Beautiful Release

Beautiful Release

When I am faced with any change in my life that reqires me to face uncertainty I grapple with fear. Tremendous fear. I had made fear my advisor in life. Currently we are facing a life changing circumstance. We are currently planning the celebration of life service for our unborn son. This is much like an Abraham journey. I have viewed letting go of something loved as a valley experiance, much like a funeral of the heart. And it has felt very much like that. Choosing to remain pregnant till God chooses to recieve our gift I aliken to the walk Abraham made up the mountian with his son Issac.

The other day pre labor contractions started and I was fludded with fear. Not of  the death of our son, but all of the unknowns and the pain. My loving husband lay next to me as I wept and frustrated with his unablity to take this from me, he washed my broken spirit with the word. Suddenly the question came to my mind. why are some healed and others not, why do we pray and pray and press into the father and still recieve that what we do not want. I am possitive that Abraham wrestled with the same questions as he packed his bags and headed for the mountain top. Then God gently spoken to my clinging to fear heart. Do you believe really that I am good? And, in that moment being completely honest I was having my doubts. Sometime the losses feel greater then the rewards. It was as if a old veil was being removed from my eyes. If I believed He was good and his desire for me is good then my fear is really a lack of belief in him. If I believed he was good then my journey up the mountain would be a relief my obediance to His desire to have our son to Him self would be my greatest pleasure. What I was veiwing as a valley experiance would be quite beautiful, quite holy.

This is devine holiness. And, this has changed the way I pray as I walk this mountain. I pray that my mind is kept pure, that I do not stumble, that I am able to rejoice on my way, singing new songs. Songs of His generostity, goodness, and His faithfulness. I want to celebrate the unknown and misunderstood mystries of God and His marvolious heart for us.
Earlier in this journey I was grieving hard and asked a dear friend how do I find joy in the midst of my suffering, how do I suffer well. Purhaps this is what Paul was talking about. Joy in suffering is when we let go of it's sting.

So I let of my life line called fear and reclined in the lap of God and swang in peace from this mountain top. From here the veiw is stunning, and worth its suffering. It is a beautiful release!

Confessions of a grieving mother

Confessions of a grieving mother

I found my self today grappling with the fact that God gave his son for me and I am having a hard time giving my son back. The way He asked me was loving, enduring and clearly the desire of His heart. But, why am I unable to give this child of my to God who loves me more than I can comprehend, who's plans are good for me and His will being so soverign and generious. The last thing I ever want to do is grapple with God over this one. In my heart I want to freely give as he ask, and yet I am selfish, angry at times and jealous even. I find myself questioning things I swore I never would.

If only this was the only confession. I have become critical even judgmental. I splatter my grief like a toxic paint on what seems to be everyone around me. What I complain about is not even the fact that I will be laying my son to rest when he is born. It's about everything else under the sun. My pet peaves are on a hightened sense of irritation and I am itching to voice my opion. When what is that anyway. Being right is all that is, being right, and even then most times its not worth it.

Who am I to complain? Yet, at this moment I am not as thankful as I long to be. Im in a pit of pain, grief, discontent, and even worse bitterness. I know its a mistake to look at the grass on the other side of the fence, yet at times the side I am on is some times unbearable. What I don't want is to look back at this time and wish I worshiped more, was more thankful, and offered more grace because the grace offered to me in this time of my life is truely a gift in it's self.

Just some confessions of a grieving mother.

So much life

So Much Life

Its been far to long sense my last post, but a recommendation from my bereavement nurse that I began to write again. 

I am mid way through my 27th week of pregnancy with our beautiful son Peter Roman and we are planning his going away celebration of life. On one aspect I am blessed that I have the oppertunity to put thought into what we are and will be experiancing when we lay our son down. Yet I am so torn. I do not know how to grieve. I feel a great sense of responsibility in grieving with hope for those who are watching and because I love Jesus. There are so many women who have gone through this and yet I feel as though I am blazing a new painful trail.

I am loved, supported and encouraged by hundrends of beautiful people and yet I feel utterly alone. Like my world has stopped but everyone else is in movement. I don't know how to carry my son, feel his movements and stay emotionally and spiritually level. I hate being the center of tragitiy and that there are few times in my life where there has not been tragitiy on some level.

This is my 10th pregnancy and I have two living children, and I wish that was all the tragitiy but far from it. I beg to go home, I beg God to take me home because I am utterly broken and the older I get the harder it is to remain vonrable and the less I trust. I don't want to be that person but it feels so out of my control. I feel ship wrecked and fear I have lost who I am.

Merry Christmas

Crows Nest

I lay on my bed curled up and crying out to God about the direction the evening took with my husband. My heart felt etiolated by enemy fire. I am at the mercy of everyone and suddenly became completely aware that I was not enough and that what ever I bring to life falls tremendously short and the one person I needed to arrive on the battle field came dressed for dinner not war. I have nothing to bring other than me and me is not enough. And so I cried out to the Lord. 

A few months ago words were spoken over our marriage that were profound. Our marriage was a ship out to sea. I was in the crows nest and my husband at the helm with the Lord. God has given me the gift of seeing the unseen, yet me seeing is just seeing and does not control the direction that is taken. Although I can see what otherwise is somewhat hidden to some, my attitude and beliefs keep me from seeing the whole picture. So often I see the storm coming and I find myself pleading that my husband take us in a different direction. It was that way when we started going to church, that way again when we moved to AZ, and several times in between and after. 

The other night I was consumed by the storm that was raging all around me and was rendered prisoner to despair. Despair is a interesting word; its meaning in purest form is nothing other than to turn your back on God. I was unable to see where God was taking me in the midst of the storm because of my despairing thinking. 

If God has given me the gift to see, then seeing would mean all that His will desires. I know that the desire of my God is goodness, and therefor would want me to see His goodness too. To see the hope on the other side of the storm. To see it all the bigger picture, the war, His beauty, His glory, and with that sin and the death it brings and the depravity it carries. If I can hear God in 10 different ways then could I also see him in those same ways too? I think so.

So I uncurled my self and reclaimed my place on the battle field declaring that I was never going to be enough for my marriage, friendships, ministry, and then found my peace in knowing that God is enough in me. I picked up my sword and God silenced the enemy.  I faced what would have taken me out for days and dusted myself off, and advanced on our enemy with the power of the word. 

~Beholding Beauty~

The tapestry of a woman's heart is so complex or at lease I thought mine was. But really is simple beauty is  more powerful then my feeble state is used to carrying. Perhaps it’s not our complexity that baffles us all but the power in our beauty that has us in awe.
Growing up in a home where beauty was distorted and cursed, to being taught that beauty was something that was for the opposite sex, my understanding of what God really designed as beautiful is slowly creeping to the surface and its nothing of what I understood. Being made in the image of God to reflect His glory? I cannot help but think that perhaps that my beauty is just as vital part of my healing as my heart.
While studying with what I can call my best friend, Revelation this gentleman asked a simple question that started this unraveling of my heart. His question was “What will you tell God you did with your time”? I immediately thought of a story that I understood to be about money, but really its not about money at all. There were three men given each a specific amount of money to use wisely. One buried it so that he would keep it for his master, the other invested some and saved some and the third invested the whole amount. When the master returned to see what each man did the first dug up his gift and said I have saved this for you. The Master rebuked him because his did nothing with what he was trusted with. The second man brought back a slight increase of what he was given but this man was also rebuked because he did not give his all. The third returned with 3x as much and he was praised for his was faithful with what he was given.
This got me thinking, am I faithful with my gift of salvation? What man am I like? My heart began to hurt. I am more like the second man than I want to be. The one area of my life that has always neglected is my beauty. I have hated myself, and all though I would not have admitted it before, I was just really waiting for Jesus to come back. How can I ever look at what has been so scared and decimated with satisfaction. In my refusal to see my beauty I have gained a significant amount of weight, and my health is in shambles.
Not long ago my health gave me a scare. I knew I would need to do something about this weight issue. But in my heart I was irritated that God wanted to use me. Secretly I just wanted him to take me home. The very idea of looking at myself as beautiful has been so hidden under blankets of contempt. I have denied myself beauty and therefore have created a standard in my marriage where my husband will not fight for it either. I had berried my beauty beneath my broken heart and was investing only what I though was worthy.
This morning I lay on my bed talking my best friend. Both of us sharing where we are in marriage, and parenting, our struggles and accomplishments. My friend shared with me how she thought I was a good mother, Yet everything in me could not receive her affirmation. My heart so wanted to. I wanted to believe what she believes, to see what she sees. Just like I want to see my self as something beautiful yet no matter how many times I look in mirror I would not even look into my eyes. I realized that my refusal to embrace my own beauty it has stolen joy in my life, some freedom, and most of all has damped the glory of God. Sitting on the floor of the shower I poured my heart out to God asking for forgiveness, for my unwillingness to go there all these years. 

      

                                              Unveiled

You know, there is a lot that God is doing in all of us. As individuals we have got to decide if we believe who He says we are or if we are going to store this away as a God encounter and put this with every other touching hallmark memory. For so long the Church as a whole has been sleeping with this elusion that as long as we read our bibles go to church and serve then we are models of what God had in mind. Nothing could be further than the truth. 

Many christians feel suffocated by life and are tired of searching for this life to the full that is promised. We have been dining from the scraps that fall on the floor from heaven table when we have a seat at the table.  We were meant to walk on water not swim below the surface. I believe to really walk with God we must be willing to risk our social statuses, our comfortable conversations, and our overly sensitive postures so that we can be unveiled before the world as the children of God. Where we allow the weight of who are be felt by every corner of the world. 

The glory of God will not be stifled and God will use any means for his will to be accomplished. I just hope that we as children of God reflect more of His glory then our own inhibitions or insecurities. We have to as a body become willing to bleed publicly and be willing to have others bleed as well. We are all limping and the world will see the Glory of God arrive where our brokenness meets heavens hands. 

I have to risk it all, we must risk it all. We Must become unveiled.