Dear Weary Mom: The Dichotomy of these Love Letters

Dear Weary Mom,

I'm weary of not feeling confident as a stepmother.

I think I may be far too paranoid and feeling far too childish. Far less equipped and far less ready.

Surely God must have meant for some other woman to come into these kids' lives, to fall in love with this man.

Because all I can see lately is failure on grand levels.

Surely God meant for me to stay in my hermit-like 1-bedroom apartment and live a solitary existence so I would not mess up any children with my insecurities and immaturity.

...Wow. Do you hear how awful that sounds?

First of all, that isn't a very kind thing to say about myself, is it.

Secondly, I am basically telling God, Maker of Heaven and Earth, that He messed up.

He got the wrong girl.

As if God could ever get anything wrong.

When self-esteem is floundering, take the "self" out of it and feel how you soar.

God esteems me.

When I am weary and burden-laden, when my identity gets thrown in the laundry with dirty and grimy clothes by the enemy of all of us, God whips me out, shakes the dirt off, claims me clean, and I start fresh. 

Like mountain-spring-fresh. Grassy-meadow-fresh. 

Hung-out-on-the-line-to-catch-the-spring-breeze-fresh.

And if I just let God be my launderer, maybe I won't get so weary or lost. Maybe I will realize the Truth, as I do on my good days when I know God has called me here to these children, to this husband, for such a time as this.

I love the story of Esther and I especially love the unlikely heroism of it all. 

I love how God chooses who we would consider the least qualified to do extraordinary things.

Do you feel weary?

God chose you to do the work you are doing BECAUSE of your weariness. No, not as a cruel joke, but because you show that you need God.

These Weary Mom letters are a blessing to each of us. They are not complaining sessions between mothers, they are love letters to God shared between women who do the hardest work.

They are letters of reminders, proclamations, clarifications.

You think God got the wrong girl?

Think again.

God intimately knows each person He calls and He calls each of us to something.

And He's just loving these love letters floating all around the internet, around the neighborhoods, over your telephones.

It's a dichotomy: be weary no more 

yet also continue to feel weary -

because both are a sign that we believe in God bigger than we believe in your own ability to carry it all.

**linking up today at Hope for the Weary Mom blog - I recommend the book of the same name, as well! Let's band together in our weariness and point to the God who gets us through it all!**

What You Find When You Peel Back the Tree

Copyright (c) <a href='http://www.123rf.com'>123RF Stock Photos</a>

The past two Christmases I've written excitably about the season, feeling inspired and touched by the meaning, the reality of it all.

The past two Christmases are the first two that I've truly known Christ.

This Christmas? There are more unexplained tears and more family-tension. More little problems and more big crises. There is more nagging and more needing-to-go-for-a-walk to get away from it all.

My blog has been quiet, waiting patiently for my return and I begin to think: who is the author - is it me? What is this blog? Who reads it?

The normal writer-doubts fill my head and tell me that I'm not good enough, that I don't write well enough. I hear the lie that I should just return to angst-ridden poetry instead of faith-filled personal writing because that, at least, got me ....

say it. Say it.

Attention. Accolades.

Shiny ornaments on my tree of success.

Oh, but I think about what I've learned in the past 2 years about God's upside-down Kingdom and I re-read what I just wrote.

The angst-ridden poetry may have gotten published widely and a few awards here and there...but the truly fulfilling writing did not come until I started this blog, until I started writing for my church newsletter, writing more intimately in my prayer journal and my regular journal, when I began my gratitude journal.

When I began the dialogue with God I became the writer I wanted to be.

Maybe not the writer that would get me accolades and awards. But the writer I know I was meant to be.

The angsty poetry had its place back then. But I am a new creation and I cannot nor should I discount the transformation within done by God.

So who is the author of this blog?

My dear friend, Michele, says on her blog that "Life's Author is God."

And I want that desperately. I want to surrender so much - all of myself - to God so that He is truly the Author of my everything.

I want God to be the author of this blog and I the mere vehicle.

I look at the metaphorical tree I have set up in front of me. I notice the ornaments are those of ingratitude, complaint, grief, sadness, depression.

I fight all those things on a daily basis, but this season has been especially hard. I read so much inspiration on my favorite blogs and I then play the comparison game. Why can't I do that? Write that? Feel that? Be that?

I don't want to feel this much grief for my mother, six years gone. Why am I feeling it so much more now?

I don't want to get this crabby on a daily morning basis.

I come home after my 40 minute drive and I am ready to go, having put the Armor of God from Ephesians 6 on, prayed in the car, told God I was ready to face the evening. And then to walk through the door to some crisis. It feels like it's every day. It just might be every day.

And in all of it - (I took a weekend break a few weeks back and learned this -) I know to give thanks.

Practice Eucharisteo. Practice giving thanks during the hard times.

So maybe this Christmas, for me, won't have the jolliness past ones have had. It isn't seeped in my mother's apple cider. It doesn't sing with Barbra Streisand's unique rendition of "Jingle Bells." We haven't done a family picture this year and I haven't sent out Christmas cards (how strange) because we've just been trying to survive.

Maybe this Christmas is more about what I learned that weekend I went away to be with God. Maybe it is about giving the hard thanks.

Maybe this Christmas I will peel the leafy evergreen branches back and reveal the bare tree underneath. It isn't about presents for me this year. It's about His Presence.

Not the decorated evergreen tree

but the bare tree that became a cross where Jesus gave His life for me

picture from http://www.dayspring.com/tree_to_cross_3_christmas_ornament/

and through tears (maybe explained, maybe unexplained) and heart-pains I give the hard thanks. I turn my head up and, amidst the frightening teenage choices and the whiny kindergartener and the starting-to-get-moody-tween and the marriage bumps and doctors' shrugs, I give thanks.

I give thanks to You, Lord. I give thanks because You deserve it and so much more. I give thanks because I am thankful that I know how to give thanks. For that is truly what saves me every time, in my deepest and loneliest and scariest times: counting Your gifts. I lived so much of my life feeling lost, Lord. This Christmas, I thank you for leading me, stone by stone, footprint by footprint, year by year, to You. I am choked up when I think about how You have saved me. How You sent Jesus down as a baby born in a dirty, filthy feed trough instead of a regal chamber.  I am amazed at how You, this baby grown into God-Man, have pursued me - me! - all of my life, and still do! How you ask me to sit at Your feet. This girl who looked in the mirror and hated herself. Who saw dirt and filth. You ask me to see what You see, Lord. You are the Savior I always knew I wanted but never could understand until now. And not only do I want you, but I need You, Lord. Jesus, I need You.

It feels odd to be writing so nakedly about myself now - here - at Christmastime when I feel I ought to be writing about Jesus and His birth and the Gospels. I wrote my first year of blogging here about Joseph being a great example of a stepparent and I shared different music videos contemplating the amazing situation Mary found herself in. And an interesting blog entry from December, 2011, about the yoke Jesus asks us to take on and about Christmas expectations.

Is this December, almost-Christmas, blog entry appropriate reading for this season?

I can't answer that right now. Somehow, though, I know God works through my heart and into my fingertips. Somehow, He can write me out of this confusion.

From a bare cross, God folds out my branches until, in Him, I am a beautiful tree, ever-green with glory as I shine with all He will do through me.

I hope to write again before Christmas. I can't promise, but I will try. Until then, may you keep your eyes on Jesus this season.

And does any peeling need to happen in your life? Certainly an interesting notion...

Now, if you'd like, sit back and listen to a beautiful song I just discovered:
"Becoming" by Christine Dente

Blessings be yours...

When the Flesh Recoils and You Reach to the Eternal

I am fortunate that, in my adult life, I did not get hurt by many people.

I'm not talking about car-sliding-off-into-ditch-hurt. I'm talking of old relationships-gone-bad hurt. 

Things said without voice, arrows slung at the heart and piercing a past I thought I could hold onto forever. 

I don't often lose loved ones without them passing on by death.

But tonight showed me that I am going to have say goodbye to a significant relationship, one that was with me since toddler-hood and was a very deep tie to my beloved mother. 

Due to pain on both sides, our relationship has been strained and though I have tried to reach out in various ways, the reaching-back has become less and less to the point of his arm actually recoiling. 

I never thought the recoil could hurt so much. It's so...intentional. 

There's nothing intentional about the losses I've had that has hurt me to the quick:

my Gramma when I was 15, her dying of a random heart attack on an airplane while taking a nap. 

my dear mother who died of lung cancer 

Those two people have been the biggest losses of my life. They loved me here on earth and they departed this earth loving me. 

This person loved me then and now the love has stopped. Been recoiled. 

Or...even if the love has not been erased, the deciding to not engage at all with me hurts the most. 

And I am hurt. I am angry. .I feel like a branch that somehow kept me close to my mother has now been cut off. I cried and I flailed. 

And then I watched some home movies with my husband because I needed to hear (and remember) my mother's husky, Chicagoan voice. I needed to see her sun-scorched hair and crooked tooth. That beautiful smile, nonetheless. 

 I needed to remember that I am still her daughter, even if the relationship with the other person has withered away. 

Certain kinds of love don't leave. 

It reminds me of God's love for us. And I wouldn't have thought about that at all prior to two years ago when I became a Christian. I can't fathom going through this kind of grief without knowing that I am unconditionally loved by a God who can love me more than anyone else on this earth 

My therapist said this to me last Monday: God loves you more than your mother did. 

That puts it into real terms for me because I knew how much Mom loved me. I felt that love so acutely that I can still taste and smell it, it was that palpable. 

But God loves me more. 

So instead of being angry, vengeful, hurt over the recoiling of love that hurt me down to the quick, I am choosing to focus on God who is the God of All Comforts. 

He comforts those who grieve. He comforts those who are depressed. He comforts widows and orphans. 

"He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted

and to proclaim that captives will be released

and prisoners will be freed.

He has sent me to tell those who mourn

that the time of the Lord's favor has come,

and with it, the day of God's anger against their enemies.

To all who mourn in Israel,

he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,

a joyous blessing instead of mourning,

festive praise instead of despair.

In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks

that the Lord has planted for his own glory."

~Isaiah 60:1-7 (NLT)

And my hope resides in Him, now and forevermore.

photo from http://www.flickr.com/people/a_gods_child/

When The Odds Rise Against You

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/businessman-removing-building-block-high-res-stock-photography/103033288

Two odds have stacked up; two very big facts in my life:

1. my body
2. my 14 year old teenager stepdaughter

Both are angst-ridden and angry, both are moody and stuck in a rut. Both are victims of circumstance and  victims of themselves.

Is that vague yet poetic enough for you?

To be more specific, yet still respecting privacy, let me try to explain a bit further.

My body has been fighting me for years, but has progressively gotten worse this year. Since March, I was in the emergency room three times. Urgent Care became my middle name and I formed long-lasting friendships with every on-call 24-hour-nurse at my clinic. They'd always be there at 3 in the morning to take my calls of pain and hysteria. They'd offer advice, suggestions, and sometimes just listen to me vent about how much pain I was in and how I couldn't get sleep.

After getting a common yet important procedure scheduled for January, my body made it known that it would not wait that long. The 3rd ER visit occurred and soon we had the procedure scheduled for four days later.

That was last Friday.

The procedure painted me as a healthy fool.

The doctors were perplexed.

Maybe you're too anxious, they said.

Yes. If you were going through this much pain and agony and worrying about how you were going to function every day and take care of your kids and husband and life-duties, worry about how many sick-days you were using up at work and were you going to lose your job over this...yes, I bet you'd be pretty anxious too.

So off I went to the specialist in my area of body-problem.

She was invalidating, plain-old-mean. She told me I was too emotional about it and wasn't the least bit sympathetic.

At that point, my normally-sweet and compassionate demeanor disappeared and I unleashed some wrath I did not know I had. Poor woman.

This got me to see a nationally-recognized expert in the area of my body-problem. I have to do another procedure this week and then get one x-ray next week and one on December 3rd. I'm told he will be able to tell me what is going on.

In the mean time, every day gives me pain, pain, more pain. I can't describe it without going into too much detail so you will just have to trust me.

Then there is my number two odd stacked against me: the 14 year old.

As with me and my health problem, she is full of pain and wrath. And lucky me, I am her target practice.

Actually, I don't think I'm "practice" for anything; I know she is very angry with me.

Yet I understand this. I'm not her biological mother; I'm the woman she lives with who is being the second parent in the house; I'm the woman who makes sure she does x, y, and z and gets on her case if she doesn't. I'm the parent who helps make sure her room is clean and that she gets picked up from confirmation and poms weekly.

But I'm also the parent who gets the "you're not my mom; stop trying so hard to be my mom."

I'm also the parent who gets to fight with her almost every morning about being upstairs on-time. About basic manners. About this or that. Name anything. We've covered it.

This girl adored me once upon a time. I have up on my wall a framed drawing that reads, "Stepmom is my favorite word. When you came into my life I felt hope in my family being broke up. I love you."

Was that only two years ago? How can a child morph into someone so different in two years?

And yet I love her. I am called to love her. God wants me to love her. And I do. I love her when I am angry at her, I love her when I act irrationally at her and when I act rationally (however irrational to her teenage mind). I love her when we bond over something and I love her when we fight (though, I admit, it's mighty hard to remember that).

So these two things: my 14 year old and my body...

they are both railing against me right now. They are wild animals howling in the night and they are in agony. They both want help but reject it. Granted, the 14 year old has more control about accepting or rejecting the help than my body does, but there are similarities none-the-less.

I feel like I'm being hated on...a lot.

This morning, after another tearful drive to work after dropping the kids to school (tears due to the tiredness of fighting with 14 year old every morning over something), I read through my index cards of Bible verses.

One stuck out in particular:

"If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first." 

No, that's not the president talking nor is it my own parent. It's Jesus.

John 15:18 (NLT).

I sat in my car, transfixed by that message.

I felt God lean in close and tell me:

I love you more than she hates you. 

Wow. I haven't realized the true nature of God's love. I haven't realized that God loves me no matter what time He goes to bed or needs to be upstairs in the morning. If God sneaks someone into the house, God is still going to love me when I punish Him.

Okay, so I'm making a bit of a joke there, but I think you might know what I mean.

Feeling God say that to me made such a huge difference. So much that I do not fear anyone or anything hating me [on a good day].

God loves me more, immeasurably more.

"With your unfailing love you lead the people you have redeemed. In your might, you guide them to your sacred home." ~ Exodus 15:13 (NLT).

Unfailing love, that's what Moses wrote. Unfailing love is mentioned, in the New International Version translation, 32 times!

So...

the odds might be against me.

But God is for me.

And if God is for me, who can be against me?

I rest in God. I thank God. I sigh into God's bigger-than-huge love.

Deeeep breath.

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.

Dear Me, at 16 Years Old

Dear 16 yr old Lisa,
What do I say to possibly prepare you for your future? Let me get one thing out of the way first, something that's been pressing: "J" is not worth it. He is not worth the obsessive phone-and-watching-and-waiting. You've been hurt and you will be hurt by him again.

But honestly, you know you search for your identity in guys, yet you do so anyway. I so wish I could go back in time and put your nose in a Bible. Ask Anne to go into detail of why she loves this God of hers.

God, in fact, opened a door in Anne and you did not take it. But don't worry - sixteen years from where you are the Great Whoosh will happen and, while I wish you came to Him another way, the truth is that you finally meet the only unconditional love you can ever have - and believe it or not, that will be enough.

Right now, nothing seems enough, does it? "J" can't call you enough, hold you tight enough; "A" can't dote on you enough, "Mr. M" doesn't think you're different and talented enough. The theatre folks can't ask you if you are okay enough and you can't seem to cry enough.

The cutting and scratching can't get enough of the pain out and trust me, girlfriend, once you start your first dose of  Prozac, any day now (if you haven't already), no medication will make you feel good enough.

Because if I could somehow get you to stop seeking out your "enough" and realize that just as you are - you are precious, beloved, treasured, and loved. Enough. Not by any man, but by God. Yes, Lisa, the Creator of the Universe thinks you are enough and He will be your Enough. Pain ends with Him. Seeking approval and validation end with Him.

All through your 20s, you will struggle with idolizing men. You will make each man you think you love into a little "god." I am sad and so sorry for the hurt that awaits you. If you thought your feelings for "J" were intense and heartbreaking, just wait.

Maybe this letter isn't as compassionate as I had hoped. I sense some resentment, probably because I'm starting to relive your teenage years in our stepdaughter.

Yes - you get your "daughter," though God gives you two girls and a boy in a very different way than you had originally imagined. But, right now, keep Caryn Eve framed if that keeps hope alive burning at least for a while.

"Girl with Apples," painting by William Adolphe-Bourguereau that, at 16, I used to pin my one-day-mom dreams on in order to get through each day

Anyway, as I was saying, I have not one but two girls. And the eldest carries pain I cannot begin to imagine, yet, at the same time, she reacts to it identically to the way we did. I don't know if this was God's plan in allowing you to endure years of self-injury, but you now have a child who does the same. And guess what? She is as stubborn and self-absorbed as you were. She resists the help you try to offer as much as you resisted the help offered to you. That comes crashing down when you are twenty-two, by the way.

So I'm asking you to keep careful notes so that I may help this fourteen-year-old girl under my roof. Thanks for all those journals. From age eleven, I'm still going strong.

There are two things you will need to let go of. The first will feel of little consequence when I tell you what the second thing is, but I'll tell you anyway.

Right now, theatre is everything to you. You thrive on the accolades, applause, the carnations and compliments.

Don't cling; it does not last.

In college, something traumatic will steal that dream and you won't perform in another play for twelve years and even then, the acting bug will be long-squashed. But don't fret, you continue to perform and share through

 your poetry readings,

 the Alzheimer's Poetry Project

reading and singing to your stepkids, and even in church by singing worship songs with the Praise Team and when you portray Mary in a Lent monologue.

The second thing to let go of - or what you will have no choice to let go of - is...

I've been stalling. I don't want to tell you. She is your best friend and hated enemy at sixteen. And I know if I tell you she will be gone one day, I simply don't know if you can take hearing it. Even now, almost six years after, I mourn fresh and piercing. So no, I can't go into it.

Just love, Lisa. Don't worry so much about being perfect, about how much others approve of and love you because those who matter always have and those who don't never mattered.

Love your mother, but detach a little. For heaven's sake, give John a break. You will anyway in around seven years. Stop being a brat to your future stepfather. I'm now a stepparent whose oldest started treating me that way and worse this past year. Trust me, it hurts more than you ever know.

Sixteen is such a pivotal time for you, Lisa. If I didn't know there was a purpose for it all, I'd beg you to put away the tarot, crystals, the board, all of the New Age stuff that is not good for you. You were always seeking that Higher Power. Well, I found Him. If I didn't believe you needed to be molded and crafted before God flung open the shutters, I'd beg you to ask Dave what a born-again Christian is. Don't listen to others laugh and mock; these lovers of God could save you so much anguish.

I constantly wonder: what if we had been raised loving and knowing God? What if you had been curious enough to let Anne share? What if I wasn't the giant age of thirty-two before my life was so radically saved, much less altered, by God?

And yet....when I feel myself growing angry at you for all your mis-steps and idolizing, I remember Jeremiah 29:11. God has a plan for you, Lisa. A plan not to harm you, but to prosper you with a future too awesome to comprehend. And I have to believe He felt that way even when you were sixteen years old, flailing in a God-less bowl with water so high that you had to drown many times before hearing Jesus say, "Come!" and finally, after so much...you do.

But I know it all comes down to love. It always has. You are loved, Lisa. You must feel it and then love yourself. Listen to those older and wiser than you. Yes, even at thirty-four, we don't have it all together. You have a husband who loves and adores you, but you still look for validation too much. Codependency is still your middle name. Your childhood demons continue to shake your earth and has broken through the ground you carefully laid down as a toddler to keep it hidden and covered. It's coming up now, Lisa. I know you suspect at sixteen. Keep open to the healing and let love reach you.

I understand suffering so much better now. It doesn't make it less painful, but we have a God who comforts us, redeems us, forgives us. That love is eternal, something we never knew.

So don't lose hope at sixteen. "J" will leave one day. Others will take his place. And one man will come and be the one God chose for you. In fact, this man helps bring you to God.

Wow - did you ever imagine your engagement ring? Here it is!

And stop taking the pills. Stop marking up your body. Stop the self-absorbed self-hatred and remain open to the love that knocks every so often. I know He tried to come to you many times in the next sixteen years. Don't let a near-tragedy finally open your eyes.

And one day, Lisa, you will finally rest in the One who will never leave you, who will never be taken away from you.

You have a Forever coming. Be ready, my sweet, sad girl.

God is on the horizon.

I love you. More importantly, God loves you.

Lisa 

Linked up with 

although I waited too long to write this and be included in her link-up, here is the url for other letters to enjoy!

To support Emily P. Freeman's wonderful book, "Graceful: letting go of your try-hard life," people have been  writing letters to their teenage selves. It's quite the undertaking! Write your own and check out her book! You will surely be blessed by it.

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. 

Dreaming Your Everything

I opened my email earlier this week to find this week's September Compassion Blogger idea. Easy, I thought. Write a letter to God. About child sponsorship.

Sure, I can do that. I can thank God for my two sponsor girls, I can thank God for giving me the opportunity to have a relationships with them and, thus, with God, Himself. And so I sat down to write. And things just came out...well, plain.

And then, days later, I had a dream about Daniela.

I've never dreamed about Daniela before. She's the sponsor child I've had for 8 years and who I visited this past May.

The dream I had last night was more vivid and more real than what I actually remember from our visit. Isn't that weird? Yet, without that time of us meeting face-to-face, despite our shyness and nervousness, this dream couldn't have impacted me as much as it did.

All I remember from the dream was talking with her (we spoke the same language, which was strange) and looking into those deep, intensely dark eyes, her ebony hair flowing behind her, that gorgeous smile. And I remember the hug. I remember hugging her so tightly that when I awoke I literally ached for her.

Tonight, I sat outside on my back porch at twilight and cried.

I missed Daniela.

I ached for her.

And, so, I write my letter to God now. Here.

************************************************
Dear Heavenly Father,
I can see her so clearly in my head, Lord. Wearing that yellow shirt which starkly contrasted with her Latin American complexion and dark eyes and hair. She looked like a supermodel. In real life, Lord, not just in my dream. Daniela was more beautiful than I can ever imagine and I thank You so much for giving me the opportunity to meet her.

Not many sponsors can say they got to meet their sponsor child. I feel so very fortunate. And yet my heart aches because that dream...I felt so close to her in my dream...and yet, tonight, I cry because I feel so far away.

I miss her, Lord. I wish I could return to Central America and do all the things I would have done in hindsight. I wish I could  have been less shy, less nervous. Funny, in a recent letter, she wrote the same thing to me. She's 13, Lord, and she wrote to her 34-year-old "Madrina" (which means Godmother in Spanish) that she wished she was less self-conscious and could have been more outgoing during our visit.

A teenager wishes this, a teenager who, by hormonal nature, is usually shy and unsure. A teenager told this to a 34-year-old who, by most understanding, ought to be confident and well-spoken. Well, I was just as nervous and unsure as she was.

I couldn't stop smiling when I saw her in person, and I tried to strike up questions, but I just felt too nervous.

Not so in this dream. In my dream, we were laughing and sharing stories and loving each other.

And I awoke with such a clear picture of how I now want to visit her.

So on my back porch, Lord, I pray:

Thank you for the gift of Daniela and my other sponsor child in Indonesia, an 8 year old spirited girl who has the most intriguing eyes.

Thank you that my letters, prayers, and my monthly giving can impact a child so deeply.

And thank you, Lord, that these children's letters and prayers for me can impact me so deeply. I never expected it to be such a reciprocal road.

Thank you, Lord, for You - who connect these children and myself across miles and miles, across mountains and oceans, across political strife and poverty. You are the common link, Lord. You are our bridge. You are our common language.

I write that to Daniela a lot - I even told her when we all met in her church building - I said how amazed I was that God could connect one girl in Central America to one woman in the United States (I held one arm out to one side and the other arm out to the other side and then closed the gap to illustrate).

L-R, My stepdaughter, our translator, and myself (copyright Lisa Auter 2012)

What an amazing God we have!

For these children, Lord, I pray that You would give them Your Holy Spirit to guide them. Help their parents raise them in Your Ways. Guide these young girls to womanhood knowing their value in Your eyes. Teach them how good it is to be a Christ-follower.

Of course, I pray for their daily needs, Lord. That is a given. That is what people mostly think of when they think of monthly giving to a sponsor child: how the money will give them more food, better water, a chance at education, and better medical guidance. And that is all true - Compassion International does all that.

But Compassion does so much more.

Children don't just need food in their bellies; they need God's kiss on their foreheads. Mosquito netting is vital - as vital as knowing God is everything.

Lord, give them Your Everything.

This I pray in Your Precious and Life-Saving Name,

Amen.
**************************************************

Will you consider helping a child get their Everything?

The road is not one-way.

In return, you will get more than you ever could dream of.

I know; I dreamed it. And it was real.

You will get your Everything, too.

Pray about sponsoring a child. There are so many waiting, wondering, and dreaming their own dreams.

God bless you in your prayerful consideration.

village girls praying before the meal (copyright Lisa Auter 2012)

The Ugly Turned Beautiful Life

"God's Word was meant for 

the ugly life."  

~ Beth Moore from the study, "Breaking Free."

Can I just admit it? I live the ugly life. I live the sinful life: getting angry, prideful, jealous, bitter, depressed, and doubtful. I walk with emotionally tattered clothes and emotionally battered face. I am in need of God. I am in need of a Savior. I am in need of breaking free from the bondage that tells me

I'm a 

bad person

selfish person

that I

don't matter

shouldn't be here

don't deserve any good thing

I must break free from the bondage that the enemy holds over me. He does not want me to know

that I am

made in God's image (Gen 1:26-27)

blessed by God (Gen 12:3, Eph 1:3)

strong, courageous, successful (Josh 1:7-9)

a daughter of the King (Ps 45:9)

precious and valuable (Deut 12:30,31; Ps 106:34-39)

the focus of God's love song (Zeph 3:17)

(I've got a list, shall I go on?)

It's time. 

It's time I let God set me free. 

I may live the ugly life, but God knows I deserve more and He wants to give me more.  

I know I live the ugly life, but I also know that God is for me. His love is for me, for you, for all of us.

He is knocking on the door and I must answer. 

“I believe; help my unbelief!”  (Mark 9:24 ESV)

And may I suggest a song for your breaking-free journey?
Matthew West's, The Healing Has Begun
(just click on the title and it will bring you to the amazing song)