Week 26 --- Psalms 32:8-10

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.

Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the LORD's unfailing love
surrounds the man who trusts in him.

I think that we are rarely honest about our "actual status". Facebook is so funny, because it allows us to share with others what we are doing, thinking, saying, feeling --- however I really think we just say what we want people to think about us in that venue. My friend and I were talking about our "actual status" the other day, and here are a few of our favorites:

*Lindsey is in full dress clothes, sans pants, laying in bed eating marshmallows.
*Beth is still wearing a swimsuit from this morning, sitting on the living room floor, eating expired food.
*Beth just pulled a tshirt out of the clean laundry basket that she wore on May 5th and still hasn't gotten around to folding (this one would become FB appropriate if I added "haha too many fun things to do to get to laundry!")
*Beth is PMS-ing and feeling like a caged animal.
*Beth is thinking that if she reads another post about lactating or dilating she may delete FB altogether.

Isn't honesty rare?? I struggle with it, as I tend to side with the People-pleaser team. My fear is if I tell someone what I really think, or what needs to be said in honesty, they won't be happy or like me anymore. Which sounds ridiculous when I say that out loud, but seriously. I've been trying to work on my honesty when I pray too.

God, I feel like you don't care.

the LORD's unfailing love surrounds the girl who trusts in him

God, I feel really alone.

the LORD's unfailing love surrounds the girl who trusts in him.

God, life is way harder than I thought it would be.

the LORD's unfailing love surrounds the girl who trusts in him.

It doesn't matter what we throw at Him, the answer comes back the same everytime. The trust part is the tricky part of that statement.

I've been meeting with some friends to study Ruth this summer, and I told someone this last week that my bible study went for almost 3 hours last night --- and they acted sympathetic, but I was quick to correct and just beaming from how much we got to talk about in that time. One of the things we talked about was weeping or crying, and how that looks in scripture. For me, honesty and crying are so so closely related. Here is what i've decided since hashing this out with my friends:

Weeping is everywhere in the Bible. It's not a bad thing. Our study challenged us to "weep forward" and use the times of sadness to still find God and still keep going.

Crying gets more mileage when you do it with someone else. Crying alone invokes self-pity, and in my experience it just makes me feel the same on the other end, if not worse sometimes. Crying with a friend is a humbling experience, but I think that might be where it counts. I remember one time in college where my best friend and I were living in separate towns, and she came to visit me, and at two totally separate points in the weekend we both cried while we were sharing parts of our lives that were hard at the time. I remember her telling someone else that she spent the weekend doing some crying, and that person telling her she was lucky to have a friend she could cry with.

For me, crying has two factors that make it difficult:

Admittance:

Oh man, here's where it's hard for me. When I get to the point where I feel like crying, I'm usually admitting that something is bad wrong. I'm admitting that I can't fake it anymore, I can't keep up the happy face and I don't even care how it makes me look, I'm going to cry. If you can somehow find someone you trust to do this with, how much more beneficial the process. I think this is what Jesus wants from us. His power is made perfect in our weakness, and I feel like what I just described is really his specialty to redeem. I think if we admit to him that we can't fake it anymore, and we need to show that we feel broken and are broken, His grace and gentleness is so so ready for us at that point.

Acceptance:

Oh man, here's where it gets really really hard. When I cry with someone else, I'm admitting that I need help usually. I've been hurt, or I'm confused, or discouraged and I need someone's support. Accepting support and accepting advice are hard, cause it seems like maybe we didn't know everything after all and we can't do it alone. Here's another part about acceptance that gets me, sometimes when I finally get to a place where I can accept someone's kindness it often makes me cry. There's a woman at my church who can make me cry just by hugging me. Sometimes I avoid her, cause I know if i'm having a bad day, and she hugs me, I will lose it and i just don't have the energy. That woman has hugged me on some really hard days in my life and I know her kindness and understanding are so present and it just makes me cry! At my bible study the other night, my friend told me I had been on her heart a lot, and it just made my eyes fill with tears because accepting kindness and help is humbling, but so so necessary. Jesus' unfailing love surrounds the person who trusts in Him. Accept it. Whole-heartedly.

Week 25 --- Esther 4:14

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?


God revealing himself to me through Esther is something I hope will always stand out to me as a turning point in my life. Let me begin by explaining that I have been in a negative relationship for the past 3 years that just would not stop. Mostly because I didn't want it to, but at times I genuinely wanted it to go away, and somehow it would re-surface and pick right back up. I justified, begged, explained, willed and prayed to God to make it work out. I would thank him for how he showed himself to me through this relationship, I would thank him for grace, I would pray for this man in my life, and at the end of it all I would still ask God to work a miracle to let us be together. I feel like through the course of the 3 years God took him away, brought him back, moved things around, kept things the exact same. I was constantly confused.



Let's cut to this past January. I started a Bible study with some friends on the book of Esther. The title of the study was "It's tough being a woman..." Who wouldn't agree with that? I was knee-deep in Seasonal Affective Disorder and just needed something to give me some structure to my time in the Word. The first video message we watch of Beth Moore's lesson, I quickly discover that she has set the scene of this series in a political theme, and more specifically with a Washington DC backdrop. Awesome. My only memory, or knowledge of Washington DC is when I was there with Ryan. I throw an instant temper tantrum with God, because can he just make something --- anything--- a little less painful please???? When I see the monuments that Beth Moore stands in front of to speak, I think of the time when I was there, and it breaks my heart to think of how happy I looked in all the pictures.



Exhibit A:

(I'm not sure if I should have blurred out his face or something, to be less incriminating, but oh well...)

You get the idea. Happy. Hard to look at later. And Beth Moore parks her sweet video series in the exact same spot. Coincidence?.... Providence :)



Check out Beth Moore's video snip-it of Esther here. Bless her heart, she knows how to make a good promo video. The music alone is intense.



You could call the DC backgrounds of the study a coincidence, but I really think that this was God's first nudge to get ready to do some work on this part of your life Beth. I think so many of my conversations with God must sound like whining on my end. Praise Him that he knows how to reach us and how to handle those moments when I am a mess.


So this study was supposed to last 10 weeks. I am rarely blessed by structure :) and I quickly got off schedule. Things had come into my life through work that kept me from attending our weekly meetings, so I kind of just kept doing my homework on my own, but not staying on track or finishing with the rest of the group in April.



In February, we had been studying the portion of the scripture that speaks to fear. Esther is finally accepting what she must do to save her people, and she states "If I perish, I perish" In the Bible study, Beth Moore challenged us to fill in the blanks "If ________, then ________" She spoke to the fact that no matter what we write in the first blank, the second blank will always be God. In my homework that week, and I'm sure there were tears dropping on the page as I wrote it, but I said "If Ryan marries someone else, then God will still be sovereign" That was my biggest fear, and most dreaded thing that could happen in my life on that day.



Last week, Ryan and I had lunch and he let me know that he was getting ready to propose to his girlfriend that he had met in February. I hadn't seen him in quite awhile and just having lunch with him had put me into emotional turmoil. While I was getting ready, i had to stop and sit down and just lift my hands up for help. I remember praying, "this is too big, here, i need to give this to you" Jessi --- this is when you were praying for me, and I can tell you without a doubt in my mind that you made a big difference by doing that for me. It works! Keep doing it! :)


So I leave my lunch, and I am crushed, yet oddly peaceful. In the past I have just crumbled while having difficult conversations with this guy, but I did not panic, and I said a few things I had always wanted to say. The dates of when his life started to change, and when God started to work on my heart were so so similar, that I was so ready to see what was left in the last week of my Esther study that I hadn't finished yet. 1 week of the 10 remaining, for such a time as this.



A lot of people don't know how the story of Esther went down. We know that she won a beauty contest, and we know that she had to muster up her strength to go speak to the King to save the lives of her people that had been destined for complete annihilation. The part of the story that I think they forget to mention in Sunday school is that the king did not reverse the order to kill all her people. King Xerxes gave her permission to write any other proclamation she wished. So she wrote an edict giving the Jews the right to defend themselves when the soldiers came to kill them. Do you know that the Jews came out of that as the winner?? Against the Persian army, this small group of people defended themselves and won?



So I have now finished a lunch that has changed how I thought i would spend my life, and I'm starting to see how Esther is wrapping up. The last chapter of the book of Esther is about the Feast of Purim. I'm sitting at a little cafe table at the Whole Foods the next day, and I start to read this:



"Purim 'was a spontaneous celebration of the joy of finding oneself still standing on the day after an irrevocable death decree was executed. The day of death had come and gone and God's people were still alive! The Purim is in this sense a Sabbath, a joyous rest after the evil and the threat of death have passed"



I went on to read:



"Here you are, Beloved, Satan tried to destroy you along your lifes' path, but clearly, he didn't get his way. You're still standing, aren't you? Instead of falling apart, your lines are all starting to fall together. Piece by piece. Glimpse by glance. What a beautiful inheritance you have!"



Man, God is big. And real. Don't ever let anyone tell you different. As I started to write this out I was getting a little self-conscious that people would think I'm taking coincidences and making them seem magical ---- but that's where providence takes over. One of the more infamous facts about Esther is that the name of God is not written anywhere in the book. It's the only book in the Bible that doesn't include His name. I think there's some pretty serious truth in asking ourselves, "Are we in a season of life where we can't find His name anywhere?" "How do I know he still cares about me, when everything that's happening would say He's not even around?"


Esther is God's message to us, that even when we can't feel His presence, He is there, and He is at work. God's providence speaks to His perfect plan for us, and His purpose and destiny for each of us.

"In other words, every time He shifts us here or moves us there on this earthbound chessboard, He's not just fulfilling His own pleasure regardless of is impact on you. He's also working every detail --- even the dreadful ones --- to your and my good. Providence cancels out every coincidence."


I could talk about Esther all day. I'm thankful that God knows the timing of life, and our needs more thoroughly than we do. Praise Him!

Week 24 --- Psalms 18:24

"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes"

I've been thinking a lot about our memories and what that looks like through the perspective of scripture. I was sitting on my friend's porch a couple weeks ago--- having a mini-breakdown if I remember correctly--- :) but I was just pouring out my heart and all the things that I was upset about and all the things that were so painful to even talk about that just made me cry on the spot. I started telling her about a movie I had seen called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind ... I included the preview here for you, which after watching it I decided is much creepier than I remembered. I'm going to hit the highlights that were impactful to me if you don't make it through the whole clip...

The idea of the movie, is that people pay someone to erase their memories that are just too painful to bare. The main character goes through a difficult end to a relationship and decides the memory of it is not worth it. As i was sitting on my friend's porch that night, I choked out the admission that if this was a real thing, i think I would do it. When I was driving home that night, the only thing on my mind that I regretted saying was that statement. It gave me this panic, unease, and unsettled feeling to have said those words outloud. I kept thinking about why it gave me so much guilt to say those words and I think it is because deep down I believe that God uses every single instance in our lives to draw us closer to Him and to reveal himself to us. For me to say I want you to take any of those moments away, would be to doubt his purpose and presence in my life through those difficult times.

Later that week I was driving downtown in my car, and the song Blessed Assurance came on the radio. "This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long" Now that's what I'm talking about. What is my story? I know it's so far from perfect, but it is also so far from being done. :) I want people to look at my life -- even the messy, painful parts --- and see Christ as being the author and perfector of my story. I want to be able to tell people that to have missed even one of those memories where Jesus provided strength in a difficult time, would have been a huge loss. I love hearing Beth Moore talk about the heritage she's taught her daughters they have -- she talks about making sure they want the relationship with Christ that she has found. "To miss this part of my life, would be to miss everything" Isn't that a statement?!

This verse talks about God re-writing the text of our lives when we open the book of our hearts to his eyes. Oh I want to let Him! I think there's really two parts here -- he does the writing and we do the opening. We both have a part.

So back to my original statement of really questioning what to do with some of the painful memories that are included in the text of my life. I've been praying about this quite a bit. I know that these things are part of my story, but I don't know what to do when recalling them makes me sad. I remembered studying something last summer that was along these lines so I looked it up again. The author told us to read Psalm 103 and take away the statement of "forget not God's benefits..."

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my
inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and
forget not all his benefits-
3 who forgives all your sins and heals
all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you
with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good
things so that your youth is renewed like
the eagle's.
6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the
oppressed.

She then told us that as we recall our memories, to assign one of God's benefits to that particular time in our lives. Whether He's forgiving us, redeeming us, satisfying us ---- whatever that looked like in our life at that point in time, to forget not that benefit. I figure at this point I'll try anything. :) And it can't hurt right??

(This should be the last of my onslaught of blog posts. I think i am caught up.)

Week 23 --- Luke 11:13

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

I've decided to start praying that God will show me who He is through blessings and good things for a little while. Not forever, but just for a season I would like to discover more about Him through that route. I'm not even talking Prayer of Jabez, increase my territory business --- I just feel like God has revealed himself to me in difficult circumstances and I would like to also find him in the goodness of life. Above all else, I want to learn to submit to His will for me in any circumstance, however I know he doesn't mind if I ask, so I'm gonna :)

Over the past few weeks, I've tried to be conscious of the good things that I have in my life. This list is by no means all-inclusive, but the things that I find myself loving about life on any random day. I think these really are the lesser of what's described in the verse above. I think that the verse implies that if I consider these to be good gifts, how much more will the Father be willing to give the Holy Spirit to me. I learned a lot about the Holy Spirit a couple summers ago, and I think it's important to note that we just have to ask to be filled with Him. "Lord, empty me out of all my garbage, junk, sin and baggage. Here are the things that hurt me today, the things that people have said that I can't forget, and the nasty things that I've been thinking that I feel guilty about. Now that we've created some room, fill me with your Spirit, I don't deserve it but you offer it and I love you and thank you."

Some of my Good Things, that overwhelmly turned out to be people:

1) My friend that will put me in the car and take me out of town when I need it. The same friend that lets me sleep at her house and cry on her porch. The friend that is the sister of my heart, what a good gift.

2) My friend that asks the hard questions --- "When was the last time you showered? When are you getting out of bed?" Things like that that seem difficult after a break up or crisis that I don't want to answer, but probably should. This is the same friend that shows up with short people jokes and witty sarcasm after a bad date vs ice cream or chocolate. I love her.

3) My mom that gives me the Laurie-badge every day of my life. Her vote of confidence makes me feel like I can do it.

4) My friend that has watched how life has changed me in the last 2 years. My friend that talks things through with me, and let's me try out my thoughts as they occur to me. My friend who is quick to point out scripture and what that means for my situations.



5) My friend who makes the best comfort food ever. Do you know that she makes me milk and cookies whenever I want? And is quick to tell me how much she appreciates me. Such a gift.



(this is really her ... she has an awesome bakery.)


6) My friend who I have spent less than 3 hours with in person, but knows my heart and my history. She is my modern day pen pal and such an illustration of God's redeeming power in any circumstance.




7) My boss who told me several year ago that I am going places. Big places. And when I get there, she wants to be able to tell people that she is so proud to have gotten to be the person that helped me get there. My other boss who is many states away but who asks me about Bible Study and ministry. They are the women who exemplify leadership in my life and I am blessed to have found them in a most unlikely field. Gifts.



8) My big chair and coffee with good creamer.



9) The book of Esther. The feeling that it is God's word, living and active in me. The little ribbon in my Bible that tugged at my heart when I moved it out of this portion of scripture.



10) My realtor. I know that's random, but God put this Christian man in a position to speak truth to me at just the right time. I will recommend him to any potential home-buyer for life. :)




11) My church family. The group of people that I am going through life with --- they are flawed and human, but I could not ask for a more wonderful, loving, persistent, community of believers.

13) My Dad who sends me flowers and takes me to lunch. I've never wondered for one single minute of my life if my Dad is proud of me, he tells me all the time.

I wrote on a notecard last week, "God, that I would never trade this feeling of intimacy for whatever idea I had of happiness."

Week 22 --- Romans 5:1-8

So I've been thinking about the title of this blog and how I bet it's semi-confusing to people. I saved this blog address and title several years ago and hadn't done anything with it for a long time. Mrs. Potter's Lullaby is my favorite song by the band Counting Crows, and possibly one of my favorite songs of all time. The background behind the lyrics of this song are that the lead singer saw the movie Patch Adams and fell madly in love with the actress Monica Potter. He went home from the theater that night and wrote this song. I love it because it's everything about him that he wants her to know --- a completely genuine attempt to put everything out on the line for her in hopes that she will talk to him. They end up meeting, and dating, and breaking up in the real life --- the story behind it all is pretty cool.

The different lines of the song really hit me at different points in my life. This past week, this stanza is particularly on my mind:

"Well, there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything"

Maria is his first love, and he unapologetically explains that pieces of her are part of his story. I'm sure I over-analyze a lot of the verses of this song, but I don't really care. If I can find a blessing in something, I'll take it! :)

So I've been thinking about this song in terms of my life, and if I had to tell someone I was trying to convince to date me, everything about me that they needed to know and I wanted to tell them, I would pick Romans 5 as a starting point. I think it was last summer that I really started to get what this verse means. For awhile my little green purse Bible fell open to this section of scripture on its own since I was reading it so much. I think the part about being hemmed in by troubles always catches my attention, but it also offers so many ways that God uses those troubles. You can't lose. So awesome.

1-2By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
3-5There's more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
6-8Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

I'm still pondering in my heart a lot of the things that have happened in my life over the past few weeks. I'm excited to share some things that I learned. I am blessed to be able to say that I'm starting to really feel the part of this scripture that says "We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise."

Finding myself standing where I always hoped I might stand,

Beth

Week 21 --- 1 Samuel 7:12

Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”


I love this scripture. Anything with an illustration always helps me understand. I made my own Ebenezer stone to give to my dad for Father's Day. I feel like my family has a lot of changes coming up, and what a great reminder that up to this point, the Lord has helped us! --- why would he not continue to?

I was thinking about the phrase, 'up to this point'...and it really made me want to go back and look at the past a little. A couple summers ago a friend really challenged me on the issue of trust. I was struggling with fear and anxiety, and she said I should go through and write out my "even if" statements. Basically identifying the things that I was afraid of and then writing out that even if this happens, I will still trust the Lord. I looked at the journal entry that I wrote three years ago, and it just broke my heart that every single thing I wrote has happened. They weren't huge life altering things, just the small worries that never went away.

07/12/08

God I will trust you even if no one chooses me
God I will trust you even if I am in retail forever (this one makes me smile today)
God I will trust you even if the people I love, love other people
God I will trust you even if all of my friends have babies, even if I don’t
God I will trust you even if I’m scared
God I will trust you even if I fall asleep alone every night

Oh it just makes me tear up!!! But what a blessing to know for sure that God is bigger and stronger than my fears. Up to this point the Lord has helped me. What a blessing to know that I will still trust even when my life is difficult. I have decided that sacrifice is such a priviledge. I feel like God is asking me to sacrifice the picture/idea I have of home, in exchange for the work that He wants to do for the kindgom through my Dad. And my response is that I'm all in. :) I was hesistant and a little angry at first, but now I know for sure that when faced with that question, I pick Jesus and His ministry first. Always.

God is doing so much in my heart I could just burst. I feel like I have a lot to say. More to come. :)

Weeks 19 & 20 --- Jeremiah 1:19, Revelation 19:11-16

So my whole life I have had this obsesssion/crush/fascination with Robin Hood. :) Not sure where this stemmed from, but since i was a little kid it has been my favorite movie. I used to think it was the romantic part where Robin Hood rescues Maid Marion that was what drew me to the story, but the more I think about it, there are tons of romantic movies that haven't stuck in my head like this one does. So I went to see the new Robin Hood movie, starring Russel Crowe, and I think everyone either teased or seriously questioned me on whether or not my loyalty to Kevin Costner Robin Hood would still be genuine if I entertained the thought of enjoying this new movie... kind of funny. So I went....

And again, I LOVED it. I decided I like any movie where there are people riding horses, fast, to save someone or something, set to dramatic music. I almost can't stand it i like it so much. So this got me thinking that the concept of people doing whats right, at any cost, to serve others is what gets me. This might seem like a stretch, but I think that's where it comes from. Especially when its a guy. How attractive. Yikes.

So this has lead me to a few verses that I've been thinking about the last few weeks. How Christ is our rescuer and how he would go to the ends of the earth just to get me back. There are verses that speak to this everywhere but here are a few i've been thinking through.

Jeremiah 1:19

They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

Revelation 19:11-16
The Rider on the White Horse

11I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter."[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

Doesn't that just give you chills??? The ultimate horseback riding scene is in scripture and I feel like we get to see this someday! I might not be able to contain myself. Just some thoughts. :)