The Hand of The Surgeon

Over the course of Nathan's illness, we have been privileged to meet some amazing doctors and surgeons. Some of these doctors have been world-renowned in their particular specialty, and sought-after for their particular expertise. People from all over come to them because this doctor holds their only hope for recovery, due to their unique skill or understanding.

In my devotional reading this morning, I came to see God's work in my life in a different context than usual. I am used to seeing Him as a majestic Creator, a merciful Savior, a loving Father (and even a tender Mother!) But today He revealed his work as the faithful Surgeon.

I was reading in Psalm 139 and Psalm 51. A powerful metaphor emerged from these passages. The Psalmist writes "Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts," and in another passage, "O Lord, you have examined my heart..." A skilled surgeon's work in our life always begins with a thorough examination and a battery of testing. These tools in the surgeon's hand give him an accurate picture of the full extent of the damage and the amount of work it will take to fix the problem. He also uses this information to determine if the end result is worth the investment and risk of his work. The surgeon not only gathers data with an exam and tests, he compiles a complete history. In verses 2 through 5 of Psalm 139 we see that this skillful surgeon has taken into account the patient's lifestyle and habits with such thorough understanding that the Psalmist declares, "You know everything about me." The patient humbly declares his complete dependence upon the surgeon's interpretation of this data and his diagnosis for the repair, stating, "Such knowledge...is too great for me to understand!"

We go on to read, "Point out anything that offends you." The patient is inviting the great surgeon to render his diagnosis, and prescribe the necessary surgery to bring wholeness again. We have implicit trust in the surgeon's findings and opinions, because he carries the impressive resume contained in Psalm 139, verses 13 through 16. It turns out that the surgeon was the Creator in the first place, so who better to know how to fix the defect? In fact, the patient has been desperate for the great doctor's attention, ("Do not banish me from your presence" Ps 51:11) because no other surgeon can even perform the operation. And we also trust this physician because his motivation for repairing our brokenness is love, not money or prestige. Verses 17 through 18 tell us of the tender thoughts the surgeon has for us, thinking through the procedure over and over so that he can best repair our damage.

Then the scene changes. The day of surgery has arrived. The great surgeon plunges into the operation. "Create..." "Blot out..." "Make willing..." "Renew..." His brow drips with sweat as he wrestles out the iniquity that is buried deep within us. He is utterly concentrated on his great work. At last he is done, and as the patient wakes from anesthesia he exclaims, "You are still with me," for the great surgeon has stayed right by his side all the way through to the recovery room!

Great Surgeon, possess my heart and body today. Perform your assessment and prescribe the surgery necessary to restore me to your original design. I give myself over willingly, mind and body, to your surgeon's skill and to your tender love for me, to do as you see fit. Amen.

Musing on the Master

A few of my pastor's wife friends and I have been sharing our struggle with anxiety recently. This morning, as I was reading Knowing God by J. I. Packer, I came across a quote that impacted me profoundly. Packer is quoting a young Charles Spurgeon (who, at the time of preaching this, was only twenty years old!), and so I quote him here:

"Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead."

As one who has struggled with anxiety, I have come to acknowledge two things. One is that as my knowledge of God increases my anxiety decreases. As a child of God, I cannot become more deeply aquainted with His power and His authority without being comforted in my fear. Paul said, "...for I know Him Whom I have believed and I am [positively] persuaded that He is able to guard and keep that which has been entrusted to me and which I have committed [to Him] until that day." (2 Timothy 1:12, Amplified) As I see Him more fully, as I see the might of His arms, and begin to catch a glimse of the tender, fatherly love with which He watches over me and those I love, my trust in Him grows and my fear lessens. And two, many times the issue of control is at the root of my anxiety. I am desperate to remain in control of what may happen to those I love, all the while seeing how useless my control is because I am so weak. But as I give over control to Him, in whom my weakness is made into strength, my anxiety vanishes like the remnants of a summer storm in the face of the sun.

As one who has often longed to drown the very life out of the cares that hound and harrass me, I have set my face to know God, to plunge myself into His immensity, and allow him to speak peace to the winds of my life. This Mom will be "Musing on the Father" from now on!

Five for Friday #5: Wow!

So you may be wondering why, for a lady who blogs only occasionally with no discipline or routine whatsoever (unlike my inspiring friend and blogger The Accidental Pastor's Wife), there are 5 new blog posts with today's date. There are two reasons for that.

#1. The preceding four blog posts have been sitting in my mental inbox over the last couple of days, but I have not had time to sit at the computer and write them. I'm trying to limit my time at the computer lately, so the last few days have been full of such creative activities as flower arranging and cooking in addition to the usual picking up after the toddler, laundry, picking up after the toddler, medical stuff for Nathan and picking up again after the toddler!

#2. The over-arching reason for this creative renaissance in my life is that God is doing mighty things in my spirit. Many of you may not specifically know that I have struggled over the last few years with depression and anxiety. It had gotten to the point where I was spending many days in my pjs in front of the tv all day long. (The tv is great when you have depression or anxiety, because they pretty much solve any kind of crisis in either a half-hour or an hour!) Last Sunday during our altar service, a young lady in our congregation with a beautiful spirit began to pray for me after I had been ministering to others and spontaneously began to pray for deliverance from depression and anxiety. There is no way she could have known about those struggles in my life. During her prayer, I physically felt God doing 'surgery' on my emotions, pulling out long-rooted growth of strongholds and hurts. In the days since, I feel as if I am beginning to live again for the first time. I am so hungry for God and His word that I can't get enough. I want to spend so much time in fellowship with Him that I've been prone to let things go around here-a good thing for a woman hung up on getting things done in every spare moment. I have been reading even more vociferously than usual-and here's the true sign of MAJOR change-anything non-fiction I can get my hands on! I feel like a wide-eyed kid who has discovered that the world is full of things to learn about. I am moving on a journey for which I don't know the specific destination, but I really don't care because the scenery is fascinating to me, and I'm just happy to be moving at all!

Five for Friday #4: A BBQ for God!

I was reading in Ephesians yesterday. I love that book-it's so upbeat and useful! I got to the beginning of chapter 5, and read, "Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us, and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God." That last bit about the pleasing aroma stopped me. I'm all about wanting to be pleasing to God, so I began to wonder, "What aroma is pleasing to God, and how can I smell like that?"

Now when I think about pleasing aromas, the perfume counter at Macy's comes to my mind. All of those pretty bottles and a scent for every mood and occasion, none of which I will be likely to afford any time soon. But since the word sacrifice was used in the previous sentence, I don't really think expensive perfume is what we are talking about here. [Yes, I know the story about the woman with the alabaster box, but I'm making a point here!] Sacrifice in the OT usually meant the burning of animal flesh on an open fire. Basically, a big bbq pit. It didn't take the greatest theological scholar to figure out the symbolism of burning flesh with fire to atone for iniquity and to move closer to holiness in God.

I sat there thinking about all of this, and being the foodie that I am, I began to imagine summertime in the evening, when all of our neighbors open up those grills and the neighborhood begins to smell intoxicating! You drive down the street with your car window open and say (to quote Carmen, old school), "Give me som' o' dat!!" Since I truly believe that the love of food and the bountiful , beautiful ingredients God has given us to use indicate that He might be a foodie too, I think I have hit upon this mysterious aroma! Think about it-when you smell that smell you begin to salivate in anticipation of what is to come. I'm going to seek to have such an aroma in my life. I'm gonna gleefully set ablaze my fleshly desires so that the aroma that is given off will draw others in, in anticipation and excitement of what God is doing in my life and what He can do in theirs. I'm gonna have a BBQ for God!

My Weakness

God and I met before coffee this morning. (There truly is something about meeting Him early in the morning!) As I prayed and talked and worried aloud and spilled my guts, I fell into my usual routine of confessing all of the things I should do that I don't and asking for protection against all of the things that scare me that I can't control. In other words, my weakness. The infirmity of my flesh and the smallness of my might.

But God spoke something to my heart that knocked my socks off-He told me that He created my weakness! It didn't catch Him by surprise. He put it there. He isn't shocked, or disgusted, or offended by it. WOW!

I spend so much time trying to make up for that weakness, by trying to plan for every eventuality that might happen in our life. Or by trying to cover up the failings in me that makes me so very imperfect, unlovable, unusable. Like Adam, sowing up those fig-leaf board shorts. But we are wasting so much effort on trying to hide or cover up for an ingredient that the designer deliberately chose for the creation. Before He ever made you or I, He wrote in His word that His strength is made perfect, or complete, or finished, in our weakness. (2 Cor 12:9) John writes that "nothing-not one thing!-came into being without him." (John 1:3, the Message) Even my weakness! It's like the baking powder that the baker deliberately pulls out of the cupboard and puts into the bread, because He knows it is a necessary ingredient for the bread to rise even higher.

I must let this anxiety over the things I am too weak to control in the future, or the shame over the inherent weakness of this flesh I am presently living in GO! I sense that in embracing that weakness, I will open it up for God to more freely show His strength, and that is what I desperately long for.

Groovin'

4“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you know so much.
5 Who determined its dimensions
and stretched out the surveying line?
6 What supports its foundations,
and who laid its cornerstone
7 as the morning stars sang together
and all the angels^[a] shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7(NLT)

When my house is really dirty and needs a good, top-to-bottom cleaning (Oh, quit acting shocked! You know yours gets that way too sometimes!) I get out the cleaning supplies, load them all in a bucket, and put on my grungy sweats. The final supply that I need doesn't have a bald guy's picture on it or smell like mountain mist scent-it's music. Loud, energetic, pumping music! I pop a CD into the stereo or put the satellite on the 80's channel, roll up my sleeves and get to work!

Even when I was a kid, we always listened to music when it came time for that once-a-week, marathon cleaning that most working mothers know all about. Somehow that music made the work seem less daunting, less grubby. It inspired us and got us moving (except for the summer when my dad's favorite work music included "Let's all go down to Dumas Walker", but that's another subject!)

I was reading Job this week and discovered that God likes to do his heavy lifting to music too! Who knew?! But there's one major difference between my Saturday morning play list and God's. It seems that when the Almighty, Omnipotent Creator Of The Universe rolled up his sleeves to measure the breadth of the heavens or sweep the mighty oceans into their borders to make way for dry land, He decided to put on The Singing Morning Stars and The Angels. (Sound like some girl group from the 50's, don't they?) Wow, that sure makes my DC Talk or 80's oldies-but-goodies seem paltry in comparison!

I love it when I come across these little snippets of scripture that make God a little more touchable, a little more 'relate-able', a little more human. Now, that's not blasphemy, because scripture says that we were created in His image. As humans we are a reflection of
Him, and some of His attributes are stamped upon us all, so God must be a little 'human' somewhere in there!

So the next time I'm scrubbing my tub to the strains of Jesus Freak, I'm gonna smile and look up and imagine my Daddy God's foot tapping up there on the footstool of the earth, nodding His head along and thinking "Good song choice! Where's My 409?"

It's beginning to look alot like...

Sorry for the lapse in posting...the holiday season is here and as a mom and a pastor's wife it truly seems that the to-do list is never-ending! But I am really excited about Christmas this year! I've had our tree up for about a week now, which is the earliest I've ever put it up. The halls are finally decked and I have been in the Christmas-crafty mood for the last week too! Now, I must say that I am not a crafty person. I am the girl who wanders around in Michael's saying, "What do they use this stuff for, anyway?!" But so far I made a new wreath for the back door, cinnamon-applesauce ornaments with Nathan and a ton of bows for the church and our house. Could I possibly have picked up some kind of crafting virus last time I went in Michael's?

I think one reason I am so full of the Christmas spirit this year is that I have little two-year-old eyes to see the holiday anew with. Having my daughter around is definitely making this Christmas more fun than any other I've had so far! I stayed up until 1 a.m. decorating the tree, just so I could see her face when she came down the stairs in the morning and saw it for the first time. And I must add, it was so totally worth it!!

Also, this is the second year that we have celebrated Advent as a family. Growing up in a Pentecostal background, I had never heard of the Advent season until a couple of years ago. Chris and I felt that celebrating the anticipation of the coming Christ child, which is the focus of Advent, would be a great balance to the secular anticipation that has swallowed the holiday season. So we have an Advent wreath and candles, and each night we light the candles and have a small devotion, sing a Christmas carol, and pray together as a family. It has birthed in me a new, giddy awareness of my soul's longing for Christ and a childlike anticipation of the joy in realizing that He has come for us all! As I decorate the tree or tie bows, I feel as if my soul is singing out John's words with renewed wonder, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

You see, it is so easy to celebrate and worship the miracle of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross or His triumphant resurrection, but if we are to understand the fullness of those miracles we must also fully realize the miracle of His birth. All the world was looking for a warrior to come to the rescue of the Jews, and eventually us all! But eternal, omnipotent God himself stepped through the portal of unending time and space and squeezed into the tiny, squirming form of a baby boy. He gave up his limitless authority over all of the heavens and the earth to take on helpless flesh in order to become salvation to us all. The knowledge of it transfixes me, as it must have those cold, lonely shepherds two thousand years ago, when the hosts of heaven appeared singing "Glory to God in the highest!"

So I hang lights and bake cookies and twist bows, all the while humming beautiful songs of a baby in a stable while joy steals over my very existence! Merry Christmas!

Heavy Hearted MomMusings

Since this blog is mainly the musings of my mother's heart, I must share my heartbreak over the horrific events of this week. I have been deeply disturbed and saddened by the attacks against young girls in our schools and communities.

I don't need to rehash these events themselves; if you own a computer, tv or radio, or if you read a paper you know the intimately horrific details of this new spate of violence. For those of us here in the Washington DC area, on the same day as the tragedy in Colorado last week our newscasters also informed us of an eight year old girl's sexual assault after she got off of her school bus half a block from her home and the man police were looking for who had assaulted one girl already in area stores and was caught on camera stalking another young victim in an area Target.

My husband, while watching the disturbing news coverage, made two astute observations. The most important of them was the statement that, for reasons he hasn't quite figured out yet, the enemy of our souls is deliberately targeting our daughters. The second was that, being the parents of a beautiful, precious, innocent daughter right now feels a lot like having a deer and knowing it's hunting season out there.

Now we must deal with the horror of this latest attack in Pennsylvania. In listening to the news reports of this disturbed man's possible motives for his heinous plan, I was grieved to hear his statements about being mad at God over the death of his premature baby daughter. There will be thousands of sharper minds than mine analyzing this man's motives over the next few weeks, as we all try to come to grips with how someone could even conceive such evil, but this makes me wonder a few things. I wonder if this man, who has now admitted to molesting young female family members as a twelve year old boy, felt that God was punishing him for this secret sin he had carried hidden in his memory and conscience with the death of his baby daughter. He has stated that he was mad at God, and I cannot help but wonder further if he thought that by perpetrating these evil plans on even more innocent young girls, he was showing God a thing or two. This makes me really think about what a direct path to destruction it is to harbor anger against God.

I write this from the perspective of someone who has spent a lot of time being angry with Him. Every time Nathan gets sick, and I watch him lay there helpless and barely moving, I get angry knowing that the all-powerful God I serve could make his entire illness go away with a wave of His hand. During the years when Chris and I begged to have another child, I alternated between petitioning God for this deep desire of my heart and being angry with Him that He wouldn't even give us this consolation. Now some of you might be aghast at the idea that a pastor's wife would admit to being angry with God, but I genuinely feel that God is big enough to deal with me being angry with him. But thinking about this man's anger at God has made me realize that my personal anger with Him has always been tempered by my inescapable love and need for Him. I see this in the story of Job too (which I have been studying lately). There are many passages in the book of Job where Job is really ticked with God. But his anger never outweighs his love for his God, or stops the longing he expresses to be known by God. I feel that there is a key detail here. We must always strive to never let our anger with God eclipse what the Bible calls the 'fear' of Him, or the realization of who He is and how much we need Him. I think these events are a clear example of the result of such untempered, unchecked anger against our Creator-the death of our souls.

I also feel compelled to point out the stark contrast between this man's inability to forgive God for the death of his baby daughter and the almost instantaneous forgiveness the Amish parents of his victims offered to his family. I am sure I am not the only person to observe this contrast. The Amish community members who have spoken with the press have been a walking textbook for the biblical spirit of forgiveness. As a mother, even though I am a Christian, it boggles my mind that these parents could forgive this man. I can only pray that out of this tragedy, some good will come of the testimony of forgiveness that is being lived out under the glare of media cameras in the gentle and unassuming community of the Amish.

I believe that we need to pray for specific protection over our daughters-the daughters in our homes and the daughters of our society. Like Chris, I don't know the reason for the targeting of our little girls, but it brings to my mind the biblical extermination of baby boys in the effort to prevent the Messiah from coming to cover our sin and restore creation with Creator. And in the hearts of mothers everywhere, just as in those days in Bethlehem,

"A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more." (Matthew 2:18)

A Mary Moment in my Martha World

Thank God, the cold is gone! I could go to the hospital today to be with Nathan, and since the drive to the hospital is around 45 minutes, I got to spend my commute time rocking out to some Hillsong and praising God.


EVERMORE

With all my life I'll sing,
I'll be livin' for your name
With all to give you praise
I'll be livin' for your glory, Lord

Lost for words with all to say,
Lord you take my breath away!
Still my soul, my soul cries out
You are Holy!

As I look upon your name
Circumstances fade away
Now your glory steals my heart
You are Holy!

You are Holy
You are Holy, Lord!

Evermore my heart, my heart will say
Above all, I live for your glory
Even if my world falls, I will say
Above all, I live for your glory

Man, can those Australians write some worship, or what? Now, anyone who knows me knows that I definately fall into the Martha category. My heart longs to be a Mary, but my to-do list gets in my way. But I cannot wait for the day when I can worship God for eternity, with no laundry to be folded or meals to be cooked to distract me from my purpose.

I just want to take the time to echo the sentiment of this song-My God takes my breath away! See, I have this addiction. I am addicted to God's glory. In this life, we can only get a little taste of it at a time. Bottled up moments when the film between heaven and earth becomes a little thinner and we can just glimpse it, not quite taste it, think we smell it, almost see it. One day we will bathe in it, and like a junkie who can't get enough, I'm living for that day. Somedays I'm blessed enough to grab ahold of the hem of His garment, and squeeze a few drops of that glory onto my parched face.

A lot of people probably look at my life from the outside and think I'm religious because of tradition, or because it makes a living for my family. But I am utterly smitten with God. It's all about my relationship, and nothing to do with religion. We have this thing going, me and God. Even when I was His enemy, He called after me. He sought me out, and sacrificed His precious Son in my rotten, good-for-nothing place. This morning, I woke up to find out that He Hadn't Changed His Mind Yet!!! (That's what 'mercies new every morning' means to me!)

His glory has stolen my heart! That's why I do everything I do-from trying to craft a ministry that reaches out to every woman, to caring for my kids so that one day they will see God's care for them. He is my every breath, my every heartbeat. So, maybe, when I have moments like today, He's saying "Now, you've chosen well!"

The Motherhood Of God!?!

Hi! It’s been a little bit since I've had anything to blog-"blogger's block" as I've heard others refer to it. (I'm mildly puzzled as to how someone who always has something to say could run out of things to write, but that's another subject...) I just don't know how I could get too busy to blog, what with a BUSY toddler, Nathan's medical and school needs to manage, a Women's Ministry to coordinate, a husband to take care of (okay-he's getting better and better at taking care of himself, I must give him credit!!), a house to keep clean enough for the health dept. to not shut down, and all that while balancing precariously up on this "Pastor's Wife Pedestal" from which I am supposed to give the appearance that everything's cool!

So, amazingly enough, I found time to read in Hosea today. (Dire prophetic warnings go great with musical accompaniment from Dora the Explorer, by the way. Kind of like a "We can do it!" soundtrack for those rebellious Hebrews to get it together!)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been reading the "Captivating" book. One of its central themes is that we, both women and men, are created in God's image, so our feminine traits embody aspects of God's character just like men do. This was brought to my attention in the passages from Hosea that I read this morning.

Having been a Daddy's girl I have always related to God as my "Abba, Father" or "Daddy, God", and I must admit that I have never really thought of God much as a 'Mother figure', but these beautiful passages shed a new light on God's abundant love for us in a poetic word picture of motherly love.

Chapter 11, verse 1 of Hosea states "When Israel was a child, I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son." Verse 3 continues, "I taught Ephraim to walk, Taking them by their arms; But they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, With bands of love, And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them." (NKJV)

What a beautiful, moving picture of God tenderly caring for His people, like a gentle mother who carefully and gently teaches her little one to walk. She patiently holds their hand and safely watches over each tiny, precarious step. She selflessly and patiently bends low to give them nourishment and vigilantly tends their sicknesses until their healing is restored.

The pathos of a mother's heart is illustrated again in the yearning, almost broken voice of God in verse 8 and 9, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of My anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim." (NKJV) Every mother who has ever had to discipline their precious child empathizes with the emotion contained in those verses! We know the dilemma of our heart, which demands that we enforce difficult consequences so that a lesson can be learned, even when we yearn to shield that child from every hurt, every difficulty.

Earlier in Chapter 6, verse 1 the prophet calls, "Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up." Upon first reading those words, one might wonder how God could inflict harm knowing that He will then turn and heal and comfort. But in light of the illustration of God's maternal-like love for us, this passage becomes a poignant promise that His anger is not without tenderness; His righteousness is tempered with undeserved mercy.

These passages call to mind Jesus' cry over the city of Jerusalem, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem...How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me." (Matt 23:37 NLT) As Jesus is the Man-God, the physical embodiment of the divine God, his heart continues to be poured out in that maternal, all-consuming love for his little ones.

What an awesome, astonishing look into the heart of our God! As I love and tend to my precious children in the next few days I will ask the Holy Spirit to remind me that God's love is poured out in my life in a similar, unreserved fashion. May we all take some time to bask in it!

Pentecost!!!

Yesterday was a twirling day! Our weather here was absolutely gorgeous! I got to go to church and worship while sitting with my two miracles: a son that doctors said shouldn't still be here and a daughter that doctors said would probably never be here! How can you not lift up grateful praise in those circumstances?

Chris preached an amazing message on Pentecost and then we had a whopper of an altar service! I literally laid on the floor of Carissa's bedroom once we got home because I was so exhausted from praying for people and worshipping around the altar. It is comforting to me to see that, although the methods of ministering to people in the church setting have changed over the years since I was introduced to the pentecostal expression, the way in which the Holy Spirit moves is still just as powerful! I will be the first to tell you that although I grew up in the Assemblies Of God, I am a relatively reserved and watchful Pentecostal; many times I have said that if you see this girl dancing in church you better look up because the rapture is about to take place! But in our service yesterday we heard the sound "as of a Rushing Mighty Wind" (my capitals added!) and the spirit of Pentecost filled the place! You could not help but respond! I cannot wait until the day when we will be able to sing and praise God for eternity and never become physically tired! Ya'll are going to be standing around heaven after a few thousand years saying, "Is she ever gonna be quiet?!"