I got to run this morning….fueled by 7.5 of sleep makes for quicker miles and clearer thoughts.  For me, running usually results in a blog, scribbled notes smeared with drips of sweat, the missing sentence, and prayer all tangled in with the mess of stringed words.  But running is always worship, even the words that may make for a good blog or article find themselves bowing to the One who intricately designed that which would birth forth anything at all worth a lick of reading. I can’t write unless I first see, or smell, or hear or touch something of this holy creation. Like when I ran down into the meadow and felt it’s hot breath of passing summer surround me and I thought it about time for the crickets to put away their bows and silence their chirps. Or how orange and black fuzz wraps itself up in a season and dusty wings fly a days worth of living.  If you can’t see God in this, what’s the point?

I prayed for those who have lost hard. Cuz loss runs wild over a soul….. uncatchable….until it hitches up against the blind and with one hard yank rips the scales off…and swollen red eyes see Holy. He floods in, in a collision of Grace and mad exhales and shows us the way to live both lonely and full, cuz He makes a home for the lonely (psalm 68).

I run past a young mama, with a fresh babe at her breast. I inhale the newness and young of it all. God makes babies. God gives tired mamas sweet, fresh skin to run tender fingers along as if discovering a soul treasure swaddled in skin…..and milky breath to breathe in as tears run past a smile wrapped around this life. This. Now. Life. Where God is. Everywhere.

I keep running and listen to ghosts of days breathe through trees, and the bow creaks in the sway. And this too, calls for my soul to stand to attention in worship,as the first leaves dance about in a swirl.

I pray and ask that my verses be addressed to and for the King. I want what’s glorious inside to find a trail out the tips of fingers and relish the run in phrases and descriptions that reflect our ever creating God. The run, the meadow, the prayer, the mama and babe, the ghosts…..I’ve caught them on a page and I will remember them.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel that day, but He said go, so I like the others who had already been going and saving mamas and babies, set out to a hostile and foreign place. I had already been there, but a quarter of a century had passed since then, and the thought of returning had never entered my mind until He said “go. ” He’s like that you know? He makes us return to those ancient ruins in order to show us He is the Rebuilder and Redeemer and Restorer of all those years chewed up and devoured by the locusts. Still, this place, Lord?  This was a place I’d hoped no one would ever know I had once visited. This was a place buried under years of forgotten, shame-shackled, and pushed into corners covered by miles of self-preservation, and an unwillingness to share…as if it never happened…as if I never made the conscious choice.  There were parts I wanted left out of the story, but I kept forgetting I wasn’t the author of my story, God was, and what I wanted to stay hidden in the darkest corners of my past, He said, needed to come into the light, because He was at work then, and that even the darkness was not dark to Him and He had done a glorious and wondrous work there….in my blackest.  And so on that day, the day He said “go,” He grabbed my trembling hand and steadied the racing beats held in by ribs,  and together we walked into the Planned Parenthood adjacent parking lot.

As I began to ask the Lord what He wanted me to write about, he said there were places we would have to return, because He had always been there and we would face them together.  I asked Him that I might be a good steward of my words. To help people see Him in all the mess of life we create, each one of us in tangled stories of sin and forgiveness….grace interrupitng…in our turning and running.

And then I saw her.  She was just there front and center as if she had been there hours in advance to set up camp for the army who would come.  All nine or so decades of her, all in, on that day.  She was wrinkled with the passing of merciless age and creased with kindness.  The pressing, bumping, space invading crowds, the scorn of hostility from the PP, these weren’t enough to keep her at a distance.  No, on this day she would not be found safe at home surrounded by the friendly familiar.  There was no waiting to hear second-hand what her Lord told her to walk into that day all dressed up in battle attire.  So she went, all of her twisted joints, ache of gospel-worn feet with thousands of miles of compassion and obedience, and the slowness of decades behind a life.  This could be her last one, and so she wrapped fingers twisted with arthritis around that strong familiar Hand of her First Love and went.  There was a mass of beating red, strong that day, conceiving of prayer and birthed through faithful lips.  She was the one I would see when I returned to an abortion clinic.  When I saw her, her lips moved like Hannah’s, and our eyes never met, for hers were closed, hands folded in prayer, undisturbed to the thousands surrounding her.  Her prayers seemed to form invisible cradles for the ones without cribs on that day, and they rocked those being unraveled in the building next to us as they fell into hands of Holy. She didn’t just stand in the gap that day, she laid down a bridge of self over the gulf between life and death. When I saw this frail and mighty servant of Jesus, my eyes spilled in gratitude, overwhelmed with love, victory, sadness…in remembering.  .

How long, Lord? How long has she been praying?  I wondered.  Since Roe verses Wade?  Had she prayed for me when You roared in and rescued me and the life forming in my deep from inside the walls of an abortion clinic all those years ago? How many babies have been saved in accordance of your will that carried her prayer? Had she waged a mighty war on Roe verses Wade? Here stood a battered warrior of prayer, unafraid to stand in the center of a protest of over four thousand people.

And so we sang and we prayed and next to me was a woman holding her adult daughter, the one who had just one more chromosome, celebrating her life, because all lives matter and we all bear His image… and the first nucleus of a cell is reflected in all of us through Him.  They were here together because on the day of her birth God danced.  He danced when they said “she has Down Syndrome,” and she said, “she has my eyes.”  He leaped when they said, “special needs,” and she said “I need her to show me more of Jesus.”  He let out a shout when they said, “it will be hard,” and she said “the hard way through Christ softens me.”  I had kin here.  The next generation, young marrieds with toddlers and swelling tummy’s with babies still safe.  Blacks, Asians, Whites….a family of wild color reflecting an Image. We came to say lives matter.  We came to learn how to partner with the One who saves lives because His blood ran down wood sticky and warm and we tasted it and lived.

This wasn’t the time to wonder why Catholics believe what they do, or Baptists preach what they preach, or the Reformed try and reform them all, or Charismatics show us what they feel, this was a family standing on kingdom ground in unity….together. These were my kin, brothers and sisters I would one day stand next to again crushing the broken rubble of shattered denominations under our feet, when we really believe there is neither Jew nor Greek .

And so I went, because blood ran down a cross. Because the grave is empty.  Because Christ roared in and rescued me from abortion and made me remember… I made a choice, and though I needed to repent of making that choice, He delighted in granting me unimaginable kindness and mercy that day.  I went because its time for me to keep going and standing in that gulf bridging it with prayer like her.  And maybe real cradles will rock live children if I keep going.

Something from two years ago…

Father, Abba, who knows me so perfectly, so intimately, so beautifully and wisely; You wise, true, faithful and all powerful God, created a story for me…not to make much of me, but to put on display your glory, your splendor through a broken and crushed daughter.  A girl born into sin, yet fearfully and wonderfully made.  A girl who would deny you a thousand times; stand with scoffers.  A girl who chose sin, lust, self; hurting, beaten, bruised – seeking heavenly salve, yet her soul did not know it.  Salve from heaven came down and covered the girl, and with Holy salve came the weight of Holy trouble.  The girl began to have frequent and familiar encounters with a Holy God who gives and takes away; and in the taking, hope was born.  In the taking there was grief.  In the taking there was suffering.  In the taking there was anguish.  There stood the girl stripped, yet clothed.  Clothed in heavenly attire, clothed in a righteousness that on her own she could not claim.  With every stripping, the robe remains to cover her nothingness, her nakedness apart from Him.  There are days when suffering stings, yet the robe is safe.  There are moments of sin, yet the robe, still safe.  There are hours and days where darkness hovers, and there standing in the robe, the girl is reminded that even the “darkness is not dark to Him.”  There are days she cannot stand, and there, on Holy ground, crying for more salve, the robe remains.  The lower she goes, the thicker and heavier the sweet heavenly salve.  It won’t be long and she’ll stand again.  How could she stand at all having not known the depth of the weight of Holy trouble?  A weight that crushes, yet renews.  A weight that breaks and stops a selfish heart and slowly re-starts the rhythmic beating of two hearts, a girl’s and her King’s.

“I’m afraid I might hurt them…I’m so scared…maybe if you tie our ankles together while we sleep it will help me feel safe…”  I said in a barely voice.  A cracked voice whispering through the effects of dehydration and an all consuming anxiety that had left me 11 pounds less than me in 11 days. For the past few months I had been fighting.  Fighting hard.  Fighting for peace.  Fighting for joy.  Fighting for happiness.  Fighting to please.  Fighting to keep the girl, the wife, the mama.  If I could just keep her alive I wouldn’t sink into it all, I wouldn’t lose everything I counted as gain. My husband would stay.  My friends would still look up to me.  My kids wouldn’t lose their mom to a psych ward.  I waved the white flag and collapsed.

As a young wife and mom, I was in a place I never thought I would fit. I loved it. I loved who I had become.  I was married to a man born out of pride and responsibility and he was safe. He bought me a home and then a bigger home.  We gave our kids lessons, and love and prettied up pieces of broken.  I saw him and knew I would marry him.  He told me he would marry me on our third alcohol slushed day together.  I walked into his arms and fell into his bed in a haze of brandy and cokes.  By a righteous outstretched arm over us and a stitching of holiness we’re still here minus the haze.   I was jagged, raw-edged, skin-stretched before my time.  I had a list of erased names belonging to men.  I had cigarette breath and alcohol veins.  I gave off an aroma of pride mingled with shame and the scent of a God who gave up.  I didnt’ even know I ran from the God who hounded, wildly…furiously.   I stood with mockers and ran into a darkness that would continue its fight for me.  I bared it all because I had nothing to lose and the eyes of strange men saw everything..

Seven years old held a heart written with  new words of life, breathed on by Spirit, awakened to grace.  I loved my Jesus and desired to do everything He wanted me to do.  I was a good girl on the outside.  I loved to read and get good grades and please my parents, but inside rebellion ran deep and I didn’t just dip my toes in it, I played the game of who can touch the bottom first and I won every time. I drank from a mason jar something that burned my throat when I was 14, and though I hated the taste I loved the euphoria.

I had somehow found myself the mother of three and I heard the Voice without sound whisper into hungover ears one Sunday, “take them to church” and we drove until we stumbled in, and I remembered Jesus.  There were fresh tears and new hope and Jesus said He had always been there and I believed Him and wanted to tell my babes everything I knew to be true of Him and all of the beautiful new things He was teaching me. There were conversations about God and heaven between toddlers and mama… and angels stooped low to listen.  I memorized scripture while they napped, lungs filled with worship, that burst through deaf tones, and I didn’t care that I couldn’t match a note to a scale, I was sure the sound of angels joining in my chorus drowned out my flats and sharps. And this is the way it went.  God blessed and I stayed home and cooked and baked and attended bible studies and learned to pray on a floor and get intestine honest with God. At first I was afraid to have my bible out in front of my husband, but after a while I didn’t care.  I ate and stayed hungry.  I thirsted and stayed thirsty.   I read everything I could on godly marriages and grace-filled parenting.  I studied each child’s love language and spoke in each of their tongues.  I was pretty sure I was doing it all right and God was pleased.

It was in the middle of my right where everything turned sideways and wouldn’t stand straight again. Even me, sideways in bed.  I couldn’t get up.  Something hit me so hard one day it knocked air from my lungs and I literally couldn’t breathe.  I struggled for every breath. Food became my enemy.   I couldn’t swallow because my throat always felt like it was closing in on anything I would try and eat or drink.  I trembled violently each time I brought fork to mouth. I feared the worst.  I feared they would lock me away and I would never see my children again.  just when I thought I couldn’t fear anything else, the images came. I was afraid I would lose my mind all together and hurt my own children.  I closed my eyes tight and commanded them to leave in Jesus name.  I tried to chase them out with scriptures on peace and resisting the devil.  They fearlessly stared back at me. It’s as if my fear strengthened them.  I called my husband home from work and dissolved into his arms on the hull of our garage.  I wept and felt his chest heave in unison with mine as he wiped his own tears before they wet my hair. I feared losing my children.  He feared losing me.  We were both losing. I went to bed and didn’t get up.  For days.  He brought me half turkey sandwiches and pressed them to my lips, while he whispered in close “please eat, baby…”  He got low and prayed.  He offered, “I’m here, baby” and reached for my hand in my terror filled sleepless nights.  He brought me xanax and sleeping pills.  He tied our ankles together each night with the belt of my robe so I wouldn’t wander.  He searched for me in the pitch of night and found me on the floor of my middle daughter’s room trying to be as near to her as possible in hopes that the nearness would grant me – me back….I was a good mom!  But the images had lied to me.  He reached into me where I was so lost, took my hand and said, “c’mon baby, lets go back to bed, she knows you love her.”…more words would come,  “c’mon baby, get in the shower, I’ll go with you.”  He led me to the bathroom while bones through skin shook and I couldn’t look up. I steadied myself on the bathroom counter and looked into hallow eyes.  Someone was in the mirror staring back at me, but it wasn’t me.  Where did I go?!  I screamed from inside.  I can’t find her!  I got into the shower and held one trembling hand toward heaven and begged God to take my life and stop my racing heart.  I wanted to die but was too afraid to take my own life.  I couldn’t face another day.  But God breathed a silent no over me and I groped for Him but couldn’t find Him.   I opened my Bible and stared at black words against thin white and yelled at God.  My mind so distracted I couldn’t read one verse.  I pressed my bible into my chest hoping it would save me from the cancer-fluid of self filling my lungs.  I asked God to breathe for me.  My friends were afraid of me, like Job. In a daze of staring at empty words in between leather binding,  I yelled, “if this is what it means to be a Christian, I don’t want any of it!” and a tiny stream of light broke through into my solitary hell.  I showered and put on mascara and lip gloss.  Still weak, I walked into my husband’s office and tears fell out of his eyes onto his suit. He took my hand and we walked outside and he said he’d never seen anything more beautiful.  The healing had started, but the wounds still raw…

I opened up Beth Moore’s breaking free and God spoke to me about everything He had shattered in the breaking so that I might be free.  He said I had to forget who I was, so that I would always remember who I was in Him.  He taught me who He was and who I was as His beloved and we danced.  Oh, I was still afraid to dance, clumsy and weak, but He led and we swayed together under heaven’s orchestra, my head to His heart.   He breathed for me and I inhaled Him. I stopped shaking and fighting images.  I started to sleep.  I remembered how to laugh.  I remembered God.  And I begged Him again.  This time I begged Him never to take me back there.  Each time I looked back in fear, Jesus gently took my chin and tenderly turned my gaze toward Him.  He became my life, my treasure, my love, my joy.  I had a new understanding that even the flames of hell are free to singe me in His sovereignty, but their licks can only reach so far. That even the image of my sweet husband tying our ankles together so I wouldn’t wander alone in the dark, reminded me that nothing would separate me from Christ and His love and I began to trust. I learned that I had an identity so steeped in being the good wife, the best mom…because that’s what Christian women do, and it somehow cleaned up my past. At least that’s what I had believed. But he took those false beliefs and showed me truth and showed me that He not only runs to the broken but He breaks those who think they’re shatter-proof.  He showed me the cross again and this time I saw real blood and wanted to taste it.  I drank His blood and let Him wash me in it anew.  I let His mercy scrub me raw.  I wet His feet with tears and snot again and again and again in more gratitude in groans than words in voice. He showed me how to cling to the cross and believe down to my toes that I couldn’t earn His approval through righteous works and obedience to my role as a wife and mother. I could never be perfect enough, He was the perfect one!  In His severest of mercies He let me crumble in a heap unable to distinguish reality from insanity and sang to me there.  And then one day He whispered, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along.  For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers have already appeared in the land; the time has arrived for pruning the vines, and the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.  The fig tree has ripened its figs and the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance.  Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along!”  (Song of Solomon 2:10-13). He kissed me and tied Himself to me and I was no longer afraid.

At a.m. and black I craved more spoonfuls of milky sleep drift…cuz sometimes He feeds them to me.  Other times he feeds me words and pours out morning oil. This morning was for coffee and oil. After loving the lump (aka Ezra dog) and feeding that cat..I found my spot somewhere at the end of the fourth watch.  Through the soul-cry of the psalter I learned about the night watches, how his soul waited for the Lord more than the watchman waits for the morning…and it sang to my soul, and so as most mornings go…I came before His table to watch and to eat words.  If I don’t go to that banquet table and drink deeply from sweet wine, allow myself to be kissed by God, inhale His breath…I will starve and try and fill up on Facebook, Twitter, to-do lists…but then I would feel like I so often have when I overeat, I should have stopped, slowed down. Now I’m sick and for some reason I keep pitch forking it in. I’ve learned, this kind of filling up never satisfies. I need real food.  I need manna. I need pure milk.  I need raisin cakes and apples, the sweet juice of pomegranates.  It’s all been set before me.  The God who never slumbers nor sleeps prepares it for me before light greets earth.

I’m in a long season of feasting right now.  I’m steady. I want to stay steady.  But steady won’t stay if I shut my ears to the Shiver-whisper that beckons in the still dark.  So I go.  I didn’t always go.  This self serving, sleep loving girl used to think, I don’t need the banquet, I’m sure I can grab a protein bar.  Something power packed in five minutes, on the run, in between checking my phone, peeping into windows of Facebook friends, joining the song of tweets instead of waiting for the song of  real feathered worship just outside my window.  But somehow, just reading an online devotion in ten minutes, or skimming a psalm, lifting up distracted and interrupted prayers, wouldn’t sustain me.  If I didn’t take time to savor what Jesus had prepared for me, to eat choice words and drink sweet wine, to feel and touch and taste and see his goodness and just stay…then I could never be ready for husband and kids and schedules and appointments and ministry and pressing needs.  It’s like trying to serve them me without Jesus, and me minus Jesus…ain’t pretty and she sure ain’t sweet. The law of kindness that’s supposed to be on my tongue is more like the law of Trish, harsh, demanding an obedience that reeks of gallows…Trish is both judge and jury and as far as she is concerned your all guilty. But when I’ve slowed down to Jesus pace, filled up on his words that have become the joy and rejoicing of my heart, waited in the garden with Him for more than one hour…then nothing is wasted, I’m no longer anxious.  When I wish my young adult kids would just go and make their lives, I am reminded of coffee and oil.  He poured it out on me so I could pour it out on them. Cuz that’s what we moms do, we pour and we pour and we pour, but if we don’t let the One who turned five loaves and two fish into enough to feed thousands, feed us….we won’t find any oil at the end of the jar.

She said she slipped on something.   He said, “don’t take off your shoes.” He did, and felt the saturation of urine filled carpet seep through his socks and slip between toes.  Thick air…smoke still heavy finding its way through every inhale, silently filling unaccustomed lungs.  Mingled odor trails of an unattended dog and cigarettes making a trail through hallways and rooms…”be careful where you step.” Butts and ashes…piled high and falling off the edges of liquor filled glasses. “She wanted a party” he said, “we have to have a party…everyone loved her.” My soul was colliding with the woman’s I was led into conversation with.  I didn’t want to go to this event.  So I had prayed.  I always prayed. “Lord, give me grace, help me to really love people tonight, give me something meaningful here.”  I crave meaningful conversation. I avoid small talk at all costs.  It’s too awkward.  You’re forced to say things that you care nothing about….and worse yet, to people you care nothing about.  Energy is wasted digging into deep brain pathways, searching for words that stumble along and awkwardly bump into each other….and then they land on a soon forgotten conversation. Except for this conversation. This one was different….a gift wrapped in words that crashed into my heart.

It was in the end she would call three times each hour.  “I need to go to the bathroom” and so, driven by nothing more than an intense love for his bride of 40 years, he faithfully walked across the gravel drive that connected two homes…two hearts.  His home the garage, her’s the home he had built for her. He had been forced to move out of the home he shared with this love of his…his asthma could no longer fight the grey thick swirl that hovered in their home.  And so with every call, he went.  He walked into a place he never thought he would go. You don’t think “for worse” when your tongue forms a promise woven into your heart. It’s possible to say it and even mean it, without thinking it.  This man meant it.  And so his days consisted of dying as he entered into the last days and weeks with his bride. The worst days…some would say, or were they “for better?”   Every twenty minutes, with every step, a  part of him would die as he walked from garage to house in order to gently lift his bride from the couch and carry her to the bathroom.  On his walk he would lift his eyes to her once prized gardens, now overcome, tangled and choking through strong rooted weeds…a bloom here and there peeking through crevices of light…watching him, as if to say, “we’re still here, can you see us?” he saw them.  It’s like our life, he thinks, some just can’t see the beauty in it, but I know…I see it.  And then outside the bathroom door he would graciously wait…. and then stoop low to once again lovingly cradle his bride always careful not to cause pain, and walk her back to the couch.

Alcohol and dementia rob.  There is no other way to make sense of it.  And just as a thief vandalizes a property breaking into something that doesn’t belong to him, alcohol and dementia can shatter everything that built and sustained a precious life, two lives, multiplied into five.   And it happens slowly and subtly, often going unnoticed.  But once they find their way in, the victim is left vulnerable, exposed.  Dignity disappears as fast as the liquor.  And what’s left?  I kept listening…

“She was green when I saw her in the hospital, her liver didn’t work anymore… but she knew us. We tried to get her to stop, but she would rather drink then eat…she loved being social that way….she had a DNR…this is what she wanted… but she waited for Mike, he was her favorite, and then she went.” Her words formed one long run-on sentence, because when a soul spills it runs over all things proper.  But it’s more real this way.  I want real.  How old was she?” I asked. “Sixty-nine.”

Busyness can numb pain.  Or maybe hands that were made to work find solace and comfort in moving and navigating through deep painful waters.  It’s a way of coming up for air.  Stillness doesn’t work in these moments.  That’s for later.  They say there are five stages of grief one must go through. I hesitate to put numbers to what the human heart experiences.  That’s only for God to lift…. and to press in His time. there is no science to grief.   Some stages are never entered, other stages last years before the next barges in uninvited one day.  But hours after the loss of her mama she was just doing what her mom had taught her to do.  Work and love people.  This is what she wanted….  and so, she got busy.  She got busy emptying those overflowing glasses, scrubbing down walls, teaming up with the others, ya know those ones her mom loved…hard, like her favorite, Mike.  And they worked until, that once beautiful house and brilliant gardens surrounding it, shone once again, freshly cleaned, alive and fresh with outside air. “My mom was really into her community, they needed this.”  

and as the sun was being tucked into a sleepy sky with a blanket of pink woven into white and blue… and the conversation was coming to a close I asked, “How did he do it?”  She simply responded in the words of her dad when she had asked him the same question…”for better or for worse, honey… for better or for worse.”  

God had answered my prayer.  I wanted meaningful and I got it.  What could be more meaningful then hearing about someone finding the better in the worse?  Loving until death separated.  Carrying a bride to the bathroom when skin is sagging, mind fading, tangled and confused….loving…really loving… until the end.  This is love…and true love endures through the worse.  What a gift to hear the story of a man who opened my eyes to the better in the worse…

It was just there one day, that scar.  It must have been there for years, and somehow I had missed it.  How could I have missed something like that? It wasn’t even small.   I mean for 21 years of story after story….21 years of bodies intertwined and tangled up in dark, in light…in sickness and in health.. In ugliness and beauty…..in time-stopped wonder and racing the minutes…. this scar had been exposed to my eyes again and again and somehow I had missed it.  It wasn’t even in a strange place or a hidden spot.  Did I mistake it for a crease?   After all, it was right there where the knee bends and skin folds. I studied it for awhile in silence.  Silence except for the songs in the woods.  My best friend and I had decided to spend a cherished afternoon together in our favorite place.  We had to fight for that afternoon.  The morning had started off normal and right as we had attended worship services together.  My favorite psalm was preached.  And afterward, we had the afternoon to ourselves.  The rain bird and the musician (our two adult children still at home) were both gone! The afternoon was ours.  Can you believe we began to get irritated with one another over where to eat lunch? We almost lost the fight, but I was determined to enjoy the gift of my husband and his company on a nothing -Sunday afternoon.  Sunday’s are for nothing…I say.  I mean except worship and rest.  The rest is just that “nothing.”  Glorious, rest-filled nothing.  Enjoying to its fullest a sabbath intended to restore one and refresh a tired mind and body in preparation for a week’s work. And I couldn’t wait to do nothing with this cherished friend of mine. His heart knitted to mine.  A love betrothed and sin-stained from the start, somehow redeemed and set in motion by the God who hangs stars and commands the morning.  A covenant God was keeping these last 21 years for us.  I don’t think either one of us take credit.  We have simply been bathed in grace, and scrubbed in mercy.  And that’s where I saw it, right in the middle of nothing. Every scar tells a story….I wanted to hear it.  Us writers, well we love stories.  We crave meaningful conversations that dig a little deeper into a soul.  Stories that prick and spill a little blood…its worth the stain, if I can’t get it off or out of my heart.  The stories that give us insight into how you ever got here…ya know this place where you love what you love, crave what you crave, hate what you hate, do what you do…say what you say- Why you put words to carefully reflected on thoughts or have after-thoughts to words recklessly spoken… Words that budged in front of the quiet Voice without sound and trampled down a soul.  If you can’t share with me the deep hidden “who,” instead of the surface “what” I think I see, well, I’m probably not interested. So I ask, and then I write.

“Is that a scar?” I said. A little embarrassed to have finally noticed after 21 years.  He traced my brown-eyed line of sight to his knee.  “Yeah.”  “How did it happen?” “I wiped out on the scooter when I was a teenager. It could have been the time I was severely drunk.” He said with a chuckle.  I know a lot about my husband’s heart and I ache to know more.  We sat again in silence. Sweet soul -swaddling silence. And the silence made words float in and out of my head. Words like “scar” and the words I previously wrote about, “the heart of her husband…” And somehow they go together.  If I had missed this visible scar all of these years, surely I had missed the “invisible” scars  of my husband’s heart. It’s possible I was responsible for some of those scars, more than possible, I can guarantee you I’m guilty.   And could it just be that since I was called to help my husband in a way that his heart trusts in me, that I had more work to do? I’m not talking about trying to dig into your husband’s mind and heart and annoy him to death.  I am talking about digging into the word of God in order that you might unearth the wisdom into what God has called you to when it comes to your husband’s heart.

Last we met, we talked about the parallel of Titus 2:4-5 and Proverbs 31:11.  The older women are to teach the younger women to love their husbands and how the heart of her husband trusts in her.  Let’s pick up with the same two instructions a couple words further.  The text says “the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain.  She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.” (Proverbs 31:11-12).  So here we are…still learning about our husband’s heart and what and how loving them with an affectionate love helps us burrow into that red pulsating seat of emotions, where courage to lead is either strengthened and built upon or torn down by our own hands (see Proverbs 14: 1).  A place that can either harbor a safe shelter of understanding towards us, or run from finding a resolution to conflict.  A lump of beating red able to store away sweet memories or avoid even making a memory because memories aren’t safe… too many scars. How do we handle our husband’s hearts with the gentlest of care and the tenderest of touch with our affectionate love in order to create a sanctuary of trust and safety?  You see the next word “trust” means just that, “to feel safe, secure, confident and bold, careless, to hope.”  Thayer’s Greek Lexicon puts it this way, “to confide in anyone, to set ones hope and confidence upon.”  Surely, this sounds like a huge responsibility for us.  After all, they are the ones instructed to lead us, right? Yes, but what a privilege to be given the responsibility to help our husband’s lead with courage, boldness and confidence!  And what a sweet gift we are given when we lay open bare our own hearts inviting our husband’s in where he feels safe enough to confide his deepest fears and longings…and how even more glorious when we have practiced confession of sin to our husband’s in such a way that they feel safe enough to trust us with their own confession of sin. This is possible.  But we need to return to the ancient paths I wrote about in my blog titled, “I Want To Teach You To Sink” and “Order in The Garden.”  Listen to the next verse in Proverbs 31:12, ” she does him good and not evil, all the days of her life…” ALL THE DAYS OF HER LIFE! This woman, who fears the Lord, is first looking out for her husband before herself, before her children, before her work, before her household duties, before her ministry. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. OF HER LIFE. The two scriptures I am blogging about put in order our precious and sacred responsibility under the authority of a Holy God.  Our responsibility is first to fear the Lord, and then to do good to our husbands all the days of our lives in such a way that their fragile hearts may go forth in confidence having no lack of gain.  What is gain? It is defined in the Hebrew as plunder or booty, as the goods obtained from war.  Now, I could go into how marriage is war….and it can be sometimes, but I don’t believe that is the context here.  The context actually means that he is blessed.  Literally with “his life as booty” that he is “preserved alive.” Now I am not a fan of modern day psychology even though I graduated with a degree in it, but some of what I learned was sincerely valuable.  Like when I took a class on gender and one of the studies researched on women who stay home verses women who work revealed that men who have stay at home wives tend to live healthier and longer lives, then men who are married to women who work.  I found this fascinating, but really it’s simple.  The men who had stay at home wives were more focused on their husbands needs, more focused on caring for their husbands, mind, body and soul. They realized their main job and priority was to invest in their husband and studies proved their husbands were blessed with longer lives as a result of it.

Oh sweet woman of God, dear beloved daughter, this is not to incite within you bitterness and resentment towards caring for your husband.  When we return to the ancient paths God has called us to, something soul-satisfyingly sweet happens within this earthly covenant love.  Would you join me in traveling that ancient path and becoming a student of our husband’s hearts? I promise you when you walk that path in search of God’s heart…messed up marriages begin to make sense even amidst the mess, and as you peer into your husband’s heart, may you see a reflection of your own heart, your own scars that need to be exposed and seen in order that you can run to the One who bled for these two hearts…. that they, together, may breathe fresh life with every beat of their brokenness glorifying Christ and reflecting to this broken world an all consuming, relentlessly pursuing, ever-chasing Invisible Love?

Next time we meet, I hope to give some practical suggestions and insight gleaned from this search…this 21 year, swimming in grace, reclining on Christ, being scrubbed down with grace at the cross, life.

Consumed in His love, no really…swaddled and wrapped and held,

trish

The heart of her husband…the heart of her husband. Five little words that in themselves do not form a sentence…they are but a fragment of something bigger, yet those parts to a bigger whole, words that dig holes….and stay a while, or search for a home….or tunnel down deep in order to get to the other side….that’s what they were doing….the heart of her husband…trusts in her…those parts, they just kept digging until they became a prayer in sync with my breath.  Teach me, Lord, would you teach me about the heart of my husband?

It was quiet in our bedroom the other night.  There were no announcers talking about the British Open, or background noise from a giant crowd mixed with shrill squeaking of rubber soles on polished wood.  My soul was sinking into the word of God by lamplight as my body sunk a bit deeper into my well indented side of the bed.  The goose was next to me…where he always was.  Nothing had ever separated us in 21 years.  Grace.   “Where are you?”  Without taking my eyes off the page, I answered, “Ephesians.”  “What part of Ephesians?” Quietly pondering where this conversation might be being sovereignly led, I said, “I’m reading and praying through Epehsians 1.” Another question from the goose, “What do you pray about?”  More pondering…. I could answer in a short brushing him off sort of way in order to get back to my reading, or I could let him in to what was stirring so deeply within me.  Could I let him in…there?  The place that longs and yearns and pants and feels crushed with a soul thirsty craving that my partner in life could never satisfy? Was never meant to? Was it safe? What would he say? Could I share my innermost thoughts, passions, emotions, and ache with him? That ache that I didn’t even know existed before I met Someone else?  Could I really let him in there? I decided to let him in…”I can’t get over His grace.  When I read I can’t get over that I was chosen before the foundation of the world!  I have to stop and pray every few words...”I love Jesus so much…so very much.  He lavishes grace and love on us!! It’s too much sometimes.  I can’t get over that He would choose to lavish such grace on us. I ache for more of him, like deep in my bones, I can feel it.  When I pray there are always tears.  He leads me to repentance and I just always want to be in His presence.  It’s like fresh rain, or a sweet and heavy holiness I can’t understand but instinctively know is there.  I’m not afraid.  I want to know Him more and more.  I’m so in love.  You know I’m in love with Him, right?”  the words just sort of spilled out and rolled along and bumped into one another….Quiet hesitation, and then another question, “Yeah, I know.  That’s not going to affect our marriage is it?”  “What? Me being in Love with Jesus? No! It will only make our marriage better, it can only make me love you more!” “It’s hard following Christ, Trish.”  “I know, but in a way it’s simple, He promises his burden is easy and His yoke is light.

So there it was, I had let him in…I had been asking God to teach me about my husband’s heart. When we last met here, I had been hoping to start blogging about God’s non-negotiable instructions to women regarding our husbands, children and households given to us in Titus 2 and Proverbs 31. The first verses that parallel one another within those instructions have to do with the heart of our husband, and I needed to learn more.  So I began to pray, “Lord, teach me about the heart of my husband.”  I don’t think there was any coincidence why we entered into such an intimate conversation that night.  In God’s mysterious and intricately woven way of answering prayer, soveriegn love was stirring and connecting two hearts in the beauty of holiness and wonder. But how does this coincide with Titus 2 and Proverbs 31?  It has been said and passed down from one generation of women to the next that the way to to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  Now I love cooking for my husband and family and friends.  I experience sheer joy in full and satisfied bellies.  I love nourishing their bodies this way.  My heart rejoices when all the college kid can think about is coming home to her mama’s home-cooking.  What a privilege to bless my loved ones this way, yet I can assure you, the way to your husband’s heart is not through his stomach, but through Christ and Christ alone.  So we must start there. We cannot love our husband’s in a way that glorifies God unless we return to our first love in Christ. How will the heart of our husband trust in us if we are not daily seeking and pursuing Christ and His authority in our lives? How will we even know what that means, unless we desire to know Christ above all else? You see, it is vitally important that we understand that Titus 2 and Proverbs 31 are so much more than rules to follow.  When joyously applied within the context of pursuing to know Christ, they become a language of love flowing from our hearts first to our God, and then to those God has directly blessed us with.

The heart is mentioned over and over in Scripture, and is defined in the Hebrew as the “inner man, the seat of appetites and emotions, passions, the soul, mind, understanding, resolution and determination, thinking, reflection, memory, friendly, comfortably and care.”  Wow.  That is a lot to think about for sure when we are being mindful of our husband’s heart. But how mysteriously beautiful and wonderful that through pursuing God, he may lead us to deeper intimacy with our husband’s as we get to know their hearts? However, I cannot stress enough that this can only come through knowing and pursuing Christ and “adorning the gospel” in our marriages.  To “adorn” literally means to “wear” and to put on display.  I once read it was like decorating a Christmas tree with beautiful ornaments and brilliant lights. So we must take great care in living out the gospel in our marriages and ask ourselves, “Are we putting on display the fruit of the Spirit written to us in Galatians 5:19-22, in our relationships?  Are we living out love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control? To get practical, how is the attitude of your heart when your husband asks you to do something for him that you see as an inconvenience? Do you roll your eyes as I often have? Do you immediately think, “what has he done for me lately? Doesn’t he see how much I do for him already?” Do you hesitate in your answer or answer with a tone of irritation? Or is your heart willing to serve in the attitude of serving Christ? Are you thanking God daily for the gift of your husband even when he feels more like a burden than a gift? Are you regularly praying for him? For him to love the Lord with all of his heart and lead his family well?  Are you trusting in God’s sovereignty even when he doesn’t? Are you trusting in His sovereignty even when your children are grown and he hasn’t led in the way you have desired? How can the heart of our husband’s trust in us, if we don’t trust in the sovereignty of God and have no fear of our future, like the Proverbs 31 woman? So much more I intend to write about dear one….but for now, some thoughts:  We must handle with greatest care the heart of our husbands as we look to the only One Who holds our hearts and knows our hearts, both ours and our husbands. We will never know everything there is to know about our husband’s heart, for only God can know that, but before I sign off, think and pray through the meaning of the word “heart” in scripture. Remember these words as you reflect on these questions and intentionally pray through them:  courage, emotions, soul, mind, understanding, thinking, reflection, memory, friendly, comfortably, care.  Are we helping our husband’s in a way that promotes courage to lead within them? Are we helping them control their emotions by not provoking them or manipulating them with our tendencies to be over- sensitive or demanding our own way? Are we praying for their soul, especially if they are unbelievers? Are we praying about godly conversations that encourage quiet reflection and understanding and in turn lead to growth in the marriage? Are our husband’s comfortable with us? Do they feel safe with us in order that they don’  have to worry about being attacked or torn down?  Are we trusting God and letting them lead even when we think our way is better? Are we letting them into our hearts as we adorn the gospel….desiring more than anything to show them our love for Christ, and in so doing loving them as Christ loved us? Do we lavish grace on them when they have wronged us? Or do we withhold in some form of punishment? Do we withhold affection? Conversation? Serving?  But understand, it is never about doing things better, but loving Christ more…if we get this…if we aim for this….then may our husband’s hearts become a place where we invest and the world catches a glimpse of an invisible God….

Much love,

trish

So as I was thinking about why I am blogging the other day, several reasons came to my mind through question-scattered prayers…why am I even doing this?  Will anyone even read it? Do you want me to write, Lord? How can I bring you glory through it when it seems to point to me and my life even when I desire for it to point to you?  I’m so passionate about You, about the husband and kids you have given me…will it sound like I have it all together? You know I dont…Silence preceded the shiver-whisper, and then it was there… “You don’t get to write because you did it all right, but because My grace covered what you did wrong.”  Whew! Whew! Whew!  And so I write.  I write because I am full of passion, and passionate people screw things up.  Ever hear of Peter?  Yeah, I’m kind of like Peter that way.  One thing is clear: Peter loved his Lord….passionately.  In fact it was Peter, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who penned one of my two life verses and is what I decided to name this entire blog after, “Though you do not see Him, you love him, and though you cannot see Him now, you believe Him and rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).  You see, the Lord has intricately woven my life together in such a way that even in all of my past sin, choosing wrong when I should have chosen right, selfishness, unkind words, and pride, it is a wildly beautiful life because when my Abba looks at me, He sees Christ.  Since the moment He transferred Christ’s righteousness to me in the gift of salvation, he has been righting my wrongs. He knew back then I would still disrespect my husband, act selfishly as a wife and mother, become irritated with my kids, judge other believers, desire my own way, shift blame, and relentlessly celebrate me in manipulative pity parties. None of these things were the wildly beautiful part.  The wildly beautiful part came and continues to come with God’s undeserved kindness towards me when I act this way.  Because He has promised to finish the good work He has started at me, he just won’t leave me in my sin.  His glory is at stake.  So what does He do? His Holy Spirit graciously reminds me that I have sinned against a Holy God in actions, words, or attitude of heart and that I must confess and repent.  So when I say something hurtful, unkind or manipulative to my husband in order to get my way, I must first go to the cross recognizing my own depravity, and secondly to my husband admitting my sin and asking his forgiveness.  Something wildly beautiful happens as sin and forgiveness collide.  Expressions of grace awaken the senses in these collisions.  God becomes more real, love deepens, souls are cleansed, and a bit more of his glory passes by as he holds us safely in the cleft of the rock. This is the wildly beautiful part.  So I write….because of Him and He is right.  So right.

consumed in his love.  Really.

trish

If I am going to take you on this journey… A journey of sinking into Christ and learning from Him as women disciples, women who crave the ancient paths…you know those unpopular, old-fashioned even debatebly boring, ancient paths? May I suggest to you that these paths are anything but boring, that these paths are filled with the seeking and sinking into an all powerful God who desires that we know Him in such a way that when we begin to discover who He is, we will be left in knee-hitting ground awe, speechless in wonder, and a bursting heart leaking inexplainable joy, that we will be anything but bored.  These are the paths that lead to God and to rest, and we must heed his word, “Thus says the Lord, ‘stand by the roads, and look and ask, for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘we will not walk in it'” (Jeremiah 6:16).  Oh weary, burdened mama, beloved sister, let us be women who heed this quickly!  Let us not be obstinate women who say, “we will not walk in it!”  He promises rest for our souls if we heed  the ancient and true paths!  When will we be women who so seriously take His word to us that we “tremble at His Holy words?” (Jeremiah 23:9).  Esteemed daughter, there is a path for us…a path that was painted with all the colors of creativity, beauty, tenderness of heart, feminity in all its softness, compassion, gentle hands and kind tongues…a path, though purposefully placed on unfamiliar terrain, through deep valleys, up steep mountains, and across sun drenched meadows, nevertheless, it was intentionally placed before every choice woman of God to bravely set her feet upon, to courageously set out, with a determination to not look back….if we believe there is a path that leads to Him and to rest in marriage and motherhood, then we need to start in the beginning and decide.  We need to decide and resolve that there is a God who made us.  Who made us male and female and assigned to us beautiful complementary roles, and that within these roles, there is an order, for our God is a God of order and within that order He made all things good (1 Corinthians 14:14, 1 Timothy 4:4). If we decide this….If we understand this basic premise to diving into a sea of wonder and beauty within the black and white phrases, jots and tittles….then this book of words will be sure to come alive and actively at work as the Holy Spirit illuminates the ancient paths for us.  Dangerously at work.  Purifying.  Consuming Work.  Blowing away chaff.  Cultivating fruit.  luxurious  fruit and green foliage that will not shrivel up even in our season of lack and want…..if we believe and so therefore we speak…that He is God, then we can start.  For by proclaiming and confessing He is God, and understanding what it means to surrender your life to Christ as Lord of your life, then we are in fact saying that He is in rightful authority over our lives and we joyfully submit to His Holy word.  That Holy word, as holy as it is, as difficult as it is, becomes easy as we apply it to a rightly positioned heart in submission to Christ and his magnificent and glorious instructions to us as women.  So let’s start….in the beginning; the garden.

In the beginning, God had been at work.  A holy work.  A good work.  And he had skillfully crafted all that we know as the earth, the sea, the sky and all they contained.  Hanging lights on a canvas of black, jagged moss and snow covered rock reaching into clouds, deep caverns of swirling water where glowing fish dart about and hauntingly hover….magnificent scaled beasts, and the dance of the  amoeba… Bouncing about….is there a rhyme to it all?  A reason perhaps?  Is there an order of things and worlds and planets and times and epochs and nights and days and generation after generation of human life?  The answer is yes. And we will find it in the garden.  Enter with me into the most beautiful place on earth.  A place where God’s  presence was known to man before sin.  A place He had perfectly and ever so carefully designed for man to live and to thrive and to enjoy the presence of God. Perfect climate. Lush vegetation. Crystal River. Colors so brilliant and life so vibrant we would be left hand over mouth breathless.  The garden was paradise and it had been given to man to live.  God loves giving good gifts to His children and I beleive this to be the first of many gifts, other than his very breath within them.  It was to be an unending vacation in paradise.  This is the place God had prepared for his people.  This is a God of good gifts.  What kind of love breathes  life into dust and then tenderly places that God-formed life in the most beautiful place on earth? Our God. The one who made male and female (Genesis 1:27).  The One who fashioned these two brilliant creatures to be equal in worth yet vastly different in physical appearance, thoughts and ideas, temperament, emotions, personalities, skills and abilities, over which all, He was in charge and had masterfully and specifically designed within each to complement the other, serve the other, and to glorify their Maker.  The two, made in the image of Him, each a masterpiece, a workmanship with the mark of a holy God, intertwined and made one flesh, and God delighted and celebrated and angels peered down in puzzlement.  For they were not angels, they were mortal, yet oh how they reminded the angels of God in image.  What a wonderment to behold, a man and a woman. And how did the order become?  There was God, the holy triune God, and then God formed his precious Adam out of dirt.  Since it was not good for man to be alone, God tenderly put His Adam to sleep and took from him a rib in order to fashion Eve and create for Adam a “helper.” (Genesis 2:18).  The God who keeps giving gifts, gave His beautiful Eve to His precious Adam.  There was The perfectly happy self existent triune God.  There was precious Adam.  There was lovely, beautiful eve given to “help” Adam.  There is our order.  This order helps set the stage for God’s instructions to women.  If God created Eve,to be Adam’s helper, what does that help mean?  What does it look like?  Does it look the same today as it did back then? In order to answer these questions we will closely parallel Titus 2 and Proverbs 31 beginning with the first order of instruction in both passages.  When we meet again we will explore our instruction to “love our husbands” and to discover “the heart of our husband that trusts in her” (Titus 2:4, Proverbs 31:11).

consumed in His love,

trish