More than Crumbs (another pre-post of my church newsletter essay)

image copyright The Dove Chronicles 2013

She only asked for a crumb. What she wanted was the restoration of her demon-possessed daughter, but the Canaanite woman in the Gospel of Matthew was so desperate, so needy of Jesus’ mercy, that she ultimately asked for a crumb.

She was persistent, tenacious, and stubborn: three qualities that some people would think rude. But put it in the context of seeking the Lord and it can become some of the best qualities we can have.

She was desperate and needy: two more adjectives that aren’t exactly pretty to our ears, but interestingly enough, I think Jesus desires of us.

How desperate is a parent to heal their child’s wounds? This daughter was demon-possessed and the mother knew she was lost to her so she asked Jesus for mercy. She believed Him to be who He said he was, something so many others couldn’t - or wouldn’t.

When Jesus tested her, she rose to the challenge. She had so much faith that she would take any handout, anything the Master would give she would take. She was desperate, needy, loved her daughter so much and had such faith in Jesus, that she believed a single crumb could help.

Do you think yourself too small of a person with too big of a prayer? I sometimes do. There are so many people in this world with so many prayers. Where do I fit in?

This determined woman knew what she wanted and she knew who could help her. She gave her all to Jesus - her dignity, her pride, her ego. She was begging on her knees.

People see begging as “beneath us,” but how did going to Jesus on our knees become anything less than the preferred position?

Because Jesus, indeed, answered her prayer.

Jesus rewarded the Canaanite woman’s faith not by a handout or the dropping of a crumbly grace - Jesus completely healed her daughter based solely on this woman’s faith.

This woman who was small and sinful and human. This woman who was on her knees, dirty, sweaty, and tear-stained.

Jesus gave her more than she asked for, more than a crumb.

If you truly become desperate for Jesus, to the point of recognizing that you, indeed, have nowhere else to turn and you cling to Him as the only one who can help, that is an act of faith. Jesus loves that sort of faith. In fact, He asks it of us.

We all can have more than a crumb if we so choose Jesus as our Savior. If we put all our faith in Him, we receive so much more than crumbs - we inherit God’s Kingdom.

What I Know Now Thursdays: How to Decode a Teenage Girl

What I know today is that fathers and teenage daughters have one of the hardest relationships to muster through.

I remember my own stepmother "mediating" between my father and I. I should call that "teenage interpretation" in which she decoded what I was trying to say and translated it into language my father could understand.

When I was a teen, my father didn't understand anything.

I have a 14-year-old stepdaughter and, trust me, she is very much a teenager. Add to that a history that colors her life all kinds of bleak and you get a pretty pouty and miserable girl.

How is a father supposed to understand such a creature?

How is a father supposed to allow his wife to help translate this strange teenage-speak?

And more than that, how is the stepmother...

who sees both the father's world

and the stepdaughter's world

translate to each other?

Flowers wither without water. Flowers can be surrounded by ever-encroaching ugly weeds.
We need to get the weeds out and water the poor thing.

Water it with love.

What I know now is that while it is important for parents to love their ailing teenagers

and I know it is especially important that those girls know and feel their father's love (even amidst their angsty get-away-from-me ways)

and it is important for a teenage girl who needs a mama role model to feel that kind of love

even though I know all that

what I know now is that it is, ultimately, the Father's love

Our Heavenly Father's unfailing love

that can heal a torn heart.

What I know now is that I cannot be a savior between the man and the girl I love. I cannot be the almighty translator and decoder.

We have a Savior. We have a Healer. We have a redeemer.

So who am I in this family? I'm not the savior, healer, redeemer. But I want so badly to show how I love, how I care, and how I can help. In some way.

What I don't know now is how to strike that balance.

Maybe that will be what I answer in a future "What I Know Now Thursday."

linking up with Sarah Mae  even though she is taking a month-long blogging break to focus on family which I highly applaud. In the meantime, do read her past blog entries. I enjoy her blog very much and find so much heartfelt wisdom there.

Join Me: On My Knees and Ears Open

Be aware of what you ask for.

Did you read my last blog entry? I laid myself bare on the operating table, ready and willing for God to mold and change me. A wise reader commented how similar it sounded to the threshing floor process: dividing the carnal nature away from spirit so that God can impart more of His Spirit into you. Anonymous gave that definition in the comment from the last entry and it made a lot of sense.

I'm going to write about being on that floor. And I'm going to ask you to join me.

What? You're going to ask me go through that immense pain and suffering, you ask?

No, I'm going to ask you to open your ears to God's voice.

I was at the edge today. I've been at my edge at various times this week. Chaos and stress continue to pile on as though it has no care for my comfort. Is she overburdened? Oh, no matter. She's hunched over in pain both physically and emotionally? Oh, that's okay. She can handle a bit more. 

No, worldly chaos and stress don't much care for whether you are ready or even willing to take it on.

Looking back now, I can tell chaos and stress to keep their threats because my God promises:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

~ 1 Corinthians 10:13

However, from being at my edge today...and nearly succumbing to the lies of the enemy...and then seeking company and mentoring from a dear godly girlfriend...I know now that I need to do something before I can "stand up under it."

I need to get on my knees and I need to listen. 

I've spent too much time being my own little "god" and saying, "That's okay, God, I've got it."

I didn't consciously know that; it was all so subtle. I even told people.

"I don't have a savior complex, but I am trying to" x...y...z...

I told people I was not trying to save my loved ones...create peace in my home all by myself, using my own strength and resources...but I was. 

When we try to be God to other people, we miss God trying to be Himself to us.

And I'm not missing God anymore.

It might have taken my face to slam down on the floor - yet again - but I see now.

I bow to Him and I am on my knees and I am listening.

My friend gave me the idea today. She talked about her own stresses and troubles and I realized that while our situations were very different, what we had to do was the same. She worded it so wonderfully: she had to get on her knees and she was devoting this week to strictly listening for God's direction and provision.

And because I like projects...and goals...and God-homework...and I like being part of a group...

I told my friend that we ought to be accountable to each other and email each other how things are going throughout the week.

Then I thought, why not open this up to you?

Is there something you ought to be getting on your knees for? Have you not had your ears tuned to God lately? I know I haven't. I thought I did, but my eyes are open now. Yes, I was blind, but now I see. And I'll probably have to be blind again and be reminded again, but this is all a process, isn't it? And God realizes that. He is a God of so many chances. And if you are genuinely wanting to learn, God is so pleased.

So join me in this prayer, won't you?

Lord, I give myself to you. I bow low and open my ears to hear any and everything You might say to me. I recognize that You could speak through other people - my family or co-workers or even strangers. You might even speak through my worst enemy. No matter what form Your voice takes, I promise to listen closely. I can't do this on my own, Lord. I can't live this life without leaning completely on You and I apologize for trying to do it through my own efforts. I invite You into my life, Lord. I am stepping out of the way so You can move in my life. Thank You for loving me, Lord, even when I am stubborn and not listening. I am on my knees, Lord, and I am listening now. In Jesus' holy name, Amen. 

I invite you to join me in whatever way you wish. If you like having accountability and goals and being part of a group, post how you are doing in the comment box. If you'd like to keep it more private, I invite you to email me. I hope this can spark conversation and community.

Bless you.
Let this poem minister to you, given to me by my dear godly girlfriend whom I met with today:

Last night I took a journey
To a land across the seas.
I didn't go by ship or plane~
I traveled on my knees.

I saw so many people there
In bondage to their sin,
And Jesus told me I should go,
That there were souls to win.

But I said "Jesus, I can't go
To lands across the seas."
He answered quickly, "Yes, you can
By traveling on your knees."

He said "You pray, I'll meet the need.
You call, and I will hear.
It's up to you to be concerned
For lost souls far and near."

And so I did; knelt in prayer,
Gave up some hours of ease,
And with the Savior by my side,
I traveled on my knees.

As I prayed on, I saw souls saved
And twisted persons healed,
I saw God's workers strength renewed
While laboring in the field.

I said, "Yes Lord, I'll take the job.
Your heart I want to please.
I'll heed Your call and swiftly go
By traveling on my knees."

By Sandra Goodwin

Let this song, "Word of God Speak" by MercyMe be our theme song for this next week.

The Story Table: When All You Can Do is Lay There

[note: this took many days to write, so bare with me as it is now three or four days after this event]

I'm sprawled out on the operating table right now.

I have been split completely open by mess.

Things I have neglected kept building and building; my self-care had gone shamefully mismanaged and neglected. Things were not going well.

I am not saying things are perfect now, as I lie on the table. I mean, I see that God's hands are ready to mold me. Take me apart, squish me together again, reshape me, do all kinds of things.

I see that God is doing work in me.

And it's scary.

There have been nights - recent nights - where I have sobbed on the laundry room floor and cried out at God, not necessarily to Him - and said, "I don't want this call! I don't want to do what you want me to do."

I've gone to the brink of suffering and almost lost my footing and let myself be swallowed.

And today I was completely split open.

Thanks to a few trusted counselors and a friend, I'm gaining some perspective bit by bit. I'm realizing how I need to care for myself. I need to put my oxygen mask on before I can care for anybody.

And let me tell you - I've let my oxygen mask hang there like a tree ornament for years now.

Oh nevermind you, I'd say to myself. It's selfish to think of yourself.

(As God whispers His command: "love others as yourself")

Nevermind you, I've repeated for twenty-plus years. You aren't worth it.

But no more. I am not letting the enemy's lies dictate my worth. I will not rely on anyone but the Lord to tell me who I am.

So I have taken an R&R evening. I have had to force my mind not to dwell on whether she did all her homework or if that electric bill sitting on the counter is going to tip us into the red. I have had to walk away from a sink full of dishes.

This is not piously said.

I say this in shame because I had to force myself to say:

I am breaking. I need help. I need saving. If I don't change something now, I will be lost forever.

Lord, save me. Stop this. I am Yours.

So although the image of me on an operating table sounds completely helpless and vulnerable, I have complete confidence in the Almighty to make me into who He wants me to be.

Why am I sharing this with the blogosphere? And who, really, reads my blog, anyway?

Reading my dear internet-sister-in-Christ, Michele-Lyn's blog entry, "What is alifesurrendered.com?" I read many of my own mission statements.

I can't keep quiet. What happens inside this heart is important. Not because I am more important than anyone else, but because I know God is doing important things in me.

I am becoming stronger not by my own efforts, but because I lean on Christ to strengthen me (Philippians 4:13).

My life will be a testimony. It already is.

God will use my story to help others. He uses all of our stories if we let Him.

Our story is His story.

That is what I desire - for my story to reveal His story.

Great Physician, here I am on Your table. I want to be molded, changed. I know I am made new by my faith  (2 Corinthians 5:17) and I also know that I will continue to struggle (John 16:33) so I ask you that you humble me enough to listen to You always. I ask that you humble me so that I may carry out the immense calling that you have for me - to serve my family and model Your love. As much as my heart beats for Daniela in her village, for Compassion International, Food for the Hungry, WorldVision, Operation Baby Rescue, and so many wonderful organizations that help the needy...my mission field is my home. The needy children are my own stepchildren who God has placed in my life. And God placed me in their lives. It goes both ways.

And Lord, I'm sorry that I was getting so overwhelmed and upset and I wiggled and strained against Your guidance. Sometimes it is so hard, Lord. Sometimes, I admit, I don't want this call.

I admit it. I am human.

I heard on Susie Larson's "Live the Promise" show (yesterday? I forget) concerning God's calling, that, if your heart resists a bit when you hear God calling you to do something, then that usually means you know that is what you ought to do.

Why? Because it's probably hard. And we have a hard time with the hard stuff. 

Lord, I wrote a few days ago - bring it on.

And oh, you did.

You did so much that I found myself split open. I know you didn't cause this immense suffering these past weeks or months, but I know now that it needed to happen. I needed to be split open to see the light - Your light.

I needed to remember where I come from, Who I come from, where I must serve, and who I must serve.

I needed to remember who I am.

I am not anything or anyone defined by my childhood friends or current friends; I am not defined by roles placed on me by family. I am Yours, first.

I seek You, Lord. I seek to love others as I...

I am learning to love myself.

That is hard to type. I still hear echoes of ugly in my head.

But You ask me to love others as I love myself.

So...in order to love others perhaps I must dare to love myself.

Perhaps I must dare to let myself be split open and lay on that operating table and release my life into Your will.

And it says - your will is that I love myself.

And others.

And You.

Lord, help me love.

Help the ugly voices turn truthful.

Help the lies dissipate into steam on the mirror which quickly fades.

This I pray.

This I put out there in the blogosphere for Your glory and in hopes that someone might come along and read my story, Your story, and decide...

to love him/herself.

And to love others.

And to love You, Lord.

I chuckle as I look down at the necklace I wear every day. The abbreviated Bible verse has not felt personal until right now.

"Seek...to reflect Him"  2 Corinthians 

So Lord, I seek You and I lay upon the story table where You mold and move me. 

That's where the big stuff happens. That's where redemption is found. 

Audience of One ~ (Part Two) ~

A week later and part two of this two-part series now goes up. My apologies. But I do not apologize for the many spiritual revelations that have been laid upon me. I am bathing in grace and gratitude.

So, what happened two weeks ago at our mid-week Lenten service to remind me so much of that January essay? What broke me down to my very core after service as I sat sobbing to God in my car?

Weeks earlier, Pastor had invited me to portray Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Lenten dramatic reading. I was so honored and eager to dust off my greasy and underused acting wheels. I brought the pages home and glanced at them with baited breath. What would I find? A dramatist had written this monologue for Mary and for a contemporary woman - the topic was God never forsaking us and how this woman and Mary, both, had buried their children. Both women, of course, felt like God had forsaken them. God showed them that He had not.

I read the contemporary woman's monologue with interest, impressed with how dramatic it was. Wow, I breathed after reading how she described finding her baby dead from SIDS. That is some dramatic stuff.

I eagerly turned the page to Mary's part.

And what I found was one highlighted paragraph.

My jaw dropped. I read the lines. They were powerful, but the actress inside of me balked, "what can I do with this?"

Thankfully, I immediately recognized the pride and arrogance in that statement. Pastor had chosen me to portray Mary and I would do as good a job as I could.

Still, though, as I put the papers back on the counter, I felt this nagging I want more. I want to show them how good I can act.

I went to bed with conflicting emotions. I knew that I had it all wrong. I had stopped acting a decade before because, even if I didn't know it, God knew that my priorities were out of whack. I depended on those flowers and compliments too much. The sincerest You did wonderful seemed to define me.

I thought long and hard about it as I laid in bed to go to sleep. I would accept the meager paragraph of Mary's. In fact, I would rejoice in portraying her. Yes, I could feel myself becoming more at peace with the situation the more I thought about it and the more I put it into God's hands.

Heal me from my pride, O Lord, I prayed. Thank you for keeping me humble even when I trip over my ego-inflated head. 

The next day I happened to be moving the papers to another part of the kitchen. And it was then that the most amazing thing happened. Husband and Stepdaughter13 were both in the room and I looked up at them with wide, unbelieving eyes. I looked down at the papers again, then back up at them.

"What?" they both inquired. I must have looked like a dope with that goofy and confounded smile on my face.

I explained to them both how I had only found one small paragraph of Mary's to read and how that, at first, had disappointed me, but how I had decided to do my best as Mary and to glorify only God, not myself, in my portrayal.

Then I shared the real amazing grace:

I stumbled upon a paper that had stuck to the others. It held a whole page of highlighted Mary lines. And what the lines said pulled on my heartstrings. They were of a mother crying out to God...her Lord...yet her son...why have you forsaken me? Have you forsaken me?

She tells of how Jesus had been by her side all of her life...and now she was by his side, looking at his wounded side, watching him die.

"When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home." (John 19:26-27 NLT)

I almost cried at how emotional this monologue was. How emotional this hidden page was. I explained with wild emphasis and high-pitched excitement that I was sure that God had kept the entire monologue from me until I could fully understand my undertaking. I was not going to use Mary's dramatized words as a way to show my acting skills. I was not going to pretend I was up on a stage.

I would pray, ceaselessly and with gratitude, that I would glorify God with my portrayal. What a gift this extra page was. Not so I could puff around with a big actor's ego, but because I knew I could put my heart and soul into it and that was a gift God had given me - even as a young child.

So the service came and I took my place at the pulpit while the other reader stood opposite me with Pastor standing in the middle.

My hands grew sweaty and my heart beat a mile a minute. I felt dizzy. I looked across the congregation while Pastor talked and the woman read her words and I prayed.

Then, it was my time.

After the reading, I walked down to my seat. Husband asked if I was okay. I had shed tears during the reading due to the emotional content. Because I had felt Mary's heart beating inside me for just a minute and I wanted to do her justice.

Husband squeezed my hand and smiled softly, said I did a wonderful job.

I couldn't look him in the eye. I sat down and felt a bit winded.

Once service was over, a few more people approached me with kindness and gratitude. I tried to graciously thank them, but say it was all God's doing.

It just so happened that Husband and I had taken two cars because he had to pick the younger two up from Awana. So he and stepdaughter13 left in his car and I sat in mine.

For some odd reason, I sunk into my seat and kept my car dark. Sobs escaped as I felt my heart and head begin to yell at each other. I still felt a longing for compliments, for those flowers from high school plays.

It was an attack. An attack of the ego and the enemy both. And the enemy knew my weakest point:

I started to mourn the fact that my mother, who attended every play with devoted regularity, was not at this service.

And I missed her. I cried with inconsolable grief.

But I shook my head out of the fog the enemy had settled around me and realized: she had been there. She is with God; she can see everything I do. And of course she is proud of me.

But I still beat myself up for wanting the limelight, the praise.

Easy, I heard myself saying. You're still learning. 

So I am an addict. Once an addict, always an addict, I suppose. Alcoholics remain alcoholics, no matter how long they stay sober. It just means that they always have a weakness, a thorn in their side that makes them susceptible to falling.

An attention addict? A praise addict? I don't know.

I do know, however, that being an addict does not define me. I am not defined by my need - former or present - to feel praised by mankind.

For I know that
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV)

And, I strongly feel, that is all I need to know.

My identity is not an actress nor a writer, a wife nor a stepmother. Not even a motherless daughter or a victim of trauma.

I am a child of God.

And for God I live my life.

God is in the audience. He is the only One who is always in the seat, never leaving, never forsaking. God is my Audience of One. 

~

other Bible verses about addiction I have found helpful:

"The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure." (1 Corinthians 10:13 NLT)


"God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, “God is tempting me.” God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death." (James 1:12-15 NLT) 

What tempts you? Big or small?