Preparing A Place.

Soft linens cover the mattress.  Folded blankets of knitted patterns stack in piles.  Hair bows clipped to ribbon on shutters; verses hang like fresh laundry from twine.  Pink polka dots and floral bunches stamp femininity on a closet of little clothes.  Diapers are layered in drawers, books fill baskets, and frames prop empty for pictures.

Preparing a place.

Each little detail is thought through, each nail perfectly placed in the wall, each dress dotted over and laundered, and each chair sat in for size.

Preparing a place.

As a mother-in-waiting, there is much intention in preparing a place.  Prayers, details, planning.  So many hours of foreseeing the final presentation, then awaiting the use of the space.  It's a preparation of the place as well as a preparation of the heart.

As a mother prepares for the arrival of her child, so God also does for us. Jesus spoke the words, "In my Father's house there are many rooms... I go there to prepare a place for you"  (John 14:2).  How beautiful to think of him preparing and waiting and nesting for his chosen, his beloved.  How encouraging to know he too is in a season of waiting in patient yet anxious anticipation for the arrival of his child.  He is preparing a place.

There is communion with God even in this task, even in this waiting, even in this hope.  Even in preparing a place.

Fifty-Five.

Today is my mother's birthday.  Today is the day, five years ago, I handed her a letter, and in it, handed her my deepest heart, consumed with how much I loved her and how absolutely thankful I was that she was my mom, my role-model, my Christ-guide, and my friend.

So on this day, five years later, I post her letter once again.  As a tribute to her, and what she means to me.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For Mom, as you turn fifty ~

After three different card stores, sections from birthday to mother to fifty years, there was still no card that came even adequate to put words and texture to the legacy that your fifty years offers.  So instead, after scrolling their words and reviewing the pretty pictures on the covers, I thought I would put words to it myself, in the simplest form, in story.

I sat down at the retreat this weekend, enamored by the beautiful women of Crossroads and found myself flustered, wondering what I would have to offer them, and wishing I could almost shrink in the back.  But then, a woman came up to me and said, “I remember you from the last retreat, last fall.”

I looked at her blankly, rummaging my mind for a recollection, a name, anything to try and place her.  But instead, all I could present was a blank, polite smile.

But she stopped and continued, grabbing my arm.  “I remember you because of the story you told about your mother.”

And then it clicked – last fall, gathered around a table, discussing motherhood, that I shared about the woman you were.

This is not an uncommon intercession with people I know.  Surely, they remember me, but more often than not, they also remember you.  Not because they have met you, but because of the stories I have told about you, the pride I hold in my eyes when I think of you, and the gift I know I am giving when I share the way you live.

I share it often.  The way you work and talk and pray with Aunt Mil, the way you work with care to make a house a home, the way you tend flowers and give them away to bring beauty to people’s lives.  The way you send mail and packages, and did for me for five years straight.  The way you put faith and family first.  The way you and dad display your relationship.

I share these stories with people. 

At wedding showers, I am often asked to give a word of advice… and I steal yours and dads: Date your spouse.  The legacy you both have given your children is a gift we all hold.  I share your stories of Mom’s Mystery Trips, serving at the KCC Café,  lighting candles at the dinner table, sharing Bible Studies and coffee dates, making home a place of peace rather than argument, trips you planned and brought us joy through, and how you held your Bible to your chest when you heard of your parents. 

Even just this week I was talking to a cousin about marriage and suggested she talk with you, because you and dad have been so faithful and committed.  Funny thing is, she already knew.  She didn’t need my words, because she already saw both you & dad live your love so strongly that she had called you herself.

Your legacy in these fifty years is your life.  You live to shine to others and we see your light. 

I leave you with one more story.  This week you turn fifty.  And this week, your life will live as a testimony in one more home.  

On my women’s retreat, the speaker talked about women being the presence of the Holy Spirit in their homes.  Afterward, we gathered in small groups - a collection of strangers piled together to work and love as women for the weekend.  At the end of the small group session, I paused and took a breath and said, “I actually have a story to share to those of you who are moms.  Now, I know my parents aren’t perfect, but the legacy my mom left in our home still sticks with me today and I share it with you as a model and maybe as a way it can be done for you.  My mom was a sense of peace in our home all growing up, and now as a adult, I still remember specific things she did.  When I would wake up every morning, she would be praying.  You just knew it was mom’s prayer time, no thought given to it.  It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized my mom was unique in this.  She woke with my dad and then spent her time in prayer.  Then we would bundle for school and no matter how late we were running, she would gather us in the back room and we would pray.  We started our day that way, every day.  The school day would go on and when we returned home, she would be there.  She would set aside her ironing, put the dinner pot aside, tell the caller she would call back later, and she would stop.  She would bend over the island and ask about our day, take the time to be with us.  When dad got home, it was much the same.  They would kiss each other and shut the door for five to ten minutes, just being with one another and being together.  Sometimes this trait followed dinner too.  Even now, though we are all grown, she is still there.  She calls, we call, we gather.  There is something great about being a mother, a woman, and I offer you the story of my mom to help you be the presence of the Holy Spirit in your own homes.”

I left the small group with their eyes glued and thoughtful, though still wondering if I had said the right thing and if my words meant anything.  But from a small group of eight, four of which were moms, women came up to me to say thanks for that story.  Your story.  One tattooed woman with two little kids at home gathered us together with tears in her eyes and said, “Christina changed my life today and the life of my home.  Because of the story of her mom, I want to be that way.  I want to be a sense of peace for my kids and my husband.  I want to keep trying.  I am going go back home and remember your mom and try to be that sense of peace for my family.”

So mom, this week, as you turn fifty, know that you are a powerful woman.  You live a legacy to those you hold dear, to those you meet, and those you don’t even know.  Your one life has encouraged and inspired many.  You are a place of peace, a woman of shelter.  You are a cup of tea for a friend on a difficult afternoon, a partner in the jeep on a Sunday afternoon drive, a candy-holding story teller on a Monday night, a cookie-baking Grandma on a Tuesday morning.  You are a friend, a love, a light on the hill, a legacy.

Thank you for being you.  You are a blessing.

Love you always,

Christina Jill

Pickles and Ice Cream.

A rant, ode, and overview of pregnancy.... like pickles and ice cream, the salty and the sweet.

When we first announced our coming joy, I was asked by several if I would write about it, blog about it, journal about it.  I know their thought was wanting to be supportive and "listen in" about how this time was for me.  At the moment, I said no to their words for lots of reasons.  As this season has sprawled on, those reasons are an even firmer resolution for why.

Though I'm open about so many things, I'm also private about so much.  Writing is a way of seeping through that privacy, hearing the inner voice while unknown or unspoken words leak out.  Pregnancy, for me, as been a time about guarding, protecting, learning, seeking.  It has been a time where I have needed to build more and stronger hedges around my little family, and also a time where I have needed a few special friends within those hedges.  It's most intense moments are only known by me, and sometimes, shared with Mark.  Its prodding questions and concerns lay in the searching of Google and mini prayers, kept safely there.

For me, pregnancy has been about shutting out lots of voices.  Both those wanting to be supportive, and those who simply speak to speak.  Voices are overwhelming, opinions are often shared as if they are fact, women portraying their experience with pregnancy as the rule.  Supportive tends to feel suffocating when unprompted, or unasked, and creates tension between receiving the offered and blocking the invaded. Manny voices lend to insecurity or indignant me, remarking on belly growth, organic food, epidurals, sleep schedules, and clothing choices.  Still, a few voices have allowed empathy and comfort - laughing with Kelly over breastfeeding mortification, Kates' careful words concerning nurturing spiritual hearts, and mom friends who allow TV and cookies and spanks.

Then there is a separate cringing and shame from voices -- those who fluff pregnancy to be a billowing, lovely, spiritual experience.  It feels like pressure, hearing the women reminisce about their pregnancy with such awe and wonderment, like Anne Geddes angelic clouds floating around, while instead I really just feel fat and heave over the toilet still at 36 weeks.  Here's the honest inside: I hide most side-shot selfies because of the agnst I turmoil in seeing others'.  I've got compression socks on to keep my blood flowing, take pills to try to semi-control my restless leg, and chomp bananas to stop the muscle cramps in my calves.  I keep Tums at my bedside, my desk my purse pocket, and still swallow Zantac when its the worst.  I've got veins showing on my butt, toenails I can't reach to cut, and nausea pretty much every day.  I've thrown up in school bathrooms, grocery store toilets, and more plastic bags than I can count.  I dangle over the pew in church and have laid on the floor a few times there too.  I feel no warm fuzzy about baby laundry and this is is only the start of the things I'm willing to share...

Back to pickles and ice cream.  It's true.  I could devour an whole jar of Claussens in ten minutes in the first tri-mester, and now eat ice cream at least every night.  Add potato chips in, and the menu is set.  Yet, I see pregnancy woes as mostly myths:  I haven't craved anything crazy or sent Mark on midnight burger runs;  I haven't cried randomly or gone emotionally wacko or found hormones leading to my uncontrol;  I could have slept the whole first trimester, but now am energetic like a twenty-year-old at 37 weeks.  Mostly, I just try to tutor well, and watch a lot of HGTV.

My mouth stays pretty closed, my heart careful to share, because as a woman, I feel an authentic connection and privilege to quiet my complaints, minimize my voice, and trap my emotions regarding the whole situation, because life is messy, and pregnancy is messy, and sometimes our messes are less important than walking in the messes of others.

Pregnancy is like pickles and ice cream, fulfilled in salty and sweet.  After years of struggle, my sister rejoiced in Jaxson, but lost the second baby at 5 weeks, and Kaylin's twin after the ultrasound.  I think of a couple at church who lives in five years of hope, yet knows each years' deferral.  I think of friends who are just hoping and starting to "try" for babies, and want to be joyful with them, and also the friends who are waiting a while and need the freedom to enjoy that opportunity.  I think of the women who feel pressure to be pregnant to "keep up" with the couples around them, and I think of how God calls us all independently and his timing is the uniqueness to our stories.

I think of one week in February, when one friend brought home her baby girl after 40 days in the NICU and still faces the concern of breathing and surgeries to come.  Another friend had a healthy baby boy, while a third was told that her son wouldn't survive outside the womb.  Meanwhile, a fourth delivered a dark-haired little baby girl who nursed and came home just as planned.  These are the stories of pregnancy.  These are the stories of woman, both salty and sweet.

These are the stories which put puking into perspective, and people's gender preferences to my inner mocking and anger.  These are the stories curve shopping habits, and bring reality to fear and joy.  These are the stories which renounce hair and eye color preferences, and speak strength to prayers of health.  These are the stories blended into my pregnancy, creating the experience less individual than the whole.

Perhaps I'll have pregnancy dementia and look back on this season with more affection than I have, and perhaps I won't.  Yet, perhaps too, pregnancy is much like pickles and ice cream: the salty and the sweet.  The salty twinges of fear and anxiety, of voices protruding space.  Salty tears in sharing heartache or from nausea I just couldn't keep.  The sweet of friends blessing me at showers and pink softness hanging everywhere.  Sweet in honesty that allows reality and a husband who prays while I sleep.  Pregnancy, for me, is pickles and ice cream: lots of salty with hints of sweet.

Snow Days.

In light of snow days, here's a more light-hearted post about what warms my memory on days like these....

Snow days.  They start with that hopeful anticipation the days or nights before.  Kids all frolicking at the thought of snow trickling down from the heavens, bearing freedom to their school-weary souls.   So many glances out the windows, at school and home, looking for those white flakes of relief, those fluttering hopes of bliss in the sky.  As a kid, we know the wonder, the joy, the great "watching" of the skies.

Growing up in Michigan, snow days were a given each year.  And when a snow day came, it was really a snow day!  It meant mounds of snow had poured, back yards were filled to the brim, plow trucks were scraping intersections, salt was dotted along every sidewalk, and family pets were layered in white, rustling through the acers.

In my home, snow days were a glorious bliss of activity and rest.  We'd start with episodes of Saved By the Bell, syrup and butter oatmeal pancakes, and sit around in our sweatshirts.  By mid-morning we were bundled in snowpants with hats and scarves and facemasks and heat pouches in our boots.  We'd jump on the Arctic Cart and start the rumble of it's engine.  After a few rounds of tracing the 20 acers with lines of evidence, we'd grab the orange Ziffy Whompers and plastic sleds and tie ropes from the snowmobile.  Oh what fun!  Hours found circles around our property, our bodies smelling like fuel, and our hearts laughing as we'd see how high we could get the sledder in the air on the jump between the 10 back acres and the front.

We'd waddle back inside, our legs thick with snowpants and hands frozen with iced threads.  Time to stir the macaroni and cheese and warm our bellys and bottoms!  Come afternoon we'd haul out games like Clue or Life or Payday, or create a "village" downstairs, each with given roles to play.

Then it was time for activity again: layers of Columbia and Cuddle Duddles insiutated warmth while we rolled out of the driveway for the Middle School Hill.  Gigantic from a kid's eyes, it included handmade jumps and wipe outs and people from all over town.  From bright colored ski jackets to camouflage to deer-orange hats, what a sight to behold!  Dad's with kids lined up on old wooden toboggans, teenagers racing down on twirling red saucers, and mom's dragging two year olds back on the climb.  The celebration of snow.

In college, I remember Snow Days manifested into cafeteria trays-turned-sleds, twenty year olds on Olson Lawn throwing snowballs, and hours spent with milky cappichino in the D.C.  We'd spend quiet hours with movies on couches, girls piled in layers to see, and stir Easy Mac in plastic bowls.  One January was Euker played endlessly in the hallway, girls learning to crotchet, and Alias streaming from hand-me-down tvs.

My favorite "grown-up" Snow Day was dominated by bright yellow walls and blasting green carpet, in the old brick house on Hildebrand Street.  It was Angela, Marilyn, Jenelle, and me all snuggled inside under blankets and crumbs and relaxing in pjs.  We'd cued up season after season of Gilmore Girls, propped our feet up, and filled the coffee table with every junk food possible -- from Doritos to Dove chocolate to red Twizzlers piled near our feet.  The snow grew heavy, sheeted with ice, and we talked and sauntered and laid around to simply be.

I watched kids at school yesterday sparkle with the first flakes of snow.  The first evidence of arrived anticipation, assured hope.  They were giddy with catching flakes and tasting them on their tongue, awaiting the arrival of buses to go home.  Today, I imagine they're inside, ready to spoon in mac & cheese, cue up another NetFlix, and find mittens for playing with neighbors.  I'll sit here at the table typing with Mark, coffee both cupped next to our computers, still in our "scrunchies" at noon, and smile as I think, dream, and reminisce of Snow Days.

Daunting.

During wedding season, I barely looked through wedding magazines.  They were the dreams brides are made of, all put together with pretty invitations and elaborate centerpieces and lists of how-tos and planning guides and color schemes and bridesmaid dresses and veil styles and favor ideas and laced white gowns and ceremony suggestions and sentimental song lists and sparkling rings and...  Whew.  That's exactly how I felt.  So I set stacks aside and stayed with simplicity and myself.

And now I stare birth in the face.  It's the third trimester and today I hit a moment where those first few weeks just exploded in my psyche.  Mark and I have visited friends who were one-two months new parents.  These couples most seemed crazily overwhelmed, unshowered, and full of woes when it came to having that little one at home.  I can see their faces at church, or on their couch, or in a chair feel their fear and heaving forever imprinted in my mind.

As I look ahead I think of their emotions and all of a sudden everything feels overwhelming.  The "world" likes to prepare, warn, laugh or look with pity and throws its layer of words to the pile, making that little baby seem like depression already won:  sleepless nights, pain in breastfeeding, no couple time, etc...  Oh joy,  thanks.  Then there's the how-to books and advice and every woman's story, contradicting each other left and right...  (For a small taste of how this looks/feels read here:  http://www.charlottemomsblog.com/2014/01/07/sleep-advice/)

When I hear these words, think these thoughts, read this language I am frozen in fear.  Can I do it?  What if I can't get out of bed because I'm so exhausted and my baby just cries?  What if I feed her the wrong amount or at the wrong time?  What if I don't know what that cry means?  Its paralyzing, daunting.

When I approached marraige, the world spoke and warned of "ball and chain" or "institution" or "wait to you live with his quirks."   However, to create a wall between that fear and negativity, I  kept thinking of my parents' marraige and the love and joy they still expressed fully after 32 years.  Their legacy left no fear. Additionally, I remember one woman from church speaking strongly: "Marraige is great.  And don't let anybody tell you differently."  Ahhh, hope.

Today I picked up a pregnancy/birth book and after a few chapters felt so fearful and daunted that my insides started to squeeze.  And I thought back to those engagement days and the strategies and examples that helped make marraige a joy...

Which means today, I shut the book and grabbed sparkling cider.  And I thought of my sisters.  I don't know what it is about my family, but somehow everyone received a good dose of optimism and perspective and they live with a worldview that reflects that.  So I think about Melissa and Blake sharing Judd into Mark and I's arms and smiling about the birthing room and being relaxed about the new-parent days they were in.  And I think of Kelly who joined the Smith shopping trip two weeks after Jaxson was born and simply staying positive and having fun and joining in their general conversation.  These two women for me are the voices I need, the inspiration for starting parenting, and the reminder to not over-research or take everything too seriously.

So with that, Lord, lift my heart up and protect me from the daunting.

Shame On Skin.

I always thought I was a cute baby.  Little bald head with big brown eyes and easy, happy smile.  Soft, "olive skin," as my dad would say, with chubby little legs and natural bronze arms.  My mom would dress me up with little eyelet dresses and shoulder straps held together with bows.  Matching plush socks and tied proper shoes.  This image of my first years is proudly dotted; without restraint I swell and smile at my adorable baby-toddler self.

Recently though, comments have made that for the first time in my thirty years, result in shame.  About bald babies, or "less than cute" babies, or toddlers that don't quite meet the standard of the perceiver.  And I can't help but feel a sense of guilt for the hairless baby I was, though my parents never made me feel this way.  They laughed and bought with pink and beamed with pride at simply who I was: me.  Their child.  Their beloved.  Their "very good" just as God created me to be.

In such contrast, I can't help but lean back into Genesis 3.  I think about how words, verses, and feelings of pride are now juxtaposed with shame, and see the resemblance of the scripture pattern in Genesis 1 and 3.. In Genesis 1, God created humankind in his image, as his crown of creation.  His greatest!  Beyond the Grand Canyon, beyond Pagsanjan Falls, beyond the Alps.  Me!  Human!  The greatest majesty of his creation.  And the only part of his six day journey that he labeled not only as "good" but "very good!"  Oh what wonder!  What elation!  What joy! In his creation!  In me, as me!

Then Genesis 3 comes along, and Satan in all his sin-greatness slides through the beautiful joy and glory bursting, and raptures the words God, the holy one, the perfect one, spoke.  And Satan taints them, so humankind no longer is visualized, accepted, or rejoiced in as "good" but instead is punctured with sin.  In the Garden, humankind went from skin as their splendor, to skin as their shame, hidden and hurting behind make-shift coverings underneath masks of leaves and trees, with sin as a perpetual shield from full openness and relationship with God.

God's voice marveled and said it was good. Satan's voice mocked and said it was shamed.

Oh how our skin has spoken shame ever since!  How we ostracized based on color, remark based on tone.  How we compare in regard to its flaws, and flinch in regard to its measuring.  How we speak against its crackleing, and judge it according to texture.

And we hide!  We hide behind our coverings -- clothes, comments, cramped inadequacy pounded within.

As I walk around now, with skin bearing seven months of new life beneath, these revelations speak strongly in new meaning.  The sin pattern finds me hiding my flaws beyond blacks or embarrassed at growth -- my holy, blessed, God-endowed growth, but nonetheless embarrassed as sin has stolen the joy from me.  Comments of others lend no help and hinder, only draw attention to if I measure "right" in their eyes -- too big, too small, hardly showing, showing enough; then scaling a size due to height and width and bones structured thirty years before.  The assessment of my skin is spoken, though demoralizing, and only shame and anxiety and hiding result.  Surely not the words and truths that God had spoken, still stamping: "It is very good."

Then I think of my precious, beautiful, baby daughter.  Growing inside and forming and being made in his likeness.  I think of her possibly bald head and can't wait to hold it, caressing its softness and smelling its life. I sigh at the depth of love and meaning already held at the hope and desire to nestle her skin next to mine.  And then to whisper and coo and tell her she's beautiful, over and over again.  For she is created good, very good.

Yet, in great horror, I think of the the already-spoken judgements on her.  The sin that has already entangled her as the pressure to appear in the form of the perceiver has already committed her acceptable or non, based on blue eyes or blonde hair or brown curls.  And I inwardly weep and anger and fight already for my daughter.  Screaming inside to will sin's power and Satan's curses away from her.

Lord, let her come in Your Glory!  Let her know and feel Your Acceptance!  Your Love!  Your bounty of spoken words through Scripture about your joy in her, your glory revealed in her as your perfect creation!  Let the words she hears and feels and knows be, "And she is created good!  Very good!"

Oh to redeem Genesis 3!  To conquer sin, Satan, and the death it curses over souls!  Oh to hear God speak great adoration over my stretching skin, my pregnant body.  Oh to hear Him lavish his likeness over my daughter. Oh to bear and claim God's truth, it is good, against Satan's curse of shame on skin.

~  ~  ~

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."  Genesis 1:31

"God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; 

male and female he created them."  Genesis 1: 27

"Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt now shame."  Genesis 2:25

"Then the eyes of them were both opened and they realized they were naked; 

so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."  Genesis 3:7

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."  Genesis 3:11

"You crowned them [humankind] with glory and honor."  Psalm 8:5

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  Psam 139:13-14

Truth and Relationships.

I've been wiggling lately in several conversations over coffee and couches and cell phones.  It's the same haunting that has prickled me for a few years, leaving me still uncomfortable, but justly so.  It's that grimace of listening to those in close relationship choose lifestyles, craft choices, continually complain, or create narcissistic, negative attitudes that leave little room for joy, deliverance, repentance, hope or health.

I find myself shutting down the phone internally, while it is still on, or closing the conversation while its still going, yet then rewinding and replaying the whole struggle internally for days afterward -- so much so that it is hard to separate the conversations or choices from the person or friendship.

Thus I've been praying about this strain the last few months, weeks, days.  Asking God to reveal to me what my role is in knowing and delivering Truth, in restraining from self-righteaousness, and in continuing to offer relationship while my convictions contradict the conversations.

I remember reading and listening to several reflections on this over the years.  My friend Emily and I once had a long conversation over the tension of how to carry this cross with strength and clarity.  Each time, there is one point that is consistent, one line that does not change.  And it starts with: is the person a believer held to the Standards of God, or if the individual does not claim to bow or live under his   care and guidelines.  This principal alone, I believe, sets apart the words and form in which we are to handle Truth and relationships.

If a person does not declare the Lord as their Savior or wholly surrender to His teaching, then there are provisions made to offer grace.  Relationship should always be extended, but judgment is rarely helpful in leading them toward salvation in Christ.  Instead, acceptance and generosity are offered as the work of the Spirit alone enables their receiving of the gifts and guidance He offers.

However, for those who profess to live under the surrender and instruction of Christ, the Will of the Father, and the choices that lead to holiness and righteousness, the Word speaks with clarity and conviction.  Since the Old Testament, God has marked out laws and guides, grace and Truths, that are meant to help lead the way to a life that is set apart under his care.  This noted, the Word is poignant in for role of believers. It reads, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).  Ouch. But that friction of truth helps create in us a holy godliness that we must be willing to submit under.  He uses his people to prune, bring clarity, and offer insight into the roads we choose or the fruit our soul bears.

Moreover, the Lord says his Word is to be used to instruct, discipline, and grow his disciples. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful in teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness"  (II Timothy 3:16)  Paul's Epistles follow these lines and speaks forth as well as against false teaching, attitudes, and living in relationship.  Like Daniel, he uses "wisdom and tact" in discerning how God leads him to use Truth, but he still is willing to do so (Daniel 2:14).

A few years ago I was riding home from Asheville with my favorite "church" of roommates: Angela, Marilyn, and Jenelle, and we were discussing this very point: our struggle with the tension of delivering Truth while maintaining goodwill in relationships.  Riding back on 74, I remember their words distinctly, as if God gave clarity to the angles of this discussion:  "As believers, we are called under God to instruct and call out those in our life to live holy and blameless lives.  With careful words, we should talk to them about choices and honoring God according to the patterns he set before us.  However, it is that person's choice how to respond.  We offer relationship and friendship and grace in its fullness.  If they walk away from Scripture or us, that is not our prerogative.  We are to follow God first, model his grace, and leave the offer at their response."  It is not our call to fear their response, or duck because of it, or withhold a pruning because of our selfish desire to maintain a sense of harmony.

In his book, Boundaries, Henry Cloud gives insight to this concept.  He writes:  “There is a big difference between hurt and harm. We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow...  That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.” Noting the difference between hurt and harm offers some relief concerning the principle and aftermath of sharing Truth in relationship.

Yikes, this is easier said than done.  When one reads or writes, the words appear simple and clearly Divine. Yet to picture delivering Truth to the caller on the phone or the coffee date across the table, to see their faces and feel the emotion of their reply, there is an altogether other sense of strain.  Nonetheless, God doesn't always call us to the easy or peaceful, but he promises the guidance and sustainability of His presence.  He also often prepares and tends to the heart of the listener, giving them the grace to accept the discipline or words or guidance.   For God too, cares about the deliverance, acceptance, and call to holiness in Truth and relationships.

And the Bride Wore White.

White rose petals blossoming in hand, I walked down the isle on my wedding day.  It was a day filled with flowers on vines, greenery arching sunward, candles glowing from tables, chattering murmured across white garden chairs, and monogrammed fans whisking the wind.  

It was a day of so many answered prayers; of years hoping and wishing; of friendships blooming around, gathering to worship at what the beauty and purity of marraige symbolizes in the heart of a believer, the heart of a woman.

At the same time, it was a day of such sacredness, of great culmination, of faithfulness and hope fulfilled. What great joy and peace echoed within me as I radiated the with exclamation the purity of what marraige was sacred to be.

During the season of engagement, the floral lace dress hung like a white symbol in my home.  The white dress was less of a trophy or prize or garment to be earned, but instead a gown to be celebrated in.  An outward expression of the inward purity I treasured so intimately inside. It's presence paralleled a phrase that cycled through my thoughts and heart.  Not so much as conviction or warning, but as pleasure and confidence, echoing all the goodness I felt inside:

And the Bride Wore White.

In today's culture, there is an illusion that wearing white is simply "bridal" or that waiting for expressions of love until marraige is a lost art, like Amish bread or handwritten mail.

However, in the stillness, in the quiet recesses of my soul, I desired so greatly to protect the grandeur of marraige that it was pride-filled, in a holy way.  I inwardly committed to set aside some physical acts or dating rituals or homemaking skills until that union was complete.  I wanted marriage to feel different than dating, and to have the small joys of hope that I had pictured to be unique to it - whether sharing our first breakfast at 'my' table or completing God's physical blessing.

As I watch friends enter holy matrimony, what difference in these marriages is exclaimed as a radiant joy on their faces when they come before their love with purity!  This fullness glitters on their faces as their gather their white wedding garments and father's arm and come before their Lord and the one that they love in full union during that holy ceremony.  There is something pure in the air, and most who gather can feel that purity sparkle throughout the space.  Oh what joy, oh what testimony that Spirit shares to those in the waiting spaces -- what hope to wait, what desire in union, what encouragement to continue to come together in their own marraige in celebration of what God has done.

Throughout my "waiting and hoping" years I'd heard friends talk, I heard pastors preach, I read books from I Kissed Dating Good-Bye to Passion and Purity to When God Writes Your Love Story...  Though they aided in my conviction, caused controversial conversation, and kept me hoping for one more day that pure love would come, nothing convinced me of the greater power and joy of purity than that season of engagement.  I kept glowing in the inward knowledge that I was coming before my bridegroom without scar, without fear, without heaviness, and was able to offer my Love this gift of freedom and honesty and the joy of intimacy.

I often reflect on Proverbs 31:12:

She does him good, and not harm,

All the days of her life.

It was circled and underlined and memorize and pondered for at least fifteen years before I ever understood the full impact of its message.  All the days of her life: her dating, her hoping, her high school, her college, her single, her engaged, her tears, her frustration, her unseen hope:  She does him good.

Oh my dear friends, if you are hoping, if you are waiting, do him good.  Create that beautiful white wedding dress in your mind and know it sparkles even more than you imagine when your heart is cleansed and joy-filled in purity beneath it.  Hold on to greater hope, engage in repentance, and trust in the goodness he offers to your faithfulness.  May, one day, your marraige be blessed and shine forth in full evidence of His benevolence.  May you walk down the isle in radiant testimony to what the Lord has offered as a covenant to his people in the union marraige, rejoicing to proclaim, "And the Bride Wore White."

Slow to Speak.

"Be imitators of God..." 

Ephesians 5:1; Philippians 2

Often I peer at the world and people around me and wonder: Does the Holy Spirit in me show differently?"  If non-believers are aren't held to the laws of the Christ, do I as a full believer demonstrate his laws in my heart then in full difference?

The last few months have brought this to the forefront concerning the words and attitudes etched in conversations among believers.  As I listen, as I watch or participate in conversation, inwardly I cringe. Words are blunt, anger is snapped, remarks are quick, retorts come forceful, and small trials produce great negative reactions.

I come back to the continual call of the Epistles to be self-controled, to groom the fruits of the Spirit, to model Christ in love, and yet am left broken, discouraged, and dismantled by the words I hear instead.

Yesterday, amidst feeling the outcries of this negativity in my own spirit, I heard the radio host announce:

"My dear brothers and sisters, 

take note of this: 

Everyone should be quick to listen, 

slow to speak 

and slow to become angry."

James 1:19

It was God's poignant clarity to guide my heart and actions, gaining strength through the Holy Spirit.

James later speaks about the power of the tongue, the devastation it can wrought, and the contradiction of how we use it both to reveal glorious worship and angst, uncontrolled distress (James 3).

Children of God, if we claim to be One with God, our bluntness is only bold for the Gospel.  Our anger only righteous for His causes; our adversity only pleading for His grace.

May Christ give us the discernment and conviction to know when to close our lips and when to courage in speech.  May we humbly then accept his direction, imitating Him by the Spirit who filters our hearts.

Pinterest and Proverbs 31

Five women sit with Spanish food flared all around, our mouths chattering between spoonfuls regarding everything from toddler woes to recipes to teaching.  More topics were strewn about, platforms we all stand on or walk over, engaging our minds as women in current Church issues and family values and feminine callings.  Somewhere toward the end of dinner our conversation fell on Pinterest - ideas gained, inspiration given, and ideals growing.  This turned our discussion into the emotions Pinterest also triggered -- envy, comparison, and greed as well as self-doubt, discouragement, and dissatisfaction with our own reality. We sat back in our chairs, now moving onto coffee and pondering the Pinterest world and its implications for us as Christian women.

What people rush to do, often out of the difficulty of living in the tension, is draw lines around topics, issues, concerns, and choices.  It is easiest to live in a world painted black and white, labeled good or bad, stamped holy or evil.  I'd like to assign such headlines to Pinterest, but I don't think thats the issue.  In other words, I think it can be used for great good, like the buffalo chicken wreath recipe I'm cooking for my husband tonight.

Yet Biblically, I think we need to assess our interaction with Pinterest.  Many passages pop into mind regarding temptation, contentment, and simplicity, yet I perhaps the truest analysis was spoken at the table that night, giving the the strongest contrast I'd heard, catching me in a way only clear comparison and truth can.  As the writer of Hebrews 4:12 states:  "For the word of God is alive and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

And so His Word was brought forth at the dinner table: "Consider the difference between Pinterest and Proverbs 31..." The atmosphere gained momentum and our discussion grew vehemently, each woman delving into it with conviction, asserting their wrestling with the statement spoken, and feeling the implication of identifying that contrast.

The Proverbs 31 Woman.  The woman we all long to be, are sometimes overwhelmed by, and yet given model through.  The passage outlines qualities and mannerisms of this woman of nobility: she "works with eager hands" (v13), provides for her family (v15), uses money wisely (v16), and works hard and purposefully (v17).  "She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy" (20).  "She is clothed with strength and dignity...she does not eat the bread of idleness." (v25, 27).  In highest regard of all, she is a woman who is fully pursing the Lord, thus earning the respect of her husband, her family, and her village in these efforts.

With her time, she cares diligently for her family, and she serves the poor.  I picture her today washing sheets, putting chicken in the crockpot, and volunteering at a local school, nursing home, or shelter.  She may have a career, she may tend to her little ones, she may help her elderly parent.  With her time, she is purposeful, productive.

The money she has and the money she earns is used with wisdom.  She considers purchases and their intent; she saves and is generous.  She contemplates the value of a craft and is discerning on the funds that it may use.  She honors God and her family with her use of wealth and resources.

This is where I pause with the awareness that this forceful conviction has rumbled in me for nine months and hasn't made its way to the page because its impact has been profound and cut so straight to the heart of what I see women consuming that presenting such an issue demands wisdom.  Furthermore, it requires words and contemplation that allow and guides a conscientious process.

As with many addictions, Pinterest pulls in slowly and does not harm all partakers.  Some drink to it like leisurely glass of wine, tasting every few days or weeks and use an idea here or there.  Others are unaware of the state of their consumption, pinning away like one more trip to the bar, until their reality is tainted or left with more emptiness, desires, and wants.

The caution is for Pinterest to be a help in your pursuit of caring for your family and tending to your work, as Proverbs 31 states.  Yet compelling clicking can instead lead to consumption so great that dream worlds are built, fantasy collections are sought, and boards are bursting bigger and better than real life could possibly boast.  

This danger leads directly back to the call of the Proverbs 31 woman and our challenge to look inwardly, noting her time, her talents (money), her purposed life, and her pursing God.  Dear women, consider these callings.  Consider the comparisons, the contrasts. Consider your consumption and its interactions with his Kingdom.  

In your interaction with Pinterest, may his Truths guide your wrestling, his creativity your creations, and his conviction your clicking.