Early morning thoughts about life.   My life in particular.

Not that that’s anything new.  I’m a thinker.  I think about a lot of things, my life being one of the more frequent subjects. It’s usually pretty entertaining.  At least to me. This morning’s thoughts were prompted by a verse I just read, one  I’m sure I’ve seen before as I’ve wandered through the Psalms, but today something stood out to me.

“The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me – a prayer to the God of my life.”  Psalm 42:8

“The God of my life.”  MY LIFE.  My life, with all of it’s uniqueness.  Nobody else has my life.  This verse makes me stop and think about it – the beginning of it, the years I’ve lived, where I’ve gone, what I’ve done, what I’ve accomplished, the people I’ve known, what God has called me to do, where I am now, where I’m going, the life that belongs only to me.  There is no one else on earth who has had my same experiences, my thoughts, my dreams, my fears, my triumphs.  No one else even knows that I’m sitting here at this table at this moment.

This is my life.  And the two of us – me and God – are together in it.  He is the God of the life that I have been given.  Today.  In all that it holds.  The lovingkindness of this morning, and the song of tonight.

Maybe this morning I just needed to dwell on that for a few minutes.  I needed to be reminded of the gift I’ve been given – the very unique opportunity to live the life that God chose me for, to live it for His glory and His honor and not my own.  It may be a life unique to me, but I’m not alone in it.  There is Someone watching over it, directing it, blessing it.

The God of my life.

You are my King, O God.  Psalm 44:4

For the Lord is our defense, and the Holy One of Israel is our King.  Psalm 89:18

For the Lord God is a sun and shield.  The Lord will give grace and glory.  No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.  Psalm 84:11

 

 

I know God cares about me.  Sometimes He reminds me of that in a special and personal way, and it makes me smile.

So, yesterday I was almost ready to dip my toes in the waters of “woe is me”.  I woke up to The Most Awful Sound coming from my air conditioning unit.  Now I realize that some of you are still wearing sweaters and wondering where Spring went, but where I live we’ve already experienced foreshadowing of August heat and humidity and my crankiness level is drifting a bit higher.  And I also know that air conditioning or potential lack thereof is totally a first world problem and I have much, much, much to be thankful for.

But when The Most Awful Sound shattered my quiet morning, thoughts of “what now?” and “why now?” and “how much is this going to cost?” and “why don’t I have a man around to help me with this?” and “just how hot is it going to get in here?” started to bubble to the surface.

Oh, how quick we are to forget our blessings!  How quick we are to panic or despair and think the worst instead of using something like this as an opportunity to hand it over to the Lord.  Hasn’t He promised to take care of us?  Hasn’t He promised to work out everything for good in our lives?

He never said all things ARE good.  But He did say that He’d work them all out FOR our good.  If we let Him.  If we trust Him.  If we step back away from the waters of “woe is me”.

Yesterday was a chance for me to practice that.  And by later that afternoon, I had the nicest A/C service guy at my house who reminded me of my Dad (someone who knew everything about everything) and he took the time to explain it all and didn’t make me feel stupid and gave me all the information I needed to make the right choice as far as what to do next.  He couldn’t fix it right then, so I prepared to brace for a long night in my hot home.  We had temps in the 90’s the day before.

But God sent me an “I care about you” reminder note in the form of a strong breeze and temps in the 60’s coming through my windows all night.  And even though the A/C won’t be fixed for another few days, South Florida might have record breaking LOW temperatures tonight and maybe the next few nights.

And I’m smiling.  I still need to lay out a whole bunch of money for a new unit, but God will take care of me.  Like He always does.  Like He promises He will do.  He didn’t have to show me that with an unexpected May cold front and a service technician who reminded me of my Dad, but He did.

Thanks for the reminder, Lord.

Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.  1 Peter 5:7

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  2 Corinthians 4:17

You who fear the LORD, trust in the LORD!
He is their help and their shield.  Psalm 115:11

 

Grieve.  Kind of a dark word.  For some reason, it has found its way into more than a few things I’ve read recently.  When something like that happens, I feel like I need to stop and think about it.

When I hear that word, I usually picture funerals and empty places at dinner tables and tears shed over the loss of someone who will never come home again.

But there are other kinds of grief, too.

Yesterday someone sent me an email that told me about a single, never-married friend who had to undergo a hysterectomy.  Having a child had been her lifelong dream.  She said that she was grieving.

Just today I was reading an article on “Chaste Christian Singleness“.  It said, “Sexually chaste singles genuinely miss out on good experiences in this life, and we do so precisely because we believe God locates those particular good experiences in marriage. It’s good for us to recognise these losses, and, if and when they deeply strike our emotions, to grieve them.”

Several weeks ago there was a quote by John Piper going around social media.  “Occasionally weep deeply over the life you hoped would be.  Grieve the losses.  Then wash your face.  Trust God.  And embrace the life you have.”

So good.  And so very true.

Sometimes we do need to grieve the life we hoped would be.  And I think God is okay with that.  Just read the Psalms and other passages of lament.  We all have dreams and ideas about what our lives will look like.  When they don’t turn out that way, it’s not always possible to keep smiling and box up the disappointment and act like we aren’t crushed.  We can’t wallow in it, but sometimes we need to mourn the loss of the dream so that we can make room for new ones.

There’s grieving over things other than singleness or childlessness.  Those are just the things I’m most familiar with.  Most of us will wake up one day and realize this isn’t the life we thought we signed up for. Or at least the life we would have signed up for if there was such a thing as choosing all aspects of the life we live.   We celebrate the dreams come true, the goals achieved, and the blessings that come our way.  But maybe we need to give ourselves permission to grieve the unfulfilled ones as well.

God always has a plan.  A perfect one.  One that deep inside, we know we want above all else.  But it’s okay to mourn the plans we thought were the best. Especially if they were plans we had held onto for a long time. Then, just as John Piper said, we need to get back up, wash our faces, trust God and embrace the life He has right in front of us.  It doesn’t mean He still won’t provide and answer and bless, but it might look a whole lot different than what we had always imagined and longed for.

God can handle our honesty and our disappointment.  He can take our tears and our questions.He knows our weaknesses and our frailty and our limited human understanding of our circumstances.  And when we’re spent,  He’s always right there to help us get back up and begin trusting again.  I sometimes think a good cry or a good rant clears the way for God to step in and be the Comforter He’s promised to be.

So there is a grief that can happen without rainy graveside services, without obituaries and memorials and empty seats at dinner tables. Sometimes grieving is a silent, honest interaction between us and God.  Sometimes it’s something we just need to do.

And then when we’re done, we need to look for that washcloth.  Because there’s a whole life to embrace ahead of us. There are new dreams to pursue.

For there is hope for a tree,
If it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
And that its tender shoots will not cease.  Job 14:7

Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—                                                                                                   Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.  Habakkuk 3:18-19

He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God;
Many will see it and fear,
And will trust in the LORD.  Psalm 40:3

 

Confession:  I killed a cockroach with my Bible this morning.

It was all pretty horrifying, both the presence of a cockroach on my dining room table AND the fact that the first thing I picked up to kill it with was my Bible.  I didn’t have time to think.  All I knew was that this creature needed to be disposed of quickly and the Bible was right there.

Of course, I should get points for the fact that I was in the middle of my quiet time at the moment, which happened to be 5:35AM.

The cockroach has since been disposed of, and the Bible cover has been properly disinfected and my horror has diminished somewhat (not completely – people know how I am with bugs), but being the “lessons learned” kind of gal that I am, I figured there was something to be gleaned from the incident.  And whatever I was doing for my quiet time prior to this was obviously off track now.

So it made me think.  Am I that quick to pick up my Bible when other things shatter my peace?  When doubts and fears and questions catch me off guard, is my Bible the first thing I go to?

Do I run to the promises of God when Satan is trying his best to undo me?

Squash.  I’m going to remember that squashed cockroach for a long time.  Maybe every time I pick up the disinfected Bible.  And that’s OK.  Because in that Bible is exactly where I need to be.

 

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.                 Hebrews 4:12

“Is not My word like a fire?” says the LORD, “and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”  Jeremiah 23:29

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.               2 Corinthians 10:4-5

I woke up this morning thinking about the fact that Good Friday, or at least the events that unfolded so many years ago on the day that we’ve come to call Good Friday, didn’t appear all that good at the time.  As a matter of fact, they were pretty horrific.  The One who was supposed to save the world was crucified.  Dead.  Gone.

Or so it seemed.

But we know the other side of the story.  We know what happened 3 days later.  We know that what appeared so awful, so hopeless, so final was really not that at all.  Things were happening behind the scenes that nobody could have imagined.

And as I processed those thoughts just now with rain pounding against my window (how appropriate for today), I realized something that I just can’t get out of my head.  That day, “Good” Friday, stands as the ultimate example to us of why we can trust God when things happen in our lives that seem awful, hopeless, maybe even final.

Good Friday is good because God was at work in the darkness.  He didn’t stop being God when there was a betrayal, an arrest, a crown of thorns, nails, a cross, a lifeless body, a tomb, a big stone, guards and weeping. Lots of weeping.  He still had a plan.  One that only He knew about, one that only He knew would unfold in His perfect time.

Of course I can’t even begin to compare my “momentary trials” to the cross.  My frustrations and disappointments and unanswered questions are nothing…NOTHING…when seen in light of what Christ suffered that day for us.  But when I look again at the events of those days, I see a God who is always at work.  I see a God who brings light out of darkness, who redeems hopeless days in ways that bring Him glory.

And I am reminded that He wants my trust and my faith when things seem anything but good.  We only know today is Good Friday because we’re on the other side of it and we know the outcome.  A resurrected and living Savior.

God works all things for good.  But sometimes He chooses to work behind the scenes first.

 

How great is the goodness that You have stored up for those who fear You!  Psalm 31:19

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.  1 Corinthians 2:9

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28

 

 

 

 

 

It was good to see hope last week.

I saw it in rows of freshly plowed dirt, trees with no leaves (yet), tiny crocuses pushing their way out of the brown remnants of Fall, and neighbors emerging from winter caves.  Hope came in the signs of Spring.

I miss the northern seasons.  I know, I know.  I live in paradise.  Where there are swaying palm trees and white sandy beaches and azure waves and flowers blooming all year long.  But there’s something about seeing the defining divisions of the year.  Summer.  Fall.  Winter. Spring.  Especially Spring.

Spring Break gave me the chance to be with family and see…Spring.  We walked among the rows of dirt at the Community Garden.  Some would-be farmers were already starting to turn the soil over, getting ready to plant.  A few were cleaning up the remainders of last year’s harvest.  Then we walked under the bare trees – still leafless, but with little buds swelling at the branch tips.  The crocuses were up – white ones, yellow ones, purple ones – bathed in the warmth of sun that was a little higher in the sky, always the first flowers to herald the change.  And people were out and about, with neighborly greetings and smiles.

It felt like hope.  It looked like hope.  The winter is over.  Things aren’t quite what they will be in a few months, but there’s no doubt about it.  Things are beginning to change.

It made me want to look for hope in my own life.  I think sometimes down here in the land where the seasons are so subtle, I forget to look for it.  The days can seem the same, blending together so that suddenly months have gone by and years have gone by, and I haven’t taken the time to actually stop and look for the evidence of things beginning to change.  I want to notice when something pokes itself out of the dirt.  I want to notice when something I thought was dead starts to bring forth a tiny bud.   I want to prepare my soil for a new season of planting and growth.

I’m glad God doesn’t have us jump right from Winter to Summer.  And maybe I’m glad that God doesn’t give us everything we want as soon as we ask for it.  Because there’s something special about that period when you start to see the signs of Spring.  When you start to see…hope.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.  Hebrews 10:23

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil.  Hebrews 6:19

That they may set their hope in God,
And not forget the works of God,
But keep His commandments.  Psalm 78:7

 

 

 

So are you supposed to ask a valet for change if you don’t have the right bills in your wallet to tip him?

I’ve had so many visits to my dentist lately I feel like they should be paying me.  But at least the office is in a lovely tall medical building overlooking the Intracoastal waterway, yachts and swaying palm trees.  And there is a valet for my car.  Which is also lovely, except when you don’t have the right bills in your wallet to tip appropriately.

Such was the case yesterday morning.

So I struggled with the quandary:  Do I ask for change, or give them what I had? Giving them what I had was way more than I would usually fork over for a 30 minute dental visit, but it wasn’t going to put me in the poor house to part with it. So I decided that I would brighten their probably-boring Monday morning with a very generous tip.  I actually started to get kind of excited about bestowing this unexpected blessing onto one of the young men in the blue polo shirts.  I saw one grab my key off the rack, sprint up around the corner and soon enough there he was with my car.  I folded up the bill and with a smile, tucked it into his hand, feeling all happy with myself.  Another lady getting into the car in front of me gave him something as well.  And then I watched to see if he’d look at what I had given him.

Nope.  He wadded up both tips without even glancing at them and tossed them into a white bucket at the valet station.

Hey wait a minute!  Didn’t he know I had given him an unexpected gift?  Didn’t he realize that I was waiting to see his surprised expression and grateful look in my direction?

He didn’t know.  He didn’t realize.  Or he just assumed it was one of those $1.00 tips he usually gets for parking the cars of patients.

As I drove away, slightly miffed, God suddenly reminded me that there have been times I’ve done the same thing to Him.  There have been times when He has blessed me far beyond what I deserved at the time.  He’s given me gifts that He was probably waiting for me to notice, to smile about, to see that I’d been taken care of in a completely unexpected way.  And I just bet that there have been plenty of times I took the blessing, wadded it up in my hand and tossed it aside without a second glance.  Because I didn’t know.  I didn’t realize. Or maybe worse yet – I didn’t expect it.

Am I like the valet guy?  Have I stopped expecting that today will bring a blessing, that today God might place something in my hand that is above and beyond the ordinary?  Do I appear…ungrateful?

May I start looking for the completely unexpected and merciful generosity of a Father who may simply want to see me smile when I open my hand and see what He has placed there.  Just for me.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above… James 1:17

 

 

 

 

Six years.  Three hundred posts.  This blog of mine hit two milestones this week.  And it’s made me kind of reflective.

Back in February, 2010, I had this crazy idea of starting a blog.  Of course, I struggled with the idea of putting my thoughts out there for the world to see.  It felt arrogant. It felt like getting onto some ego-based bandwagon.  If felt like “notice me!”.   I was never comfortable with anything that smacked of “notice me!”.

But God was stirring.  He was answering my “what next?” question.  I had written a book about waiting on God.  But what came next?  I always joked that I wouldn’t write a second book unless it was the sequel to the first one.  The first book was about waiting on God for the desire of my heart.  The second one would be all about how He provided it.  How He provided “him”.

I’m still waiting for that sequel, but I took the plunge and entered the weird world of “blogging”.  I had two requirements for myself and for what I would write. First, any post I wrote had to have the goal of inspiring faith.  I went through an exercise years ago to pinpoint what my life mission was.  After whittling it down, I figured out my life mission was to…inspire faith.  Whether that was through people watching my life, talking to others or writing, I needed to know that whatever I did, it glorified God and inspired people to have faith in Him and His Word and His plans for them.  And then second, any post I wrote needed to be based on scripture.  I can write about pretty much anything, but at the end, if the “lesson learned in the waiting” isn’t a lesson that comes from God Himself, then it isn’t worth writing about.  It would simply be feel-good, self-help stuff.

I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know it would turn into six years and three hundred posts.  Three hundred of those “lessons learned in the waiting”.   I went back to see if I documented the beginning of this journey in my journal from 2010.  Of course I did. I told you all about my “journal shelf” a few months ago.  I wrote, “Lord, this isn’t about me.  It’s about You.  It’s about inspiring faith in YOU.”  I was reading a book about prayer and journaling at the time.  A quote from the book said that journaling is “writing down the adventure as it happens.  It gives us a feel for our place in the story God is weaving in our lives.  It helps us become aware of the journey.”

And that pretty much sums up the blog as well.  I think it has been a journal of my journey, out there for the world (or at least a few of you) to read.  When I read back through some of these 300 posts, I do see that.  I see the story God is weaving in my life.  And hopefully, that story inspires others.

I still don’t want anyone to “notice me!”.  But if you notice how God is working in my life through the lessons He teaches me, then it’s okay.  If what I write can inspire faith and point people to God’s Word, then it’s okay.  Actually it’s more than just okay.

It’s pretty great.  I think God writes amazing stories.  And if I can be a small part of showing them to others, then I have done what I set out to do.

Happy Anniversary, Anticipatience.

 

Be sure to carry out the ministry the Lord gave you.  Colossians 4:17 (NLT)

I will display my holiness through those who come near me. I will display my glory before all the people.  Leviticus 3:10

…nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine…  1 Timothy 4:6

Is it just me, or did January drag on forever?

Was the first day of the new year really just one month ago?  I turned the page on my calendar yesterday to February and breathed a sigh of relief.  Then, of course, being the thinker that I am, I tried to figure out why.  Why did that first month of the year seem so long, when really, it has the same number of days that many other months do?

It was busy, for sure.  I came home after the holidays, had a car crisis (a stuck throttle body, which meant my car would go no faster than 18mph), started a new semester at work, wrote an article pitch for a magazine that was accepted and then had to fast-track the writing to meet the deadline for publication, had a friend visit from out of town, dealt with a new family of elephants (or so it sounds) that moved into the apartment above mine, worked through some other frustration where I tried to stand up for myself and it didn’t go so well, a friend asked me my thoughts on a subject we disagree on theologically and my answer turned out to be 5 pages long – typed, and to finish up the month, I found out I have a fractured tooth that has to come out…which will cost me something in the amount of a number with more than two zeroes after it.

No wonder I’m exhausted.  And relieved to have January, 2016 tucked safely behind the calendar picture for February, which would be a nice short little month except for the fact that this is the year we add an extra day.  Sigh.

But maybe days and months and years are God’s way of giving us compartmentalized sections of time where we can frame periods of His goodness and His faithfulness, in spite of the wackiness, the drama, the struggles, the financial challenges.  January’s thirty one days seemed soooo looooong.  But every one of those loooong  31 days had a part in His plan for me.

God got me to the car repair place safely, even though I could only drive 18 miles per hour all the way there on one of the busiest streets in the area. This may make me think twice before rolling my eyes at people driving with their flashers on. The magazine article opportunity was an amazing blessing, an answer to my prayers for direction with my writing. The visit from a friend was a chance to talk about life and love and God. I learned that sometimes, even as a Christian, it’s okay to stand up for yourself and fight for what you think is right, though things may not turn out the way you want them to. The response I gave to my friend about our theological differences gave me the opportunity to dig deep into scripture, testing what I said I believed and reminding me that I can still love someone I disagree with. And the expensive dental drama is yet another opportunity to see how God provides.

January was a little crazy, but that month is now a block of time where the faithfulness of God is preserved and documented. Maybe it just seemed so long because God decided to pack it with so many opportunities for me to seek Him and to see Him in it.

OK, February.  Let’s see what happens next.

 

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.  Psalm 90:2

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him. 1 Corinthians 2:9 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been passing the same road “improvement” project on my way to work for about 9 months now.  I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s taking so long.  It’s only about a half-mile of pavement.  Lots of activity, but not a whole lot of progress.

At least from my car-bound vantage point.

One morning last week I stopped at the red light and was able to watch for a while.  Two guys in hard hats, reflective vests and steel-toed boots were staring intently at a huge pile of unrolled papers laid out on the hood of a big white pickup truck.  Blueprints (or the road construction equivalent), I presumed.  The hard hat guys  looked serious. They looked like they knew what they were doing.

“Oh, so there is a plan here”, I sarcastically thought to myself, rolling my eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They would have thought I was nuts if I had gotten out of my car and insisted that I had a right to see it, demanding to know what was taking so long and why no progress was being made.  And they probably would have had me arrested, but that’s another issue altogether.

And it’s the same with God’s plans for my life.  He knows what He’s doing even if it looks to me like not a whole lot of progress is being made or things are taking way too long.  I don’t have the right to demand that He lays them all out for me.  And sarcasm about the plan is out of the question.

He’s got my blueprint, a “Master” plan so to speak. I need to keep trusting, and keep moving.  And leave the details to Him.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:5

And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.                 1 Corinthians 2:8

(originally posted 1/28/11)