Driving Blind

I watched a movie once where a woman was driving a car blindfolded. Her fiancé was in the back seat directing her through busy traffic, needless to say the scene didn't end well. By the end of the scene the man and his bride were angry with each other and there was a wake of destruction behind them.

As I sit here reflecting on my life these days, I'm feeling like that woman driving blindfolded. My back seat driver is my own expectations of myself, and behind me I've left a wake of destructive behaviors and attitudes, disappointments, and anxiety.

How are you feeling this afternoon? Maybe you can relate with me. Maybe you're feeling like the busyness of this life, the expectations you have, or the expectations others have for you-- have blindfolded you. Are you having a hard time seeing the road?

This morning I spent some time thinking about the people in my life who have been vulnerable enough to share their struggles with me, and I thought about my own struggles. The theme of the struggles I've heard, along with the pounding of my own heart,  is that no matter how hard I try, I am not enough.

My best efforts, are clumsy and inept at best. My inner script is punctuated with those words of disappointment. It's no wonder that I struggle with anxiety and worry.

I know that I am not alone in this, in fact, I'd venture to say that this is not a Erin problem, or a feminine problem. No, this is a human problem. It doesn't discriminate against age, sex, religion, social status or anything else. We do not measure up.

Even Paul, who many Christians argue to be one of the most zealous Christians in Church history, knows this struggle.

Paul writes in Romans 7: 14-21 that even though he longs and strives to do what is good, he still does what he doesn't want to do. There is a inner war being waged in your soul. The war between doing what is right and doing what is wrong. How do I win the war?

In my life, I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on all I did wrong. I replay my failures and shortcomings, over and over again. I think of all the ways I should have done something, all the ways I have not lived up. All that seems to do is spin me into a place of desperate hopelessness.

But what if I stopped looking at myself and start looking at the God who has already won the war.

This week, I've been reading of weakness. Specifically, how as a Christian I can have hope. Regardless of all the ways I fail, my failures show me something greater then all the success in the world.....

 I am loved by the God who is great. That love is not dependent on my abilies to earn it, or keep it.

God is sovergn and His plan for humanity is not dependant on my ability to be anything other than me.

This is Grace.

This the Power of God in me.

This gives me the hope to keep going. It gives me the supernatural ability to choose to do what is good over whatever it is that I want for me.

This takes off the blindfold.

It gives me eyes to see the road ahead over all the voices in mind telling me otherwise.

Do you want to see the road? Do you wish you knew where you are headed? Start by looking into the Grace God has for you.

Grace to fail, fall and flounder.

Grace to stand up and keep going.




Erin

Seasoned With Salt

Photo credit: out of bounds salt water reef tanks
When I was about 13, I went swimming at a local salt water canal with a neighbor friend. We took turns diving off the floating dock into the salty cool water.

On my last dive, I wanted to go as deep as I could. I jetted into the water, as straight as I could and propelled deeper and deeper into the salty blue abyss.

My elation soon turned to panic as my lungs ached for air and I realized that I was indeed, deep. In my panic, I kicked my feet hard to flip my body back towards the surface of the water. In doing so, I cut my foot deeply on the barnacle and rock covered sea bed.

 I lifted my self up onto  the dock to survey the damage to my foot. I knew that in order to get back to the house, I would have to get back into the salty water...and I knew that it would hurt. Suddenly I understood the figure of speech of "rubbing salt in someones wound".

Salt hurts, but salt heals. 

As a mom to 4 very rambunctious and thrill seeking kiddos, I have often had to clean up an endless number of scrapes, skinned knees and various boo boo's. The worst part of healing is cleaning the wound, but if you don't clean it, then it will never heal. Instead it will fester and plague you.

Oh you may heal on the outside, leaving a small understated scar, but the infection is not far off. It's sitting dormant just under the surface.

This has been my experience and since you're human too- I'm guessing it's been yours too. Life is full of wounds, from minor to deep. You and I have been wounded.

God administers the salt. 

There comes a point in your life when you have to look at your position trapped on the dock, and choose to get back in the salty water.

I don't preach this from a perspective of someone who has lived an easy carefree life, I speak it as a wounded, battle scared, woman who chose to run away from God and hide my wounds.

Let me tell you the truth my dear friends, do not hide your wounds!

I had spent many years trying my best to be strong enough, brave enough, tough enough and spiritual enough to self medicate my personal wounds. All that effort was simply covering my spiritual leprosy with makeup.

 If you were far enough away from me, then I could pass the test. But come close enough and my wounds became clear. I needed healing.

 It started as a simple cry to God, "Lord, I know dealing with this is going to hurt, but it can't be more painful then living like this." Slowly, and somewhat painfully, God began to wash my hurt. I'm not going to lie, it hurt. It came with a cost.

It was worth the pain.

The process is never ending, as long as I live I will be in constant needing of a good healthy dose of healing. Not just because I am in need of healing from wounds inflicted upon me.

It's the wounds I cause to myself.

 It's my poor attitude, my faulty choices, my inadequate relationships skills. I am a broken person, I am not seasoned to perfection. And until the day I meet my savior, I am in constant need of salt.

Where are you lacking salt?

Where are you wounded?

Maybe you've carried your hurts around like a badge, telling the world how you've been wronged.

Maybe you've tried desperately to hid them all away where no one can see them.

Or maybe your walking around your life hurting others with your actions, words, and attitudes.

 Let's stop. 

Let's take our pain to the person who's willing, ready and able to heal our pain and set us free from our wounds. 

The Greatness of His Godliness

The Greatness Of His Godliness


I have been thinking about Jesus lately.
That doesn't seem to outrageous.
After all, I think about Jesus often.

This time I pondered Him.

 I wondered about Him. 

I once read a book written by a man who played Jesus in a movie called The Gospel According to Matthew. In the book, called in the footsteps of Christ, Bruce Marchiano writes about his experience preparing to play the role of Jesus. He began to look at humanity through Jesus' eyes.

 I did some more research and came across this video of Bruce Marchiano retelling some of his experiences on set as Jesus.

He spoke about the miracles Jesus did.
Jesus spent His life healing the sick.
His everyday moments were spent making the blind see and the deaf hear!
His daily to-do list included healing the leper and raising the dead!

Yet, I have found that I read these accounts in the Bible with little more then an acknowledgement that they did indeed occur.

Can we stop for a moment?

Can we linger here over this?

This is the God man, Jesus. 

The very same God who created the world, who commanded waters to rise out of dry land and who whispered the very existence of stars and moons...

 now wraps our human flesh around himself and lived on this earth!

 I want to stop rationalizing Christ.
I want to stop dismissing His God-ness and focusing only on His humanity.
He was indeed human, but He was first and foremost the same God of the old testament. The Same I AM who manifested in fire and smoke.

The same God who turns when the woman touches His hem of His coat and says "Who touched me? I know that power has gone out from me." (Luke 8:46)

That same power that parted the red sea for the Israelites, made the bleeding woman whole.

As I sit here and think about the reality of God coming to earth, coming to humanity, coming to walk among our brokenness and filth, I can't help but be moved.

The trinity has always been hard to understand. It's hard to wrap my mind around Jesus and the Holy Spirit as still being first and foremost God. In my limited brain it becomes easier to make God the Father, and Jesus a slightly less- more human God.

As I enter into holy week, I want to see Jesus for who He really is.
Jesus is not a pawn sent to earth for a task, in order to right the wages of humanities sin.
Jesus is God himself bending as close to earth as possible and leaning in close to tell us one thing.

 I love you. I love you so much that I'm sending myself to you.

 I love you so much that I myself am going to absorb all my own punishment, so that you can start again.

I'm taking your punishment on myself. 

On me, God.

When Jesus spread His arms on the cross, He was literally holding back the power of God.
The Bible calls Jesus the mediator, the one who comes between.

Jesus stood between me and God. 

The heavens darkened, and the very creation that Jesus himself breathed life into, shook in terror as it witnessed it's creator take on all of creations sin, failures and pain.

This week let's not focus of Jesus' humanity. Let us focus on Christ's complete God-ness.
God came, God lived, God healed and God went to the cross.

Jesus, didn't begrudgingly go to the cross.
He was never forced onto the road to Golgotha by the Father in heaven pulling the strings.
From the beginning of time God had one way to deal with sin, and that is with sacrifice.

The wages of sin is death. 

Someone's blood must be shed for there to be redemption of sins.
Like in Genesis, when God met Abram (before he was named Abraham) and made a covenant with him. God Himself passed between the convenantal offerings, thus making the covenant not dependent on Abraham.

So is it with our sin. 

God's decision that sin will be redeemed through the shedding of blood, is not dependent on us.

 It was finished at the cross, when God took His own punishment!

What greater love could there be? 

If you struggle to see Jesus as God, then know that you do not struggle alone.
Know that I am praying for you.
I pray that you will be challenged this week.
I pray that you won't be able to shake off Jesus this week.
May you would be forced to come face to face with the cross.
When you do, you will find the real Jesus.
The God-man who kneels down to earth to tell you one thing...

I love you. I love you so much.

Grace In The Midst of Heartache

GRACE IN THE MIDST OF HEARTACHE

There are those moments in life that impress in your heart and change who you are by their presence there.

One of those moments for me came at 16 years old, while visiting an orphanage in Romania.

 These children were all hungry for attention, but one child... One face in the crowd changed me forever.

 I wish I could tell you his name, I wish I could tell you something great about this boy. But there was nothing impressive about him.

His hair was cut short to keep the lice at bay.
His pants were a size too small and his shirt too big.

What stood out to me was his hunger.

Not a hunger for food, but for love.
An unspoken hunger to be called good enough, worthy, desired.
This boy was deaf, family less, and abandoned.
No other children played with him.

He sat alone. 

The Orphanage ‘Mothers’ told us that there was no hope for that boy.
Without the ability to communicate his future was clear.
 He would not be able to find work on the streets.
His statistical outcome was grim.
He would, in 8 short years, age out of the orphanage.
He would live on the streets begging for money.
He would fall into a life of crime and find himself jailed or killed.

He was 8 years old.

In Romania, boys in group homes age out at 16, he was half way to aging out of the system.
 In this boy, I saw the hopelessness of children without love.
That day I made it my personal mission to love that boy with all the love I could muster.

I think of him often.

I pray that the small seeds of love that boy had, in a lonely orphanage in Romania, meant something to him. Maybe that small mission of love somehow could change the path his life was on.

Just maybe, he saw the love of Jesus though me.

The day I met him, I went to bed sobbing. I would never see him again.
The odds and statistics tell me that his life may very well be over before I even pen these words.
That encounter happened over 14 years ago.

That experience opened my eyes to evil and injustice.
The normal experience of the abandoned children of the world.
It opened my eyes to the realization that, in this life...

 I drew the long end of the stick.

 In fact, it put a face to the millions of children whose lives have dealt them the short end of that stick.
 It caused me to start to question.
What happens as these children grow out of the system?
Historically speaking, taking care of the orphans was the job of the church.
In more recent times the church has taken a step back and the government has taken the lead.

Why?

My husband and I have always planned on fostering or adopting at some point.
 In the recent years, as we've asked questions and began relationships with parents who foster.
The question we've asked is:

 How do you handle the heartache?

And there seems to be heartache every step of the way.
How do you handle the heartache of taking in a child who has been so neglected and battered by the very parents who are now fighting to get them back?
How do you remain unbiased knowing that the end goal of fostering, in the best case scenario, is to re-place that child back into the home with the parents who hurt them to begin with?
How do you handle the heartache of parents who give up their rights with that child?
The pain of loving and sacrificing?
Of giving all you have into a child who refuses to let you into their walled off world?
The pain of bonding with a child you cannot keep?

No matter how you look at it, there will be pain and heartache.

 If a child stays with me, I will mourn that they have lost their parents.
If they move on from my home, I mourn that I lost them from my arms.
Am I willing to live a life full of mourning?
Am I willing to love a child who may never love me back?

Matthew West wrote a song that has been playing in my head for months.
It’s called Forgiveness and the words are powerful.
The chorus is what my heart echos as I ponder these questions.
I must return again to the cross and cry out:

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness

Go now and be amazed
By what you see through eyes of grace
The prisoner that it really frees is you
Forgiveness

Show me how to love the unlovable
Show me how to reach the unreachable
Help me now to do the impossible
Forgiveness
I want to finally set it free
So show me how to see what Your mercy sees
Help me now to give what You gave to me
Forgiveness.

There are too many children in Foster care. 

There are not enough homes and sadly a lot of the homes available are not loving homes.
For every one success story of a foster kid who made it through,
I have heard many more stories of further abuse.

 What do we do with the children no one seems to want?

I am writing this because I do not have all the answers.

 In fact, the closer I've stepped into following God’s leading the more I see how inadequate I am for the task.
 But my heart cries out...

What if that child was me?!

What if I was that lonely boy in that orphanage, who everyone had given up on?

What if I was that little girl who’s history tells her that no one will ever truly love her?

 My heart tells me to keep loving the unlovable and to keep reaching the unreachable.
To throw my fears and pain at the cross and watch and see what grace can accomplish.
 Because it’s not about you and me.
It's not about what we can or cannot do.

 It’s about love. 

It’s about following where God leads you.
It’s about trusting the God who leads you.

Another blogger wrote:

“God's ability to be good to her in a difficult environment is far greater than any good we could offer her in a comfortable one. No amount of "good" we can give her can compare with the goodness of the sovereignty of God in her life, wherever she may end up living it. There are no guarantees in foster care, except one - God is sovereign in the life of this baby girl. He is good, and He will be good to her always, no matter where she lays her head at night.”

God may not be calling you to take in an orphaned child, but God is calling you to something.
The closer you get to surrendering yourself to what God is asking you, the more you will question your ability do what He asks.
You may question how you’ll handle the pain and hardship that will surely follow the road you walk down. Friend, if you are following Jesus, He guarantees us there will be pain and heartache.

My prayer for you is that you find strength to surrender your plans to God.
There is grace at the foot of the cross.
Step forward knowing there is never a ‘right time'.

The right time is the moment God calls you.

Is He calling you?
Have you reached the point in your struggle with God’s calling that it is actually more painful to keep holding His plans for you are arms distance then it would be to simply fall at His cross and surrender?
We have to take that step of faith and accept the road of suffering in our lives.
There is a freedom that comes when you quit struggling to keep God at bay in your life.

God is relentless.

 He will never quit asking you to trust Him more, and surrender yourself to Him more.

But God is also loving.

 He never calls us to do something that He has not already agreed to equip us for.

Judged With Grace

We Christians love to talk about Jesus. We love that He loves us, we speak of all the nice stories of how Jesus demonstrated His love, healed the sick and down-and-out, and fed the hungry. Even non- Christians really don't have much to say against Jesus. He was a great teacher, a good prophet, a noble character, even if they do not believe this character actually existed. But it seems to me, that we have a big issue with God. Jesus we get, but God? He intimidates us. Last summer I was asked to explain how a Great, Loving God, could do the things that God did in the Old Testament. How do you reconcile a loving God (Jesus), to a God who would wipe out entire nations and smite entire groups of people in one angry breath. How can you trust a God who is constantly threatening to smite you? I could not answer that question, in fact, I had never even tried. I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the God of the old testament, I was pretty happy to just keep looking at Jesus. I didn't answer the question when it was asked of me, but I hid the question away in my heart. Every so often I would look at it, turning it around in my hearts mind, and perplexed- put it back away even more confused then I began. Honestly, I couldn't piece it back together, I couldn't explain and rationalize the anger of God. 

This year, has been a year of questions; a year of asking hard questions and looking deep into why I believe the things that profess to believe. As I began to look deeper into who God is, I actually began to see, more clearly, who I am. You see, on the surface, I knew that I needed a savior. I knew that I was lost without the salvation of God. But I didn't really understand my own fallen nature. Although I professed with my mouth my dependence on God, deep somewhere inside I still was resting in the knowledge that I am a 'good person'. And from the standard of this world, I am. Heck, I could say that I even "beat the odds" I'm successful despite my history! God would never look at me and be able to justify smiting me, I'm a CHRISTIAN. With this mindset, I began to read more and more of the not so nice stories of the Bible. As I read, I put myself in the position of the accused, the wayward Israel. I was particularly struck by the words in Jeremiah. God speaks to Jeremiah and likens Israel to an adulterous woman. I began to see the heart of God, God was not yelling and cursing and smiting nations like an abusive father, or militant dictator. He was pleading with his lover to simply come home to the arms of her groom! We have been called the bride of Christ, this title is not given by Paul out of a convenience, to be used as an analogy to make us feel loved by Jesus. This has been the design for all eternity! When Israel turned their backs on God, they were turning their back on their groom. The 10 commandments were not a legal document created to keep us in God's good graces. They were a marriage covenant between a God and His people. And his people, you and I, we are unfaithful. God doesn't run after naughty nations in order to punish them for disobedience, he runs after them to save them, and restore them back into this relationship! He practically BEGS them to return home to his arms, and return to the marriage covenant, and he will forget that they were ever apart! 

Jeremiah 3: 12-13

Go proclaim these words towards the north and say:

 Return, faithless Israel, 

declares the Lord.

I will not look on you in anger,

    for I am merciful,

declares the Lord;

I will not be angry forever.

13 

Only acknowledge your guilt,

    that you rebelled against the Lord your God

and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree,

    and that you have not obeyed my voice,

declares the Lord.

When I began to change my understanding how God was speaking, as a husband to his wayward wife, rather then as a angry dictator to a rebellious nation: the tone of the Old Testament God changed dramatically. In fact my view of Jesus began to change too, as I realized my inability to keep God's covenant, I became even more acutely aware that I needed Jesus. The gift of his sacrifice on the cross becomes sweeter the more I understand my need. The stories of nations who were wiped out by a just God, motivated by preserving his bride, make more and more sense. His destruction of ungodly and wicked nations have less to do with his anger at being disobeyed and more do to with his undeniable passion for saving his bride from the influence and moral destruction of nations who further degrade and ruin her integrity. 

I could go on and bring to mind many more instances of God's great mercy for his people in the Old Testament, of His pleading with her to return, of His rescuing of the few God fearing men and woman who would have otherwise perished in God's justified wrath of their sinful perverted nations... But I would rather leave you with a challenge: What is your view of God. Is he a big, angry dictator watching and waiting to smite you down? Do you feel like you are always dangling on the edge of salvation? Perhaps, like me, you don't know who God is because you've never really looked at Him. Maybe you've spent a lot of time thinking about Jesus, and God just doesn't seem to fit in your mind. Will you do something? Will you hide the question away in your heart? Will you think about it, turn it over in your mind, ask questions, and ask God who he is? 

I would love to hear from you! If you take this challenge and start your search, let me know. If you've gone on this journey and come out on the other side what did you learn about God and about yourself. Leave a note in the comments section below and let your experience be an encouragement to someone else.