Long time, No blog…

I know, I know…  It’s been a while.  Life happens.  Children to rear, meals to cook, laundry to wash and fold and put away… which means limited time to do the ‘fluff’ stuff.  Truth is, I’m still here and my thoughts are all still here, but my priorities have been reshuffled again… and again… and again… and dare I say, one more time, again…

EvidentLee is all about His evidence in me.  You may say, well, there must not be much ‘evidence’ going on and I’ll tell (well, I should say ‘ask’) you to give me some of your time (I could use about 6-8 more hours in my day) to allow me the opportunity to enumerate all the ‘evidences’ going on in me and around me.  Unfortunately, I need to prepare for the 37 people from Dublin Christian Academy’s Chorale that will be here on Monday night.  Mary was right to worshipped at our Lord’s feet, but I can’t imagine He wasn’t thankful for the food that Martha prepared for Him and those around Him.  There is a balance to life and finding it sometimes requires sacrificing our wants and desires for others.  Have a great day in the Lord whether you are worshipping at the feet of our GREAT God or making a meal to minister to those He loves.  Till another day…

September 20, 2008

It’s been 9 years and I still miss my mom.

There’s an ache in my heart; some days it feels like a big gaping hole and some days it feels like the whisper of wind against my skin.   Regardless of how it feels, the ache is my companion now and some days, dare I even say, it is my friend.

Her name was Charlotte and she was beautiful.  She always struggled with her weight.  I can remember people making fun of her because of her size, but to me, there was just always more to love.  She had siblings, but I don’t think they got along too well.  Sometimes, it seemed like a contest… which one was the better one?

She married a handsome man… who had lots of problems.  She gave birth (full term) to a baby girl who had ‘unknowingly’ died while still in the womb.  They had another daughter and she was beautiful!  (Still is! )  Personally, I think that she was adored by her father.  Time went on and life went on; personal problems that still existed were compounded with their problems together as a couple.  Then he committed suicide…  Neither knew that I was there.  Eight months later I was born.

Almost a year later, she married again.  I called him Daddy.  Everybody liked him.  He did things to my sister and I that a Daddy doesn’t do.  No one knew…?  They lived a ‘happy’ life and they had a daughter.  I thought that she was beautiful!  (Still is! )

She was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had the surgery (a lumpectomy) and the radiation and the chemo…  She was declared cancer-free!  Two months later, telling her like she already knew, they told her that she had cancer all over her body.  Less than a year later, she died.  It was September 20th, 1999.

Have you ever watched the one you love pass from this life to the next?    To know that one moment, she was in pain and suffering and the next moment, she was in her new body.   It is an surreal experience, almost indescribable.  My words are jumbled, insufficient…  I have confidence that she suffers no more because she had accepted Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.  Do you have that knowledge?

It’s been 9 years and I still miss my mom, but one day I will see her again.

Are you growing?

What’s the Lord teaching you right now?  What consumes your thoughts, your time, your energy?  For me, it’s love.  Not ‘romantic love’, not even ‘brotherly love’, but Christ’s love for me and how that love should be demonstrated to others by me.

When I had to start dealing with and facing the results of being sexually abused, I didn’t know where to turn.  People would look at me like I had ‘lobsters crawling out of my ears‘ or they would just ‘not-so-subtly‘ ignore me or they would just give me that patented answer of ‘just trust in God…‘.  Very few were willing to help me or… maybe they just didn’t know how to help.  Regardless, I began reading an assortment of ‘Christian’ self-help books dealing with the issues of abuse, etc…  In one book I read that I had to love the one that hurt me and…, well…, I pretty much threw the book against the wall!

Are you kidding me?

Love him?

How’s that possible?

Even God hates what he did!  Doesn’t the Bible say that it’s better that a millstone be hung around his neck?  I was so angry, so furious, so hurt, and so full of despair…  So much of everything!

How could I possibly love him?

It took me a LONG time and many, many, many tears and alot of VERY FRANK conversation with God before I finally realized that just as God loves me despite my sin; He loves this individual despite his sin.  His sin is no different than my sin.  In understanding this and applying it to my life, I was able to forgive him.  I was able to love him as God loves him, to demonstrate God’s love for him just as God had and continues to love me and demonstrate His love for me.

Now, here I am again trying to understand God’s love again (not through the same circumstances) and wondering how many different ways there are to learn and apply this lesson.  Granted some lessons are easier to learn and some lesson seem…, well, you know, like getting hit over the head by ‘two by four’, but regardless, it has me thinking and learning and changing and growing.

How about you?  Are you doing the same? If you aren’t, maybe you need to think about why not?

Priceless…

You’ve seen the commercials; they go something like this…

5 blankets — $50.00 (inflation )

1 box of laundry detergent — $8.00

5 wanna-be superheros in training — priceless

To be honest, it takes everything I have in me not to freak out because…the blankets will have to be washed… which in turn, means more work for me… using the time that I don’t have… to do one extra chore… that could have be avoid… if I had just said no.  Crazy, isn’t it?  How self-absorbed am I?

I can look at the world two ways, well…, actually, I could look at it many different ways.  Let’s see, there is absurdism, behaviorism, conceptualism, dualism, eudaimonism, feminism, gnosticism, humanism, naturalism, etc…, etc…, etc…  If the real truth be told, there are two ways — the world’s way and God’s way.  I can choose to be self-centered or I can choose to be God-centered.  My own sinfulness allows me to see the world as it affects me (ah, the self-centered, self-adsorbed attitude!), but if I take the time to allow God to work in me (Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”) then I am able to see everything around me in a way never before imagined — God’s way.  Oh yes, one more thing — laundry isn’t nearly as important as the laughter of children with blankets tied around their necks using their imaginations  — that is priceless!

… judging, loving, or simply obeying?

I read a quote a while back “If you judge people, you have no time to love them” (Mother Teresa) and it made me stop and wonder. What are these words actually trying to say? On the surface, it seems like a fair statement, but there is something underneath it all that is, in fact, a judgmental statement. A point that I actually find amusing and yet, it saddens me at the same time because it is not biblically founded.

We live in a society that demands and requires complete acceptance of every person’s wants and desires and yet, those persons ‘demanding and requiring’ are not willing to do so themselves. You want me to love you and allow you to do whatever you want. If I love you, then I care about you. If I care about you, then I cannot in good conscience allow you to pursue a path that will undoubtedly end in hard ache and pain. The choice is yours if you choose to listen, but ‘in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom‘ (Proverbs 11:14, King James Version). People tend to focus on the negative aspect of judging instead of the positive. God judges us because He cares about us. Does this mean that He doesn’t love us? WOW! If I said this to God, what do you think His response would be? People like to quote the passage of scripture found in Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (KJV) as their support, and yet, they fail to go to the next verse which states “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (KJV) This ‘judging’ “refers to rash censorious, and unjust judgment.” (Albert Barnes’ NT Commentary, Power Bible CD4.6) Ask yourself this ‘Am I being judged hastily, critically, or unfairly?’. Honestly, only you can truly answer that question, well…, you and your God. Is it possible that there is cause for concern? Is is possible that the ‘judgment’ is out of love? Or are you just mad because someone has challenged you and what you want, what you desire? Are you willing to examine the possibilities? You want me to examine the possibilities surrounding your circumstances with honesty. Are you willing to do the same? If someone loved me, I would want them to point out possible concerns that they see in my life. The same standard applies no matter what; I would do to you what I would want done to me.

Let’s take a moment to examine what love is. I can think of no better passage than 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a “Love is patient, love is kind {and} is not jealous; love does not brag {and} is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong {suffered,} does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails;” (New American Standard Bible) Is this the kind of love that you want? If it isn’t, there is definitely a problem. I can give you no other love except the love that my God, our God gives to us. He gave His own Son over to death because He loves us, you and me, as stated in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (KJV) His command, found in Mark12:30-31, is to “LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH. The second is this, YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (NASB) I am to love you as I love Him. Am I doing this? Is there evidence of Him in me? Am I ‘judging’ you unfairly or am I loving you as God loves me?

A thing of beauty?

Sometimes I wonder why God allows certain things to be and then I am reminded that He is God…

“Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:”

Isaiah 42:5

There is beauty even in the unseemly because it is made by God.

A glimpse of glory?

I absolutely love photography!

l think that it allows us to capture that one moment in time when we are truly awed. This particular picture makes me wonder what the glory of our great God is truly like.

What about you?

Choosing despite the consequences…

We have this inflatable pool for our girls. It is about 6′ by 10′ and as you can tell, big enough for an adult or two to join in the fun! Unfortunately, it needs to be cleaned out every so often because of the slime that tends to develop from water not circulating.

Now as I go through the process of emptying it and wiping it down, I realize that I will have to get into the pool to reach the middle ( uh, hello… 5′4″ human cleaning a 6′ pool). So I get in making myself fully aware that a slimy bottom (the pool, of course) means that I must tread very carefully. I am carefully walking to avoid that known consequence (falling!) and doing a fairly good job. You know where this is going, right… KERPLUNK! Down I go!

Going into the pool I tried to make myself aware of all the consequences. I knew that I could fall. I tried to walk carefully and yet I still failed. Now I understand this is just a story about a pool and so what,… what could I possibly learn from this mishap?

We are fully aware of the possible consequences of our choices. We think a particular consequence will not happen to us because we know what we are doing. We are aware! We think we know what step(s) to avoid. BEWARE! The truth is that it only takes one small step (one wrong step) and we have changed the outcome of the choice forever. Proverbs 3:5-6 says “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” It is not about what I think I know; It is all about what God knows! Do you trust him? Do you trust him to lead you? Are you willing to follow Him?

My favorite verse is…

Jeremiah 9:23-24 which states “Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.”

I can’t remember when exactly the Lord allowed these verses to impact my life, but the impact has been great! It’s not about wisdom or might or even riches. It’s not even about what I think that I know about God. It’s about who He is and His authority to say “…I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth…”. Who am I and what is my authority? Except through God, I am nothing. How about you? Have you taken the time to look within through the eyes of your God?