Surpassing all Understanding

The other day I sat across from my doctor and listed the symptoms. Anxiety. Racing heart. Nausea. Shaking. 

Before he responded with his diagnosis, I could already hear the words he was about to speak whisper into my ear. Panic attack. And sure enough, seconds later, he proceeded to confirm what I already knew. We talked about options; we talked about a solution and thankfully, underlying his words was the reaffirmation that I needed to hear: you'll get through this.

The other night, as my mom sat across from me on my bed, and I recounted to her the conversation between my doctor and I, she frowned and put words to questions I too have wrestled with. "But I don't get it," she said. "How can you have panic attacks when you have the peace of God?"

And I sat, stumped by her question, because in all reality I just really don't know.

But tonight, questions stir in my heart because I wonder.

Does the peace of God mean the absence of anxiety? 

If there's anything my life has taught me, it isn't that Christ necessarily seeks to take away trials from us but rather He seems to want to walk through them with us.

And I just wonder, if even in the midst of a panic attack, His peace is found in the Hand that holds mine and gently whispers, "Breathe. You've got this. You'll be okay." And in doing so, those times of severe anxiety don't reflect a lack of peace but rather peace that surpasses all human understanding. Instead those times reflect the great presence of Peace.

I'm reminded of the verse in Exodus, "The Lord will fight for you. You need only be still." The battle was never averted but rather God promised to fight it for them. He was just as present in the midst of the battle as He would have been in its absence!

And I wonder if maybe, just maybe, His Presence and Peace are just as present in the midst of anxiety as they are in its absence.

Just a Little More Grace

The other day I got a text from a friend:

"So, any new year's resolutions?" 

I thought about it for a moment. The freshness of a new year brings new hope, new encouragement, the blessing that your actions will be fruitful if you just put your mind to it. The past year, the slate listed with failures is wiped clean, and the new year promises steps forward and no stepping back. It's the perfect opportunity to dream. To resolve.

But for me, I've learned not to mark the beginning of a new year with ways to change because I want my life to be one where I'm always changing, always challenging myself, and always growing.

So instead I choose my word. I choose a word that sums up what I want to learn this year and how I want to grow. Last year my word was wait, and without a doubt 2012 was a year of waiting. Sometimes painful waiting. But I learned patience, and I learned trusting in the waiting {but even then it will probably be a lesson I learn again and again through this life}.

This year my word is grace. Because it's in His grace that I am made new, and it's through His grace that I experience His love. It's in the grace that has been offered to me by His Church that I found the freedom to offer grace to myself. And I've been wondering what my life would be like if it was marked by the kind of grace that He offers me. 

What if I turned the other cheek more often than nought?

What if I offered forgiveness when it was least deserved, when it hurt so much to offer that grace that it made me cry?

What if I, in grace, held my mouth closed and only offered words of conviction when the Spirit led?

Grace. I'm learning that grace reflects Him, because we live in a world where grace isn't offered very much. We choose to give what's deserved. We chase after the one that's wronged us. And I just wonder what this life might be like if we all gave - and received - a little more grace.

So that's my word. Here's to a beautiful 2013, filled with challenges and laughter and tears and grace.

{Linked up to the OneWord community here.}

Sitting in the Graveyard

My heart is heavy tonight. It's still beating .... but it's bruised, and it's a bit battered, but it still beats. And I am listening to that sound, as if it is a lifeline, uttering a prayer of thanks with every new sound.

Because sometimes life is so hard.

And it takes leaving your country, your home, your family, your friends to be in a space where you can finally feel that. It takes losing all of the things that hold you up ... to be in a place where the only place you can land is in His arms.

It takes being in an unfamiliar place, I think, to finally venture into grief and let yourself feel. Because when you lose something, it's easy to walk around the grief, to stare at it, to wish it away, to pray it away, to lose yourself in the familiar because grief is anything but. 

But you can't bring building supplies to the graveyard. There's a season of life, when dreams have been shattered, and you have lost what you never thought you would, that you need to sit in that grief and that heartache. 

And although it's scary, and it hurts, I might have finally walked into that graveyard. For a long time I've sat and stared at it's gates, and there have been moments when I've dared venture in, but the truth is, being sad and feeling my grief is the hardest thing to do.

But I think I might be ready to sit. I think I might be ready to leave my building supplies behind and just sit in the graveyard. However scary and painful that might be.

Because I am reminded that however scary it might be, however dark it might seem right now, the sun will rise and illuminate even the darkest and scariest graveyard. I know, for my hope rests in Him, that there will be a time when the sun, in its beauty and glory, will remind me that I too can rise. 

Dear Younger Me

Dear younger me,

I find you on the floor in your bedroom, cuddled into the corner of your closet. You are holding yourself tightly; arms wrapped around your knees, your body curled into the fetal position. Your hair is damp and your moans illicit pain deep within my soul, for your heart is breaking, slowly, into tiny little pieces.

I sit beside you and see these pieces of your heart scattered around you. I see how you have felt a piece chip away every time your parents have passed each other by with silence and a mere nod; I have seen how pieces fell the day your mom packed up her things into bags and boxes. I know that your heart feels scattered right now: you are fragile, and are clutching to your heart's broken pieces as best you can. I wish I could tell you that a year changes things, and that your heart is put together as time passes, but sadly, the adage that time heals all wounds isn't true. Only God can do that, and His timing isn't ours.

I see that your lips are moving slowly, and I can make out your prayer. It's more of a cry, really, and I hear the desperation in your voice. You are begging God to take you home into His arms, to free you of this pain and darkness. Although you can't see it then, you will see that God answered your prayer; just not in the way you thought he would.

As you journey through the next year in your life, you will struggle every day. You will feel pain, some days more heavily than that moment in your closet. But what you will find is that in your pain, and amidst the broken pieces of your heart, God is your Home. He is your shelter; He is your strength. He doesn't leave nor forsake you. This will be a lesson you will have to learn over and over; and it's a painful one. But you will start to see how this is truth.

You will learn that it is in the broken places that we sometimes discover wholeness. It will take some time, but you will see that your pain has shaped you into a beautiful caring, loving individual. You will learn that what others intend for a curse, God intends for a blessing. Your pain has allowed you to feel more – for you are broken to be healed to be broken for others. You will find beauty in this brokenness, my love. I know you don't feel like it right now, curled into yourself on the floor in the closet. But you will. This I promise you.

Love always,

Your older self

Jumping into the abyss

I've been struggling since I got here in Africa. Most of the time, I am blogging about my daily activities here, instead of writing here at my normal blog. I've felt a bit lost since I've arrived, homesickness and culture shock wrapping themselves around me and making it incredibly difficult to adjust to my new surroundings. Today, amidst a bumpy morning filled with longing for home, I wrote this journal entry, which is a mishmash of prayers and thoughts. Who God is to me is growing so much larger - and I am learning, even amidst confusion and feeling lost. I am thankful for that today.

"What is it that I so badly want from home? Because really, do I even have a physical home? In that thought I think of Jesus, who had no place to rest his head.

I just long to feel myself. I long to feel confident, joy, peace. I long for my familiar faces I so love. I long for the freedom to be able to talk to strangers and have them understand me. I long for familiar food, familiar things that make me feel like I have a place in this world. I miss worshipping in a place where I understand the songs and words, where I feel part of a community.

I think I'm being challenged on my image of God. I see Him so much as an overseer, a director, an instructor. But I long to see Him as my Brother, friend, even moreso my Father. I always feel like there is a big gap between us, and consequently I feel like the closeness, that intimacy, is lost in that abyss.

What is that gap, God? How do I change that?

Maybe I need to be willing to jump into that darkness, that gap, and trust that He'll meet me in that in between.

I feel like here bits and pieces of me are floating. I feel like coming here maybe was sort of my jumping into the darkness. And I'm floating, but mostly I am feeling like I'm drowning. I am missing the sure ground under my feet. I am missing the light, the assuredness I felt. This gap, this space isn't fun or safe like I thought it would be. It's anything but. And I'm sorry, God, for that being true. For I once prayed that I longed to be stripped of everything familiar to have just You. And I suppose, deeply, I still want that. So hear I am, in a country far away, stripped of everything. And I'm terrified. I'm drowning. I'm searching for you. 

Why did I automatically assume that the removal of my life, my family, my friends, my comforts would mean finding you? Was I foolish enough to think that you can ony be found in a place of loss, in a place unknown? You aren't dependent on circumstances, or time, or place. You said to search for you with all of your heart and we would find you. Maybe searching with all of our hearts means losing famly and friends, home, security. But maybe, just maybe, you are more concerned with our hearts and that we are searching for you from wherever we are. 

I can't believe I didn't get that, God. I am sorry - but thank you for showing that to me now. Thank you.

It's okay to be missing home. It's okay to be missing family. It's okay to be missing my Thursday night dates wth my girls. All of this is so wonderfully okay.

Because what matters the most, here or at home, is that I am searching for Him with all of my heart. I can do that at home - and I can do that here. I can do that in the middle of a lecture or the middle of a staff meeting at work. I can do that here, in the middle of a busy, crowded, shouting marketplace. Wow.

Please, Jesus, protect me from losing sight of this - bury this truth deep within my heart, so deep it is permanently written across my heart."

Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive. (Jeremiah 29:12-14)

The Cry of the Crow

This morning I sat on the couch by an open window, and I heard the distinct cry of a crow. It wailed, it screeched, but most importantly, it would not stop. I looked out the window for signs of it sitting in a tree limb, but I couldn't spot it anywhere. The screeching continued, grating against my ears. I had half a mind to run out the front door and scare it far, far away from the front lawn.

And then something stopped me in my tracks and the way I heard the screeching changed. The crow's cry made me think of a human's wail. How often do we hear others pain or cries and at first response, see it as an annoyance? Seek to remove it as far away as we can from our comfortable life?

Maybe what we see as annoyance is really another's cry for help.

Maybe we miss others' cries for help because we're so focused on how it affects us.

And maybe we need to see each cry as a call to us as Believers, to care for the least of these.

Because really, that's what we're here for, isn't it?

"And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matt. 25:40)

"Remember this when you doubt ..."

On my MacBook, I have a little program called Stickies. I keep various notes, reminders, and Scripture verses there as a reminder. Today I was perusing the notes I've left myself there, and I opened up the pink sticky that is titled "Remember this when you doubt."

There is only one verse typed underneath. 1 Timothy 3:16:

"All scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness."


All Scripture.

That means not one word was spoken without God's Spirit behind it.

That means that every word is inscribed with His fingertip and carries life because He is the author. Every word.


And the enormity of this verse weighs upon my heart because these past two years I have clung to God's Words with every fibre of my being, even though they have caused me division and have forced me to choose between making people feel good or choosing the Words I believe to be true. I have been told that I am foolish to cling to Words which carry little meaning to the culture we live in. I have been told I am judgmental, religious, un-loving because I believe every Word Christ inscribed in Scripture. I have clung to those words when the world around me has told me that they are outdated, or that they leave too many "gray areas" for us to ever take them literally.

Believing that 'all Scripture is inspired by God' has been a hard statement for me to stand by. But I have chosen to believe it, and because it is truth every word I read in Scripture breathes life into my soul. Because it is truth, it is worth every hurtful word thrown at me. It is worth being considered foolish, because in reality, the Words inspired by God speak Wisdom into my heart.

They are inspired.


And they contain life.