the grief of not having my daughter there when I got home, I cried. Then suddenly those simple tears became deep, gutteral groans and sobs – to the point where I almost had to pull over. Grief after grief after loss started pouring through my mind.

I thought it must be spiritual attack. I think I am pretty good at naming losses and surrendering them to healing. In fact, many of the things that were crossing my mind were things I had spent much time in the counsel of friends and in prayer about. I had seen beautiful things come from them. But as I started to rebuke this sudden attack of sadness and anger and all the emotions that roll around together in grief, I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to be quiet and listen. This wasn’t about me not being able to move on or sitting in the middle of broken, hurtful things. It wasn’t even about trying to name the good things I have seen in the midst of it all. It was simply about me sitting with my Jesus, the Savior who understand first hand all the complications that come from living on this earth.

The older I get, the more loss I experience. Yes, there are SO many good and beautiful things. But the losses are numerous. Some of them are like when the wind blows a piece of gravel and it smacks you on the leg. It stings and maybe leaves a little scratch, but you don’t think about it a lot later. But some of them have taken chunks from my heart, to the point where I feel like I am walking around with more scar tissue than good muscle some days. This world does that.

My mom and dad’s deaths. Loss of a life I loved in Kenya. Evacuation from South Sudan and loss of a long-term dream. Every time I took another child to college, knowing that life would look different from that moment on. Yet another new house. Friends who died from covid or cancer or malaria or an accident. Marriages I have watched dissolve in unrecognizable puddles around me. Loss of relationship with families that were part of my every day messy, beautiful life every time we moved.

SO many moves… Which means loss of stability. Loss of home base. Loss of security. Whoever said, “Home is where your heart is,” was not part of a military or ministry family.

How do I keep my footing when everything around me feels like it changes – or could change quickly – at any given moment and without warning?

So this morning my prayer is this:

Psalm 94:18-19

When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
    your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
    your consolation brought me joy.

Lord, as things change, as the world feels slippery and we can’t grip it anymore, would you catch my foot? Help me not to run from things and want to hide away in my own false fortress; a sense of security built by my own hands and heart but that won’t withstand the reality. Help me not to let anxiety rule when I don’t understand, or I come back to a thing I thought I had finally left behind. Help me to trust in the only One whose consolation can truly bring joy. Amen.

Listen and Receive

/ shawnheather96 / Leave a comment

I want to be the person God created me to be, not just a shell of that person.  Before I surrendered my life to Jesus and asked the Holy Spirit to live within me I was but a shadow of the person that God created me to be.  I know that I am still being sanctified, and the finished work of that will not come to fruition until I standing face to face with Him one day in Heaven – how glorious that will be!  But I believe that He has a good plan and purpose for me here on this earth, too, and often I am just “doing life” without remembering this.

My Bible is old, beat up, underlined, and highlighted.  I have had it for many years, so there are prayer requests and answers to those prayers written beside verses and on the inside of the cover.  While I love this because it is a good reminder of the way He truly does answer prayer, sometimes it makes it hard to read things with fresh, new eyes.  My mind almost thinks that if it is not already highlighted there must not be anything there that applies to me.  This week I opened my Bible up to read the Psalms and was on chapter 81. I started skimming through it since it was not highlight already, but my heart caught when I read the last few verses.  “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.  If my people would only listen to me, if Israel would only follow my ways, how quickly I would subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!  Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him, and their punishment would last forever.  But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”  (Verses 11-16)

I read and re-read this part of the passage again trying to figure out why my heart was catching each time.  What did the Spirit want me to get from this?  The Israelites were in outright rebellion- worshipping foreign gods and refusing to listen.  I am not in that place.  I have been in my life before, but in this time there is a lot of peace in my heart.

Like the hug of a parent reassuring a child that she is not in trouble, I felt the presence of God.  I knew this was not a rebuke so much as a reminder and encouragement that He knew something about me that I had forgotten – I am His and He is mine.  In that he desires to give me good things.  Often I miss out because I am simply not listening.

One of the things I had to do with my kids when they were younger (and still sometimes) is to cup my hand under their chin and make them look me in the eye and repeat to me what I just said.  We humans don’t tend to be good listeners.  We are looking at other things, thinking about a response, getting distracted by things of this world.  Sometimes we just plain rebel and say, “No!” and stick out fingers in our ears to prove that we are not listening.

My issue wasn’t outright rebellion this time, but I realized that my heart and mind are often distracted and looking for answers and peace in places other than Him.  The beginning of this lockdown phase was a welcome relief for me in some ways.  I love hosting people for dinner and having people stay in our home.  I am an extrovert, and I am really missing my people right now.  But the slower pace of the first week, and having our daughter back in country made me take a deep breath, sleep more, bake some delicious, homemade food, and have more conversations as a family. It also allowed for my heart to be still for longer periods of time (as much as possible with this ADHA brain) and dig into His word.  My prayer times were meaningful and my heart was full.

Then life started happening again.  Like all of you, I started adapting to my “new normal.”  Suddenly, as I was immersed in trying to make it all come together – work from home, school, family, church, learning new technology, etc, – I found my heart crazy and panicked.  When I had free time all I could think about was doing something that didn’t require learning something new or thinking too hard.  So Netflix became my new god, sitting in my room with headphones to block out the world became my new temple, and snacking on easy, sugar filled things became my new sacrifice.  With this practice the peace I had known was eventually used up and gone and I was doing nothing to refill it in a way that truly life-giving.  I was listening to too much noise all around around me and not able to filter out the still, small voice that was the true answer.

That the first week or two of quarantine was a gift, but it is not what real life can look like forever.  However, the peace that I had those days is also real, and a glimpse of what is to be mine forever.  When I wake up each morning and surrender my heart to him; when I get done with a stressful zoom meeting and take just a moment to surrender that stress to him; when I am frazzled because everyone needs my attention at the same time but I pause to take a breath and say, “Father, help!” – these are holy moments.  They are the times that take my ear back to listening for His voice.  When I stop and surrender my anxieties and stress to Him, He carries the load and suddenly I am lighter and able to keep doing whatever it is He has called me to do in the moment.  Everything doesn’t become perfect or sorted out, but my ability to do look at it in peace, calmness, and   (yes!) even joy becomes a reality as the Spirit flows in and through me.  Then, and only then – when my ear is poised to hear Him and my heart is ready to respond- that is when I am satisfied with the “finest of wheat and honey from the rock.”

So I ask you today – what altar have you been worshipping on?  Many of these things are not bad- I can enjoy my favorite TV show and have a chocolate chip cookie once in a while.  But when when they become my go-to and I stop listening for Him then I can’t see the amazing and miraculous things He has prepared for me.  Brothers and sisters, He wants to give you so much more than you can even imagine.  We just need to make space to hear Him and receive.