Mom Fast Day Two

I am such a wimp when it comes to fasting. I was so sick all day yesterday, the first day of our fast. I decided to drink a little coffee this morning so I don’t get such a caffeine headache. So far, I feel better today.

No major spiritual break through so far, but I just keep hearing “Trust Me.” I still don’t know what I’m doing from moment to moment. But I’m praying for God to shine his light on our situation. Here’s what I read in my devotional this morning:

POUR ALL OF YOUR ENERGY into trusting Me. It is through trust that you stay connected to Me, aware of My Presence. Every step on your life-journey can be a step of faith. Baby steps of trust are simple for you; you can take them with almost unconscious ease. Giant steps are another matter altogether: leaping across chasms in semidarkness, scaling cliffs of uncertainty, trudging through the valley of the shadow of death. These feats require sheer concentration, as well as utter commitment to Me.

This makes trust sound a whole lot more active than passive.  I have felt like I’ve been too passive, and that I should do more. But I do feel like we’re leaping across chasms in semidarkness, scaling cliffs of uncertainty and trudging through the valley of the shadow of death. So today I will work at pouring all my energy into trusting Him and working with sheer concentration and utter commitment to God. I will be powered by His grace and My Unswerving Hope.

Mom Fast Day One

Today is the first day of my fast. I have a bit of a caffeine headache, but I’m off to a good start. Here’s what I hope to gain from this fast:

• ·         Wisdom and insight about how to help our son
• ·         A closeness to God that I have not yet known. I want to live in His presence in a way that his love and peace will permeate my words and my demeanor

So, God, I commit these next three days to you. I want to know You. I want to love You. I want to share You.

A Mom Fast

My hope may be unswerving, but it sure is taking a beating. Today it is bruised and bloodied. I’m at another point in my life where I have to present myself to God as I am, and it is not pretty. I cried out to God today, and all I could hear Him say was, “Trust Me.” I want to shout back, “I HAVE trusted You, and look where it’s gotten us! I’ve memorized scripture and quoted it. I’ve prayed, I’ve cried, I’ve given, I’ve set boundaries, I’ve loved ‘till it hurt. What do You want from me?!”

“Everything,” is His only reply.

“But things are getting worse instead of better! Surely You must need me to DO SOMETHING! Surely there is something I must do differently because what I’ve done for the last however many years is not working!”

“OK, go on a fast. A 3-day fast. And get three friends to do it with you.”

“God, you know how I hate fasting! I always end up making it all about me and how pitiful and miserable I feel. I don’t feel like I ever get anywhere when I fast. It just doesn’t work for me.”

Silence. God will not be manipulated. Not by my rants. Not by my tears. He is unmovable.

So I’m going on a three-day fast, and I’m looking for three friends to do it with me. So far, I’ve had no takers. Am I the only mom who aches for her kid? Am I the only mom whose heart has been dashed to bits as she watches helplessly while her kid self-destructs? Is anybody out there who knows this unbearable pain? Or who would like to avoid it in the future? I need to see the Hand of God move in my situation. I cannot go on with my life as I have known it if I don’t. Maybe that’s the point. Whatever the case, I must see the Hand of God. Will you join me? Click this link for the facebook event:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=205826286150447

The Story of the Butterfly

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I know it's been around a long time, but it's a good reminder that our struggles are not without reasons. There is a purpose for every difficulty we go through.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!

In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:

The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. --James 1:2-4

The Papa Prayer

I've been thinking about the Papa Prayer a lot lately. I sent the "gist" of it to my son recently, hoping to help him on his current difficult walk of faith. Why is it so easy to tell someone else what they should be doing, when you're not doing it yourself?!

Yesterday, I realized how much I need to revisit the Papa Prayer for myself. I am so prone to present myself to Jesus as the person I think I should be instead of the person I really am. 'Cause the person I really am can be very dark, angry and selfish. Does Jesus really want me to present that kind of person to Him? Uh, yeah!

As long as I keep showing up to Jesus with my happy face plastered on, I am nothing more than a white-washed sepulchre and there is nothing He can do to heal me. But when I drop the mask and begin to tell Him how disappointed I am in what I've experienced of Him, I begin to see how ludicrous my disappointment is and He is able to heal my perception of Him and free my mind from the grips of fear, worry and regret.

Does that mean I'll never have fear, worry and regret again? Uh, no! But when I do, if I'll bring them to Jesus, present my fearful, anxiety-ridden self to Him, He will correct my perception of Him and give me direction. At which point, I need to submit (oh, the dreaded word!) myself to him, do what He's calling me to do and move on! I cannot function the way He has designed me to function when my mind and emotions are consumed with fear, worry and regret. But until I get real about those things, they will consume me.

The Papa Prayer:

Present yourself to God authentically; be real with Him as you are with no one else.

Attend to how you are thinking of God, how you picture Him as you're talking to Him and then modify your perception to fit who He tells you He is.

Purge yourself of your relational faults by taking inventory of how you put your interests ahead of His and getting rid of anything that blocks intimacy with Him.

Approach God just as you are, tuning in to your passion to know Him and to honor Him above all others.

"Come to me exactly how you are. Stop trying so hard to be good. Admit that you're not so good. Admit how disappointed you are in what you've so far experienced of Me. I know you wonder if I even care. Sometimes you've hated Me. Be who you are in My presence. No, it's not a pretty sight. But I've found a way for Me to look at you with excitement. And my Father is singing over you. You won't hear the music till you come out of hiding. Come. Present yourself to Me. I'll walk with you as you present yourself to my Father. It'll be all right. Trust me."  --Jesus (From Larry Crabb's book, Papa Prayer)

The Living Word

“As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Isaiah 55:10-11

I was taught early in my Christian walk to pray according to scripture. When I was pregnant with my first child, fearful that I might not do everything “right,” I prayed Psalm 139:13-16 and Jeremiah 1:5 over him, trusting that God was knitting him together in my womb, that he had a great plan and purpose for him.

When our family was going through a particularly difficult time involving my first-born, I would ask advice from people who were godly and who knew God’s word. I respected and trusted them all, yet each one had different advice. I remember crying out to God, “Who do I believe?! What is truth?!” He gently reminded me that His word is truth.

So I ran back to Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1 and other scriptures and I began praying those scriptures fervently over my son. We would have good days and bad, but for over 10 years, the general direction was more of a downward spiral than what I viewed as answered prayer. I got angry with God and said, “God, I have prayed your Word over my children their whole lives, and look where it’s gotten us! Have you not heard my prayers? Have you ignored them? Are you there? Can you even hear me?!”

I got very cynical and may have even taken a step back from praying the Word over my children. Early in January of this year, I heard the Lord say two words to me: “Get understanding.” I knew exactly what He was saying: Get back into the Word. I wish I could say that I spent the past eight months digging relentlessly into my Bible. But my efforts have been a little half-hearted. I did dig out my old scripture cards that I used to carry with me everywhere I went, and I got out my Chronological Bible that I started to read several years ago. But I think I still carried that cynicism about God’s Word.

This past weekend, the sermon at our church was “Busting Myths About the Bible.” My heart was stirred again as I listened our pastor share his passion about, not only the truth of God’s word, but the life and power it contains. I realized that I used to have that same passion, but that it had diminished in me. That’s scary! This Word that I have based my whole existence on was no longer the center of my prayer life. I didn’t see it as “alive and powerful” anymore.

So I went to Hebrews 4:12 and thought back about 25 years ago when I first read that scripture and how I felt then. That reminded me of Isaiah 55:11,and I saw something that I hadn’t thought much about in the past.

God says His word will accomplish what HE pleases, and it will achieve the purpose for which HE sent it! My cynicism came because I was angry that God’s Word was not accomplishing what I wanted it to. It did not achieve the purpose for which I sent it. Ooohhh, big difference.

I had been demanding that God conform to MY desires, treating Him like that big Santa in the Sky. And when He didn’t, I got angry. God forgive me. Let me never again attempt to manipulate your Word to make it accomplish what I please. I submit to You and Your will, Your purpose, Your desires. Thank You that Your word is “living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword [scalpel] it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The thoughts and attitudes of my heart have needed some judging. God, restore to me my passion for your Word, my fervent desire for Your Word, for in it is My Unswerving Hope.

My Little Flower Girl

This weekend was one of those times I took my gift of grief off the shelf for a little while. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend with it. It was a day of celebration, and most of my energy and attention was focused on my little flower girl. If you’ve ever been the mother of a flower girl, you understand!

The first of my eight nieces got married this weekend, and even though no one at our table noticed my older daughter’s absence, or at least they didn’t say anything if they did, I felt it acutely. Between times of trying to keep my 4-year-old looking like a princess, and still letting her be a little girl, I kept my little gift of grief with me all weekend. There were two times at the wedding when I felt my older daughter’s absence most. The first was when my brother-in-law danced with his daughter to Steven Curtis Chapman’s Cinderella…

And I will dance with Cinderella

While she is here in my arms

‘Cause I know

Something the prince never knew

I will dance with Cinderella

I don’t want to miss even one song

For far too soon

The clock will strike midnight…

And she’ll be gone.

‘Nough said.

The second time I felt her absence so strongly was, when saying good-bye to my brother-in-law, he whispered to me that he missed my daughter. I’m sure he has no idea how much that meant to me. But most of the time it feels like hardly anyone even remembers her. It was nice to know that my husband’s brother does. 

So, I’ll shed a few tears tonight before my head hits the pillow, and tomorrow, I’ll put my little gift of grief back on the shelf and I’ll be back at life as usual. It’s what she would want, and it’s what God calls me to do. If you see me at church tomorrow, you’ll never know I was up until after midnight, spilling my tears and emotions in this little blog post. I’ll be smiling and worshiping just like always--and it will be sincere. There is plenty to smile about and be grateful for. But I’ll never stop missing my older girl—she was a flower girl once too.