Posted on by Trish

Reformed? Charismatic? Reformed Charismatic?

I am currently pecking out intentional words  in a memoir and one of my life shaping sentences writes like this, “Charismatic expression, hellfire and brimstone are a mess of twisted sticks in my roots.  I’ve sorted through that tangled mass of doctrine, and by an invisible and mysterious grace kept the truths they taught,  and with some hard work and prayer sweat managed to dig out and discard the rest.”

I am burdened and pressed flat, rolled over and squeezed out as I write.  I find myself praying for revival continually. Wrestling like Jacob. Hoping like Abraham for Holy Spirit fire, for God to renew His wonders in our day, for an Acts 4 experience where walls shake when sons and daughter’s gather to pray and an anointing power pours out that empowers us to live a bold and ragged-raw gospel. I find myself praying for the body to operate in all of the gifts of the Spirit so that we function at optimal health,

so that not one is lacking,

and I am a five point Calvinist.

Yet, I long for the God of experience.

I burn.

I cry with Moses, “show me Your glory!”

 I want to walk roads of dust with Jesus,

and Peter,

and John,

and James,

and see miracles, touch his robe and be healed,

see the enemy defeated where it seems he has trespassed on holy ground, and I can’t help but believe,

it’s coming.

I believe there is a great divide that has left us fractured, as a global body of believers, in the magnitude of a 7.9 theological quake.

On one side we have charismatics with a fiery faith, believing in the God who responds while we are still praying (Daniel 9:23), and still grants words of prophesy that are meant to encourage and strengthen those who are disheartened, weary, feeble.  Words that reach out and gently lift a downward head toward Christ and say, “March on, Saint, the battle is the Lord’s, take heart,

The lion of Judah has roared!

Have we forgotten that we belong to an ancestry of those who bent for hours in ragged prayer, interlaced with unknown tongues on floors in intercession for the perishing and persecuted? The ones who still believe in the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever and still heals real life threatening diseases, abnormalities, deformities?

I envy their freedom to believe, and yearn for such childlike faith that knows,

their daddy can fix anything.

I love my Sovereign God who does whatever He pleases (Daniel 4:35)

and…

I believe in the hope of those who long to see Him renew His wonders in our day (Habakkuk 3:2).

I dance like David within the safety of my four walls free from judgmental staring and fear-filled stoicism.

I writhe on my floor in prayer and intercede in ways that leave me in awe of something beyond my humanness that believes God is responding to hearts He has already positioned to pray in faith, like this…

because He delights to answer and bends low to listen when we tell stories of answered prayer between miles and worlds,

riches and poverty,

 loneliness and belonging,

sickness and health. 

And in our lowly posture we grow ever more in intimate relationship with Him through aching knees and heavy hearts.

These words I pen stem from the fingers of a life that has shared in some of the sweetest of sufferings with Christ, and in my suffering hope rose,

out of gray dust and taught me to sing,

“whom have I in heaven but You, and besides, You I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25).

Still I pray the words of truth that have tattooed themselves on my frontal lobe in order that I will remember to pray them…”and God gave him rest on all sides… “(2 Samuel 7:1).

And I dare to believe in the God of Job,

who restores.

I pray with longing for the day when all is restored, and the curse is broken.  Yet there are caverns in my heart that echo, “I would have despaired unless I had believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:-13).

On the other side, could it be that we are indoctrinated to a fault so much so that we suffocate ourselves in the systemized study of theology and forget the supernatural God who revealed Himself through human hands that healed and gave Divine authenticity to the Jewish carpenter’s son through miracles and wonders?

This God who shook walls in prisons in response to praise, and cast out demons, and raised the dead, and healed the blind and the lame, and made well the sick.

We say our foundation is firm, but the one man has built upon below believers’ feet has quaked because its builders have labored on a theological fault-line that made us choose!

Is this a call to return to the God of the Bible? Could it be both sides are sick? Are we not a people who is to embrace the gospel as a whole so that we may be made whole?

To dance like David undignified with all his might?  He may have looked like one who had gone mad wildly thrusting his body about.  What would us stoic conservatists say if  we witnessed a King do that today?

or even our own pastor?

What happened to having the Spirit of David shape our hearts so that we do not move unless we first inquire of the Lord with an expectancy that He will answer and go before us?

Are we paralyzed with fear that if the Spirit shows up in an unfamiliar way people will run? But if we so embrace the Sovereignty of God then what could we possibly fear about that?  If we, reformers, believe nothing happens apart from His will, can we not embrace what might feel uncomfortable to us, trusting He does whatever He pleases on earth, turning men’s hearts any way He desires to?

If a man’s heart is turned to prophesy, are we not called to test the spirits and to keep that which is good, encouraging him in his gift? If one were to speak in an unknown tongue over us, would we tremble in awkward fear or wait expectantly for an interpretation from another?

If we say we have enough faith to believe in the sovereignty of God who raises up kings and tears them down and believes all suffering is for His glory and our good, can we not believe in the God who manifests the Spirit given to us as a pledge and a seal and with a power beyond reasoning? If we are truly filled with the power of God, why are we content to only see that which is humanly attainable?

and not dare to believe in the God who is able to do more than we can even ask or think?

Oh to believe like David who didn’t hesitate to listen for the Lord marching on the tops of balsam trees believing this Mighty God was on His way before him in order that he may slay an army and experience rest on all sides for a season. (2 Samuel 5:24).

And are we not a people to follow Paul’s example in shipwreck, in hunger, in poverty, in sleeplessness, in little, in prison, believing with a supernatural faith that the gospel is not imprisoned? And all this spins itself out in cracked jars so we see glory filled power housing itself in earthen vessels. Are we not the ones to share in the sufferings of Christ refined through molten fire?

Oh believer, God created us with a longing for more of Him.  For some, that means to long for more theology that they are lacking,

so that they may know God!

For others it means to long for more experience so that they do not shrivel up and die of thirst and hunger despairing because they have not heard, felt, tasted and seen His goodness pulled down by gravity, reaching through the body,

trembling in His presence.

We are to thirst for the living God.  If He is living, does that not mean that there is a divine energy within and around us that is meant to be experienced and known in Spirit manifestations that are meant to edify and offer hope?

The christian life is a complexity of blessing and suffering.  Gain and sacrifice.  Seasons of rest and seasons of an exhausting weariness.  Calendars of sickness and health,

like marriage.

Are we not betrothed to a Holy God who does whatever He pleases yet cares for us as a loving, cherishing and protecting husband?

Within this holy union between believer and Heaven’s King there will be times of ease and rest and renewal and blessing after blessing,

and times we are called to walk a dark road of suffering trusting Him for strength for each step, even when all we can do is crawl to the cross.  But the crawlers need the faith to believe that God is a God who heals and restores and meets needs and that Holy Spirit power will be poured out and fanned afresh if we consecrate ourselves to our living God and repent of our unbelief.

If our heart’s collectively cry with expectancy, “Show us Your Glory!” Resonating between the reformed and the charismatic, in humility gleaning from one another more riches of His glorious grace, may we then reach across the divide

extending  an invitation

to dance with one another, swaying to a holy harmony,

healing under Christ’s triumphant crescendo,

so that we may run like gospel warriors together conquering in Holy Spirit power.

whatever that looks likes.

praying for revival, burning with Holy Spirit fire,

trish

Posted on by Trish

hidden treasure in chronic illness

This week has been one of those weeks…

a week where the new roll of toilet paper sits on top of the empty roll until the new roll runs out.

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It’s unlike me not to change it, but I have been distracted.  I have had to preach to myself in order not to give in to a theology of fear that threatens to rob me of my steadiness in a Sovereign God who reminds me that “all the days He ordained for me were written in His book...when as yet there was not one of them (Psalm 139:16).  

And that “He performs what is appointed for me…and will accomplish what concerns me.” (Job 23:14, Psalm 138:8).

Some things are hidden and stay hiding in dark places reeking of must or damp cardboard.  These things got put away with a heart that couldn’t let them go, wanting them to be remembered, relived, re-read, framed or even put on display.   But they didn’t mean as much to the ones who came later,

passing through marked decades...

these items laden with layers of our existence…

dust…

remind us of where we came from and to where we shall return.  They speak a language of fragility, that displays our human weakness.  Pictures fade, ink seems to disappear into the yellowing of aging paper of letters written by hands that ached to touch the one they were sending words to. Silver and brass tarnish…and the fingers that marked them and souls that took pleasure in them have since absconded,

while bones lie down in dirt.

But if we studied them long enough,

we would learn that there are invaluable treasures in the dark places.

Boxes that house years, that keep a steady moving in sync with seasons, that turn into centuries of unknown value.  Lives that beared an Image. Hidden treasure meant to be discovered.

So one day we climb stairs, or descend them, searching and rearranging and find ourselves disappearing into hours and afternoons remembering with sighs and tears and hope and spark and new discovery.

Eyes scanning, souls sinking deep into a life that was here…

and glistened in reflection of the Author of it all.

Invisible prints of feet in wet dirt walked here and then blew away.

But in the blowing,

the wind obeyed it’s Master’s course.

Not one life escaped His notice.  Nothing they left could stay hidden for long, even if that’s what they wanted.

They lived, they breathed, they ate, they drank, they touched what we now touch, remnants of their story, portions that leave us aching for more. They got sick, body rejecting, healed…returning.

And we are better for the remembering… savoring…

the discovery.

So how does a chronic illness remind us of treasures in dark places?

I was 30 when a routine blood test exposed hiding cells that tried to flee back into angry veins with every sharp stick of that shiny point.  But the plunge of the needle into skin and stubborn blue pathways found them,

the ones that work for our bodies when we get cut deep and bleed long.  They work to clot our blood, rushing in and swiftly adhering to each other,

saving us. 

But I had too many…way too many,

and the risk of a sudden clot lodging in my heart, lung or brain was too high. My bone marrow had kicked into overdrive and couldn’t shut itself down without help.

The bigger needle used to suck up marrow extracted from my hip, strong and hard from my year of running miles alongside mornings, would prove a challenge to the one who extracted its gelatinous substance.

And then we waited two weeks to hear words like,

benign, leukemia, stroke, heart attack, small doses of chemotherapy every day the rest of your life, small chances of cancer forming, and oh yeah, we don’t know the long term side-effects since we typically don’t use this medication for someone as young as you.  Twenty years long might not be desirable, but when your 60 and start it, its ok. Most of our patients are over 60.  

I was 30.

My blood disease kept hiding though…symptoms remained nameless and kept to themselves.  If they wanted to see this rare condition they had to keep sticking that same scarred over piece of peachy flesh covering one  ungratefully stubborn vein, so they did,

every eight weeks.

“And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me…”.

In His weaving of me, in a dark place inside my mother’s safe and tiny womb-house, He knew the day would come when this chronic illness could no longer hide, and that  He would bring it into light,

shining through aging cracks of an earthen vessel.

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That day would come drowned in tears and a fear chasing it back to yesterday where it didn’t exist, yet it would tenderly lead my trembling soul through a doorway of tomorrow that would unveil my greatest Treasure.

That door would open into a world of sight, taste, touch and sound my senses had not been aroused to.  Like the God who calls us into a living breathing relationship with Holy and discovers that even mutated blood flows intermixed with the divine energy of the One who breathed new life into me.

The Creator of time and light, and me and the worker bee, and the human-like emotion of the dolphin,  and lines drawn for seas, would continue to reveal Himself  to me through the lens of chronic illness.

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I learned that though I suffered loss in three miscarriages, that were probably all a result of my run-away marrow, He still appointed me two more babies to smell, and to press warm skin against mine.  To show them Jesus and see how He marked them and set them apart, and to show them how to live believing,

every day of their lives were ordained and written in His book.

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, everything you thought you controlled rolls away from you like mad thunder and strikes lightning in your soul that awakens a helpless dependency.  This dependency fights hard against natural desire and it bends you under its fierce wind.  This is an intentional bending…fashioned by Holy, formed by Love, shaped by gentle power,

clothed with gospel intention.

Chronic illness forces us to slow down…to slow down enough to hear that Voice without sound interrupt plans and schedules and dreams and work and play. It can force us to invest into people and places, like the sanctuary of home, and hostile relationships that  once seemed to run second or third or fourth in our all-in mad sprint toward being the winner, because we matter more.

If we are willing, chronic illness presses us to give up first place, come in last, and serve others who keep trying to win.

Chronic illnesses force us to not only be dependant on a Sovereign God, but to be humble enough to say, “no,” or to admit we need more rest, or listen to professionals that God uses to help write our stories for His glory, or to take medication we think we don’t need.

To not to listen could be to sin as we try and prove our invincibility that shapes itself into a destructive idol.

You hem me in…and have laid your hand upon me (Psalm 139:5).

Fifteen years of a powerful drug counting platelets, teaches me tomorrow does not belong to us and to not –live-tomorrow-today/ .

Chronic illness taught me to breathe,

and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them, 

and live it without fear of the last  chapter, the last page, the last sentence. the Author is my Father, and He gives to me what is good.

My life verse has become, “Whom have I in heaven but You, and besides You, I desire nothing on earth.  My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26).

There is a treasure in this cracked jar of clay that houses this chronic benign blood disorder, and it is the reminder that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to me.

The theology of fear and the sovereignty of God simultaneously whisper, tomorrow does not belong to you…one steals joy, the other settles the future steadying you today.

So which voice will become your Treasure?

held, consumed, crazy in love with Jesus,

trish

don’t forget to join the conversation.  Tell your story…leave a comment, or subscribe to this blog!  Thank you for reading, may He bless you richly!

Posted on by Trish · 2 Comments

The fight

imageIt’s a dark, cold morning that came wrapped in fall.  The wind howls outside my window like a lonely ghost. I hold in my hands words entrusted to me to guard for I know Whom I have believed and Who wrote them. I press them to my face and breathe in deep. I believe, like the rise and fall of my chest, the inflating of my lungs, the rhythm of red that reminds me I’m alive pulsing out a prayer.  I have one thing to say as my fingers tap dance out words to a Holy script,

we are not alone…we are never alone.

He said trouble would find us. He said we would have to fight like soldiers, ambassadors, run like athletes. He said a promise formed on lips builds a fortress around a heart, when we know there’s an enemy.

There’s always an enemy.

 He said we would fight against ourselves and our wanting and craving would leave us hungry sick. He said our tongues would kill us. He said we no longer belong to ourselves but to the one He tied us to. He said we would have to carry our cross,

and like Simon of Cyrene, carry our spouses, too.

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He said we would feel a slow tearing and unraveling like a favorite shirt, well worn and loved, now unsaveable, the hole too big. If the two who were one were left to themselves, the hole would divide, threads blown away in yesterday’s wind.

And so we watch.  We have watched five pairs of geese, you know the ones who mate for life, at least they say they do, fly hungry and alone, in less than two years. We are filled with a sorrow strong as death; a swallowing grave.  We are filled with a fear that our nest may grow cold without the other to warm us. We are filled with a trembling that dares to look up with expectation to a Holy God that presses into us and keeps His joining of two, knowing that apart from Him we will end up as one, scarred from the jagged tear of divorce.

We’ve begged for papers transcripted by man to lead us out of this holy union. We’ve blown words like poisonous darts at one another, aiming to kill. We have withheld touch, affection, encouragement and worst of all prayer from one another.  We have sought freedom from the other who wore our blame in layers and layers until they stunk to us. We believed our lies

that we would be better apart than together.

That our children would we better and recover from angry ripped pieces of their lives searching for a holy stitching. Craving the tender kiss of God to awaken stony hearts.  Hearts once soft trusting, moldable.

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Children shaped and formed by a love that marked them with a personality, a mole, a laugh, a mop of curls or thin strands, smooth and straight.

Children taught not to throw stones, now bending, gathering,  building a wall round their hearts. Laying one stone atop the other, with every fight. Every  argument. Every selfish desire. Every wandering eye.  Every, in between the minutes, fantasy that there is something more satisfying than this.

Another stone.

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This marriage has seen trouble. This marriage has been wracked by the forces of greed luring us into a deep that drowned out hope

that forgot how to laugh.

This marriage has left scars on hearts

and holes in walls,

shards of glass on floors.

This marriage has seen financial collapse.

This marriage has knowing sickness, benign blood cancers lurking

threatening to steal tomorrow,

alcohol robbing.

This marriage has been shoved into frayed and damaged brains of a child and forced to navigate through a kind of death of a child we once knew, and embrace someone new and frightening emerging.  Someone we didn’t know,

Who scared us.

This new person would continue to surface ten years strong after the tree stopped 70 mph in a hunk of twisted metal.

This marriage has seen, felt, heard, touched and tasted GOD.

For I know whom I have believed…

and the heavy hand of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob….the One who leads out captives, the One who took a boy out of a pasture and crowned him king of a nation, the One who promises to accomplish what He has appointed for me,

This God, 

drives my soul unto its knees to pray and to weep and to beg for those being torn, right ripped and left jagged.

I want to fling open my doors and say come! Come and drink and learn and refresh yourselves in His rivers of delight. Come and know the sweetness in suffering and let Him apply healing oil to your wounds.

Carry your cross and carry your spouse!

Carry them when they cannot stand.  speak for them when they lose their words. Pray for them when their hope gets crushed with the steel weight of life.

Don’t stop reaching across the bed

when all you feel is their back.

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Touch their face and look into their eyes and tell them you’re staying and you won’t push away from this table set for two. Tell them you will keep rebuilding the nest when unforeseen storms of sickness, depression, anxiety, financial collapse, pressure and work ravage it and leave it in a mess of twisted sticks.

Lay down next to them and stretch your wing over them and warm them

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until death separates.

Keep serving…keep loving…

NEVER STOP PRAYING.

Find -the-better-in-the-worse.

held, consumed, known by God,

trish

Don’t forget to join the conversation. Gather hands and mend hearts through an unseen grace and love.  Open your doors. Share a story of healing and grace!

Scripture references: 1 Timothy 6:20, 2 Timothy 1:12, Hebrews 13:5, John 16:33, 2 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Timothy 2:5, 2 Corinthians 5:20, James 4, Proverbs 18:21, 1 Corinthians 7, Matthew 27:32, Ecclesiastes 4:12, Isaiah 64:6, Ephesians 4:8, Job 23:14, Psalm 36:8, Ezekiel 16:8-9.

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The cross

The Cross by Trish Pederson @trishpederson

So I wanted to try something different this time.  Instead of you just reading my words, I thought that I would read them to you in a video blog.  I chose a narrative that I had written for women’s retreat this past weekend and was able to share with a group of beautiful and beloved women who are desperate for more of Jesus.

However, it is important that we truly understand the cross and what that old splintered wood where Holy restrained in skin hung off the edge of heaven, dangling above hell from means.

Here is my narrative. I hope you enjoy it and share it. I hope you pray and ponder on these words. I pray you want Jesus more than any one thing on this earth.

What do,you think repentance looks like? Do we still need to be brought to Jesus on the cross, be washed in blood and scrubbed in mercy? Join in the conversation in the comments!

held, consumed, made whole in Christ,

trish

Posted on by Trish · 2 Comments

gloriously tired

At 7 am and approaching the bottom of our stairwell, my eyes landed on something that makes my messy life even messier, a soppy hair ball the size of my index finger.  The wet gray mass looked like it had its own tail and for a second, I thought Mr. Kitty hacked something up he had caught in the yard…nope just a tangling of licked off hair and some stomach contents.

Its 1:00 p.m. and though the thing that looked like my male cat birthed a kitten out of his mouth has been flushed down the toilet for the last six hours, it’s stain remains.

I am butt-end of the bread tired.  At least that’s what I posted on my facebook status last night.  What I am really saying is that, I don’t think I would be any good for anything or anyone right about now.  The butts always get thrown out.  No one wants the butt.  No one wants mouthful after mouthful of dried out crust taste with their sandwich.

So I’m crusty…

and my house is messier than I would like,

and after I saw the hairball, I saw this;

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because my kid can’t seem to either throw out what he isn’t going to eat, or at least put it in one of the many plastic containers I spent precious minutes washing yesterday after cleaning out fuzzy leftovers from the fridge.  No, to him the fridge shelf will suffice as a plate in case someone else wants it…

really?

There is a kind of tired beyond all tired’s.  You know the one…the one that you can’t get three words of a sentence out without your voice sounding like its riding a roller coaster and your eyes are fighting that burn as the internal dam relentlessly swells right ready to bust its way out.

Or the tired that snaps at my husband right before worship because sin escapes from my heart and lets itself out the mouth so it can trample down the soul next to me

the one who’s always next to me.

The one who’s used to the bottom’s of these feet words. Yeah, he knows their stinky smell…

There is a tired that leaves this

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for tomorrow because today I was told to rest, by the one who let my words run mad all over him and still reached for my hand to lead me into worship.

But I don’t like resting in the mess.  It makes me unsettled.  It makes me a doer.  It makes me anxious.  It makes me long to have the perfect magazine home, as if once I get everything cleaned up and in order I can finally rest.

And Jesus reminds me, as long as you are on this earth, this fallen sin-stained earth, you will be in the middle of a mess, either my own, or someone else’s, and if I want to really live like Him, I’ll walk into the temporary physical mess, but my eyes won’t focus on what moth and rust destroy, no, my eyes will fetch themselves a soul gaze and catch a glimpse of glory and eternity.

So I’m tired because I have been preparing for our upcoming women’s retreat.  Tapping keys that make words that form sentences that indent paragraphs about the One who came to fix our mess.

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The One who took the whole world’s mess of sin and bore it heavy, flesh ripped open, oozing blood, running down splintered wood, beaten beyond recognition while His mama watched, and His friends hearts split in two from the silent weight of Holy wrapped in skin hanging off the edge of heaven, dangling above hell.  The spit of those who seethed with hatred, hung off his face, as they drank and laughed and mocked this humble King.  This One, He found Himself in a cosmic mess.

I can complain about my mess and that I’m too tired to clean it up or I can rest knowing that Jesus walked into the biggest mess of world history and washed it all red in blood and scrubbed it raw in mercy so we didn’t have to try and clean everything up on our own.  He did, and He does.

Sure, we still have to care for our families and care well for them.  But when we can’t see eternities trail through scattered laundry, junk mail, school papers, wrappers, dishes, empty toilet paper rolls, fuzzy leftovers, splattered mirrors, scummy showers and tubs, overflowing garbages and stained floors, we will just be a barely limp along tired. But when we trade in our just plain “tired” for “gloriously tired,” then we will know His power has gone out from us leading the way. And though the sidelines may stay cluttered, the path marked eternity remains clear and the closer we get the smaller those piles appear.

Please watch the above video and be refreshed when you are poured out and empty and poor!

Join the conversation and tell me about your messy tired!

held, consumed, crazy in love with Jesus,

trish

Posted on by Trish

community

Who am I?

If I were to tell you who I am, I would tell you that I am a broken lover of Jesus following hard after Him, and a writer who often writes as messy as my life.

I would tell you I have received the gift of a husband, who I refer to as “the goose” because geese mate for life and never leave the other until death separates. Even then, a goose instinctively mourns often nestling itself alongside its feathered mate for hours and days after death.  Sometimes it’s grief is expressed through wings as it flies circles around it’s still friend and life partner, until in a downward swoop of exhaustion it makes its bed of death next to the one it cannot bear to soar without. This sounds like a beautiful love story, but these two geese here in this life have stared head on and headstrong in the face of divorce, begging for it to lead us out, and then bowed broken to the One who promised to finish what He started in us. We have hated, we have hurled word swords, we have rejected, we have torn down, and we have drawn blood. We bear scars of wounded expectations to remind us Who our hope is in.  We have faced crisis and adversity that has left 85% of Christian couples alone and floundering, victims of divorce, after being blindsided with brain injury in our oldest child. We have navigated through a mess of twisted brains for the last 10 years and we stay, because God won’t let us leave.

I would tell you I have received the gift of being called “mama” in sweet tender relationship with my three babes, and how “mama” has morphed into an angry “mother!” more times than I would care to admit, when I’m not listening…distracted…consumed with self or the pull of the world. I would tell you I let my kids eat raw cookie dough, carbs, sugar, and did not make them memorize scripture, though I had right intentions for their physical and spiritual health.  I would tell you I have disrespected their dad and let this untameable tongue, when I’m blinded by my own mad heat, get wild all over him….

blaming.

breathing out a putrid scent of self-righteousness….

And then I would tell you I cried broken.

I would tell you most of my life has been performance driven…

and left me suffocated sideways asking my husband, “please tie-me-to-you….” as we slept at night, for fear of losing my mind.

I would tell you I cherished “doing” and how my works trumped possessing a deep affection for people…until I was awakened to a desire beyond performance when I felt the warm soft of a Holy kiss and I flushed down to my toes in wild passion for the One who leaves me tokens of love…waiting when morning is sent forth out of its hiding.

I would tell you I experienced a kind of intense raw-love I didn’t think existed before I met the God who takes away.

I would tell you I take the hard path now and so that means I will lovingly disagree with you. I will cherish you, I will pray through our conflict, but I will choose Christ’s way and prayerfully explain why I believe it to be His way.

I cry broken and bleed sticky.

I would love to open this blog to a community of sticky, messy people who cry broken with me. I will be asking people to guest post.  I would love to hear your marriage struggles, your parenting struggles, your personal struggles. We will talk about current issues as well.

We are all wild olives.  We have been grafted into a family.  Share with me the pain of the pruning…

We are tribal and dance dangerously on the edge through our individual lives, yet we ache for the circle of rhythm within this tribal community.

We are daughters of Eve, hiding and ashamed, seeking healing…desperate to return to unbroken fellowship and restored relationship with Christ…and it happens in community.

Would you consider being a part of this blog? Email me your story. Suggest a topic.  Please keep it to less than a 1000 words.  If you aren’t a writer but just enjoy reading, share your comments, let us know you!

I will also be working at bringing this blog more up to date, but I am so technologically illiterate that it may take a while.  Send me photos I can post that help tell your story.  I will work on this on my end too!

Always  remember to bring glory to Christ who upholds and sustains all things including how He has shaped you through every trial and hardship.

I can’t wait to hear from you! Please comment in the comment section, and if you have a story you would like to share, email me at pedersn@frontiernet.net

What does community mean to you? How has God used community to grow you? And, men, you can comment too!  We value your brotherhood.

held, consumed, intoxicated by His love,

trish

Posted on by Trish · 1 Comment

why’d you name me that anyway, mom?

Lately, I’ve been studying faces.  I asked God if He would help me love people better and I think this is part of His answer.  I see a face on a run, around the corner of an aisle, or through a passing window and my eyes open on them…those souls hiding behind skin with eyes…peeking.  Attached to every face is a name and I wonder…

It’s like the rare, the ancient, excotic and right chipped cracked to the base.  Is it lovely protected by a window, this art untouchable?  Is it worth a breath of beautiful without its description?  A pair of hands at the end of a soul story spinning, shaping, squashing, restarting the creation.  If we know where it came from, do we breathe out wonder? Do we see its worth?

I’ve heard it said of me, “you’re a bit of an old soul.”  In many ways this is true.  I’ve been sure I was born into the wrong era, possibly the wrong century until God carved Acts 17:26 on my heart and steadied my time-travel wanderings.  And if you look at the names of my children, this would be true, for Hannah goes back thousands of years, while Kylee and Carter hundreds.  The heritage runs richer than I ever cared to study when I slapped a tag on each of them.  I named them because I liked the sound of their names…and other old-soulish reasons.  Hannah was suddenly changed from the chosen “Ashley” one week before I, present in fullness of all of her bearing down and split, emptied out and gave her my grandmother’s name. I loved old. Her name gave her that in everything new.  Kylee I chose because I met a woman named Kylee and instantly knew that would be her name.  I had never heard anything so beautiful.  It was Irish, and it was a way of keeping at least a root of the haunting Gaelic in us.  Then there was Carter.  One full pregnant and old soul day, grandma said all southern strong, “I wish one of you girls would name your baby boy “Carter” after my daddy!”  When Grandma meant it, drips of southern ran down every word.  I needed no further convincing, cuz I love grandma, southern, and the name Carter.

Some people agonize over naming their flesh and cells and bones and strands of color split up in chromosomes.  Like my sister who couldn’t bear to give my niece a name until it was the perfect one.  For one week she was just “she,” nothing more, nothing less.  Grandma’s southern came wrapped in a stringed tornado at the end of a real telephone on a cord each day of that nameless week, “When are ya gonna name that baba?”  She finally decided to go all Swahili on us and chose Aziza.  We just call her Z. Pretty sure this root has to be grafted in.

And then when it gets right down to the deepest of it.  When you know there is more to it then hormone-wild emotion, or the standard or blessing of a name, you wonder if you named them because He chose through our freedom, our flaws, our crazy, our wishing…did He whisper a name and we knew it belonged to that one?  Cuz it wouldn’t be right on the other one.  It fits this one.  Like when 1500 pounds of metal wrapped itself around bark and the only thing that held in her sloshed brains was skull.  Chaplain calls and says, “come now, not much time.” Time grows and doctor says only one other has ever woke up from this.  Eyes open empty, they pass through you like a lost ghost, and doctor stomps out your raging hope fire and says, “this may be it.”  Then God pours out favor upon favor and everything lifeless in skin attached to tubes breathes and moves and talks and walks and writes four years of English in college.  And you say, this is her name, for Hannah means grace and favor of God. 

And after God dumps an ocean of favor out on one, Kylee retreats and grows small, for she is narrow, like a channel finding it’s way through fog thick and winding…..And I have to shrink to get inside of her again.  And I get small….navigating my way back to her and we flow together into the new spring reflecting glorious and its fresh here, but we had to take the narrow way.  The mystery of the Gaelic one…still makes me be less, her way is hard…for it requires I go to her bare, stripped….don’t pack too much…she just wants me.  And her narrowness points to Holy, for His way is narrow…and we sacrifice ourselves, because He did, to get there.

And then in between Asics bouncing on pavement running with Holy…I chuckle that Carter means “cart driver, cart-loader” and God says, He leads in worship and many are burdened….In His fingers fashioned for stringed instruments and His  chords of minor lifts, He loads up weights and troubles and drives them off in a song to the One who daily bears our burdens. 

And I think, You knew all that when I just liked the way they sounded…