Let It Be

 This time of year a picture of “happily married with two kids and a golden-doodle all in matching pajamas by a roaring fireplace” runs around in our heads and we measure how badly we miss that ideal, making ourselves miserable for all the shortfalls. “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year” is the biggest lie we tell ourselves in Western culture. Yes, the music is heavenly and the lights are glorious but beyond that, there is life as usual. Actually, life as usual is amped up and stress to fit the mold is heightened. We feel we must keep everyone happy-clappy and when we fall short, and we do, we have to deal with unmet expectations.

So what if we put an end to the need to measure up to that impossible picture of perfection? What if we take a step back and not. Not make all those expected treats and not wring our hands over missed loved ones and not set the bar at an unattainable level? What would that look like? It may look like no Christmas cards, empty chairs, fewer stocking stuffers, or fewer lights on the house. 

Or maybe it would look like missing your mom and being alone away from family and friends with a new spouse in a dirty lonely dark cave used for animals while preparing a place for a newborn baby from a slobber covered feed trough and the smell of manure all around. There is no clean water, no comforts of home and no one believes your story of an angel and virginity. The birth is painful and the baby is born. What next? The birth of the King is celebrated not by authorities and leading rabbis, but by handicapped smelly, thieving sheep-herders who claim to have been heralded by a host of angels. Is this what the God of the universe intended?

So maybe it is time to let the cliche picture in our heads go. Maybe the best gift we could give ourselves this Christmas is to not expect anything out of the ordinary but to let it be as Mary did so long ago. 

Choose Hope

 I’m a mess. There, I said it. I struggle with issues like anger and fear. To top it off, I am a control freak. It is so hard for me just to stand down. And I find myself in a world that has lost love, kindness, sanity and is full of greed and depravity.

But…

I have hope and hope makes all the difference! My hope is in Christ. God wants to save us from our own destruction because He created us and loves us. He created us with the freedom to choose. All we have to do is believe and trust what He said. He said that God created everything and then sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to live in the flesh among us. And that Jesus was crucified over 2000 years ago on a real Roman cross to his death and that His body was buried in a real tomb and three days later He rose to life in the flesh. He returned to heaven after leaving behind the Spirit form of God to help us grow as believers. And He said that on a day that we have no idea about, Jesus will come again and gather up all of the dead believers and those believers left on earth and take us to live in an unimaginably beautiful place with Him to live a totally fulfilling existence without pain and death. And in this lies all my hope.

Here are the words of Jesus explaining to a guy named Nicodemus, who wanted to know why the Son of God came to earth to live as a human among us.

John 3:16-17 AMP
"For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world, that He even gave His One and only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him as Savior shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world, but that the world might be saved through Him”.

So He clearly lobbed the ball into our court. We each must choose to participate by belief and trust. We must choose to volley our thoughts and beliefs daily with Him or to walk off and leave Him. But if we participate, we become the recipients of grace for all the messing up that we have done, are doing, and will do.

It is this hope that keeps me looking to God. My hope keeps me talking to him. My hope holds me up when the world knocks me down and consequently, love and compassion grow where there was none before. Everyday my hope is in Christ. Everyday I talk to Him about letting go of my anger, fear and control issues and I see that He is making improvement in spite of me. So I have hope for a bright future knowing someday, all these issues will be a thing of the past.

If you haven’t made this choice and want to, simply tell God in a humble prayer that you choose this hope and believe in your heart that He will do what He says He will do. If you have this relationship with God, may you find a way to share it with those who want it.

Photo by Laurissa Noack

One Right Decision

I have been rescued. And I am rescued on a daily basis. No, I was not a drug addict. No, I didn’t suffer from alcoholism. My demons are covert, they are many and I am under the delusion that I hide them well. They vary and come at me from every angle. They resemble self-pity, anger, bitterness, selfishness, self-righteousness and a plethora of other chains all of which stem from pride. Any one thing on this list can destroy faster than a heroin addiction and I am inflicted with these demons on a daily basis. But God…

Yes, I have been rescued today. And I was rescued yesterday and I will be rescued tomorrow if I choose. All I have to do is make one right decision. I have to let go and give it to God. It is a choice. It is the one right decision. To let Jesus take the wheel even though I grab at that wheel during the stressful moments of a day. But making this choice consistently and daily over the last seven years has brought me peace and joy that has rooted and grown. Most of my days I am not aware of this change since it isn’t one of those bolt-of-lightning type changes. But sometimes I am given a glimpse of someone who is like me who hasn’t made that decision and my eyes see the miracle that God has produced in me and I want this so badly for them too. He is cutting my chains off one by one, replacing each with his peace, love and understanding and I am so grateful. 

I am beginning to understand this verse from the Apostle Paul. 

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Undeserved Grace

The church-going world of an insider that I had known for nineteen years was about to be over. There was an awareness that my choice and consequently, Satan-authored shame was about to cause me to be rejected by my church, friends and family and I was about to face isolation and heartbreak. I will never forget that night, looking up at the stained glass windows from the outside. It was foreshadowing of my life to come. Yet this was the first time I truly understood God’s grace. It was 1978 and I was in a situation where there was no easy way out. The world as I knew it was about to change. The gravity of the situation was more than I could handle. So in the dark of night, in my college town of Plainview, Texas, I sat alone in my car staring up at the beautiful backlit stained glass of a nearby church, pouring my heart out to God and receiving my first glimpse of God’s amazing grace.  He was there to cry out to when there was no one else. It is in moments like this that the veil becomes thinner and we get a better glimpse of God’s heart. 

The words to Better Than a Hallelujah by Amy Grant express this well.  

The woman holding on for life,

The dying man giving up the fight

Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes

The tears of shame for what's been done,

The silence when the words won't come

Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

We pour out our miseries

God just hears a melody

Beautiful the mess we are

The honest cries of breaking hearts

Are better than a Hallelujah.

Until you experience something out of your control, you cannot truly experience God’s grace. Up until that point in my young life, my choices did not slap me in the face with consequences. So I swept them under the rug and considered myself a pretty good person.  Grace cannot be experienced when you do not confront your own sinful nature. Grace is reserved for the humble and repentant and without this, I could not know this ultimate love from my Savior.  At this time I realized God is merciful and that I cannot deserve or earn his love. Nothing I could do could separate me from this mercy and nothing I can do will make me deserving of it. All He expects from me is to be truthful with myself and with him.

You see, God allowed consequences to plunge me into a world that was starkly different from anything I had ever known.  And it is those circumstances that forced me to see God in a much more personal way than before. Those hardships gave me perspective and depth. They gave me a promotion in life. They caused me to cling to my Father.  

But did God answer my cry for help? Yes, he abundantly answered my prayers but not in a way I expected. In the following years I experienced rejection, poverty, isolation and heartbreak. I was thin because I was hungry and not because I was on a diet. Every month I didn’t know how I was going to pay the bills. During this season, however, God gifted me with a passion for my new role in life as a mom.  He gave me a healthy baby girl, then another beautiful baby girl, a college education and a career, then guided me to a place where I was loved and accepted. There I met and married the love of my life and God continued to bless me with a son and so many good things, some of which  I never could have imagined.  And he did it over a long period of time. He did it in His time. There have been sorrows along this earthly road, and Lord knows, I am daily still learning, but looking back I realize the difficulties far outweighed the blessings of God's beautiful, amazing grace.