Tag: Christianity

human eyes; heaven sight

This morning the ice clung to brown, lifeless branches.
And we are all dying.

This past weekend my mom sent an email my aunt wrote about my grandpa’s graceful, shuffling steps into this strange season of life. I’ve re-read these words so many times – grateful for the way they hug my soul. I know my dad and his seven siblings feel the weight of love and the weight of age in this man in a way I cannot, but as I read my aunt’s words my eyes were wet with something new.

She wrote,

Dad’s prayers were so personal and full of thanksgiving to His Savior, especially mentioned was the gift of Eternity and his family.  He didn’t want to walk this road, but it’s here, and he is going to walk it with grace and dignity to the best of his ability, and with his Savior’s and his family’s help.

Our bodies fail. They fall apart.
And we shuffle where we once skipped.
We shake where we once snapped with the energy of youth. We age.
Our eyes grow dim and our ears faint. Mortals.

But the stiffness of his joints has not crept to his heart.

Eternity looks just as glorious on the horizon with shuffled steps as it does with skips.
The promise of salvation is as bright with eyes of age as it is with the eyes of youth.

And with every sunset, one can turn to face the rest of the sky and see a glorious reflection. All the mysterious hues that explode before night falls, chasing after the golden orb, light up the rest of the blue expanse and color the clouds.

I’m witnessing this reflection as I watch my grandpa – human eyes with heaven sight.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18

There is no way around it – we have human eyes confined to human bodies and human limits. But our sight – oh, our sight – is able to see clear through to heaven.

As Grandpa fixes his eyes on the unseen, we are blessed to watch the sky light up with the glory of his heavenly pursuit.

The ice will melt and the trees will bloom.
Let the winter come, for it is the only path to Spring.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with human eyes and heaven sight 

Posted on by Caroline 4

abide

Today, the Sabbath.

Today is a deep breath – to shed the strivings of six days toil and put on the Savior’s rest. Return, my friends. Return to rest.

Even if this day finds you in front of a screen, screaming for grown men in tight suits… even then, my friends, won’t you return to rest?

Today, I pray we abide in our Savior – in His love. I pray we regain our sight for the Kingdom of God – for the glorious already and not yet promises fulfilled in Christ. Because our eyes too often settle on a predictable horizon and we miss what lies beyond.

Our toil for this day – the Sabbath – is to trust the Savior is every bit of what He claims.

Trust. And return to rest, friends.

Posted on by Caroline 4

where is the floor in the morning?

She was special. All my students were, but she was especially special.

I listened again this past week, via text, to the valleys that seem to stretch too long in her still-young life. I felt the too-familiar cringe curling my insides with the empty question, “Why?”

This child – God’s beloved child – walks every day a lone candle into a dark place. She has seen more messes in this life than I can count, but she is a candle all the same and her light shines on and dispells darkness.

And I remembered.
I wrote,
“Where will you find the floor tomorrow morning?”
She said, “right under my feet, beside my bed… everywhere I place my foot.”

I smiled.

It had come out in the middle of one of our ‘pep talks,’ sitting on furniture that had been rejected from all other offices. I don’t remember the subject exactly, but I remember how it ended. I was asking this very special girl if there was anything to know for certain when the world swirled like crazy around her. I was asking her if she could be sure of anything at all inside the broken mess of her days.

And that’s when I asked,
“When you get out of bed tomorrow morning, where will your feet land?”
“…on the floor?”
“And have you ever gotten out of bed in the morning to find the floor is gone?”
“… Um, no.”
“God is like that. You are His child and He is forever. He will not change with the amount of mess or blessing in your life. He will always, always be what your faith and hope stand on – and He will not move.”

Our whole house can crumble around us, but there is always this ground – this terra firma where we walk out our existence. There is always this ground, a solid foundation for each shaky step.

God is this foundation when the sunlight breaks through the window in the morning to shine on what was dark during the night.
God is this foundation when the shadows scurry under beds and behind doors.
God is this foundation when friendships dissolve and sadness overwhelms.

God is this foundation when we swing our feet out of bed every morning.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
in the refuge of the King

Posted on by Caroline 2

a letter to fathers

I remembered this post recently and thought now is a good time to revisit these thoughts. I wrote this post almost exactly a year ago, while working in Honduras. Maybe it’s Valentine’s Day that has me thinking about it again.

daughter & dad

___________________________________________________________________

John Mayer’s song, “Daughters,” scratches the surface of the longing a daughter feels to be loved by her dad, but (not surprisingly) it isn’t strong enough.

Fathers, be good to your daughters
daughters will love like you do

It was simple enough to capture the attention of a whole crowd of daughters who wished for what this nebulously suggests, but I wish this song spelled out specifics.

Fathers:

  1. Be transparent about your first and greatest Love.
    For many daughters, your faith is a secret. You might go to church or you might have a Bible, but your ideas and convictions are as hidden and elusive as treasure on a child’s crayon-scribbled treasure map. It’s okay to be somewhere in the growing stages of your faith – in fact, it’s refreshing for us daughters to know you haven’t “arrived” yet. When your daughter can see you admit you need God, her heart and tenderness toward you will grow, but more importantly you will have pointed her gaze to the Father who never fails.
  2. Love your wife.
    One of the greatest ways you can love your daughter is to love and serve your wife. When your daughter sees you honoring, protecting, partnering, laughing, enjoying, and living in a way that reflects God’s design for marriage, she will respect your role and have an excellent example of a husband (especially important in those years when you cannot relate to your daughter. When nothing makes sense, love your wife well and I promise your daughter will see it!).
  3. Choose to be around.
    Your daughter will feel special when you decide the best place for you is next to her.
  4. Get personal.
    Some of my favorite memories with my dad are simple ones that we shared while we did chores together on the farm or as we drove out to a football game or prepared our animals for county fair. Every discussion doesn’t have to be deep, but if you open up first then you’ll gain your daughter’s trust and she’ll likely reciprocate (even if it’s not right away).
  5. Encourage, praise, love the God-honoring things your daughter does and push her in those things to be excellent.
    I’ll never forget my dad’s insistence that I study that little spelling book in preparation for the elementary spelling bees. My dad still types on the computer with his pointer fingers and English wasn’t his strongest high school subject, but when he found out I could put letters together in the right order, he was going to make sure I did it excellently. Those little things (though I assure you I didn’t love them at the time) made his love for me so obvious.
  6. Be gentle.
    Your daughter will appreciate well-placed words and respected silences.
  7. Be good to your sons, too.
    Your daughters are smart. They will see the way you are leading and guiding your sons. Right now they are making mental notes in their heart about whether their dream man will act like the father and brothers in their lives. Many daughters hold on desperately to the hope that it can be different. If they have to rely on Hollywood, they will be hoping for something unhealthy and unrealistic. Your daughter has a front row seat for what a man should look like – so show her!

 

let LOVE fly like crazy
and let those people closest to you benefit

Posted on by Caroline 0

ampersands

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

Tonight it struck me, facing a beautiful piece of stained glass in the cozy, stone room that tucked itself in as an afterthought of the grand cathedral. I sat in the corner and scanned the room, drank in the faces, and then closed my eyes to let the lilting music of rolled r’s and long o’s seep behind my watery eyes.

Tonight I found myself (at 5:15 pm and on time to the 5 pm service) at the Spanish Mass and I started to feel the weight of my most recent ampersand.

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

The weight is not wrong, only sometimes I forget what I joyfully carry around – three years of my life lived with kingdom eyes to hold the gaze of beauty in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. With every ampersand added to my life, I found the blessing of my daily rhythm beholding the beauty of God.

I sang & jumped & talked
& listened & wrote
& learned & prayed
& crafted & played
& taught & watched
& loved…

because God showed me boundless grace & mercy.

God commissions me, with His blessing, to be a blessing… to stuff my life full of ampersands that PROCLAIM His glory.

Some ampersands are harder than others to etch into my life sentences. Some ampersands are carved painfully because I’d really rather not add anything else.

But, no matter how they find their way into my story, I love ’em… because what else can we do with the life God gives us? Every ampersand is a blessing, every day and each moment – an ampersand stamped on our existence this side of heaven.

I’m looking at my long list of ampersands tonight and counting my many blessings… counting them like currency that should be spent lavishly on gifts.

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

Thank you, Lord, for stamping this ampersand on my 27-year-old life. Thank you for bringing me here and adding dump trucks of blessings on my already overflowing soul. Thank you for the hard days and the brilliant days and the days I wish I were somewhere other than here.

I pray I make every ampersand (every blessing added to my days, every moment) available to others in a way that brings them face to face with the Giver – no matter where my ampersands land me.

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Posted on by Caroline 3

like diamonds

diamonds are attention-getting

Sometimes, it’s the only thing you remember when you walk away from a conversation. Somehow, a diamond can make everything else seem insignificant and dull.

This is the GOSPEL to me. I want to wear it like diamonds, so that everything else is its backdrop. I want the Gospel to be the first and last impression I leave with every conversation. I want the Gospel I’m wearing to sparkle with mystery and throw off a curious reflection.

Last night, in a conversation with a self-proclaimed “agnostic, buddhist, Indian scientist,” I hope he noticed the Gospel above all else.

I hope Truth shone like diamonds, because there is nothing more beautiful.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

the greatest story that ever was

I wrote this entire post yesterday and then cyberspace stole it. It took me awhile to cool off and find time to try it again (because I had a 15 minute window between work and work), but if Vince is right – this should be better anyway.

This morning I woke up remembering. My mind was heavy with it and I didn’t want to shake free. A deep sadness chased after rose-petaled joy in the wide expanse of slight slumber and I soaked it all in with my head smooshed to the pillow. Remembering.

I know the words to a beautiful tale of trial and tragedy and triumph. I know the beginning and ending of the greatest story that ever was. I carry around the chapters in thought bubbles above my head and feel them in the work of my hands. It’s a living kind of story that is both finished and in process. It’s the kind of story that everyone wants to believe is true, but only some have eyes to see.

It’s a story where we are the characters and we live the plot.

This story is the Gospel.
God’s plan for humankind to live as we were designed – for worship.

The Gospel is the greatest story that ever was, penned by the Creator with great care – from the moment the first light broke into the furthest reaches of black void.

In the beginning, God. Forever before and forever after this little blip called human existence, God lives – Perfect, Holy, and Blameless. Our failure to reflect Him (in His perfection) required a hero – a Perfect Savior who would stand in our place to take on everything imperfect, unholy, and blame-filled. Christ is that Savior. 

And today my heart is heavy with the weight of this story – to receive it with joy and to tell it with abandon; to preach it with my feet and to sing it with laughter. This is the story of deliverance from death to life, from lost to found.

This is the story that changes everything. And so deep sadness plays with great joy in my soul as I turn over this blessing in my sleepy mind. This is the story that changes everything.

What have I imagined to be more important than this story? What have I elevated to get more fame than this true tale? What has taken my gaze from the One who redeemed me from the pit and restored my soul?

Today, the act opens on the greatest story that ever was and sets the stage for the greatest party that ever was. 

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

what scene are you making tonight? we are bound to make a scene – like fools in love.

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Posted on by Caroline 0

postcards

I wrote this post after a couple hard days during my time in Honduras, talking with girl after girl after girl who has been battered and bruised by an unforgiving world. Today I am realizing that I will always collect these “postcards.”

… the stories are piling up like postcards from similar destinations: despair, loneliness, anger, betrayal, pain, and sometimes hope. Those are the ones I like best – the hope ones. The others are ones that make my heart hurt. Those destinations are hard to explain, but they seem to keep arriving at my doorstep.

Last night a few more postcards arrived at my doorstep, all busted up and barely legible from the journey. The stories seemed tucked under the furrow of the girls’ brow or their dimpled giggles, but soon it all came out. These girls, too young to experience what their stories exposed, too beautiful to be found in such a mess.

We talked and questioned and fumed a bit. I strained to make my face say what my heart felt – pain. I didn’t want to say, “It’s okay,” because too many people say that.

What I did say, at the end of both conversations was this, “I don’t know what kind of messes you’ve got… I don’t want to pretend I know you at all. What I do know is that there is abundance that can overwhelm the pain. There is a way to make sad eyes smile.”

It was probably too much, but I said it anyway. I can only keep receiving these postcards if  I drop off mail of much lighter weight. I wanted what they received from me to be Christ – a FULL, abundant, joyful image of freedom and grace.

This song by Zerbin is the motion of this desire. We are not stuck in this ground, this skin. We are bound for a land free from messes and weights and sin. The headlights of this glory-bound train will one day meet a sunrise that will make earth mornings seem quaint.

This is the message I want to leave when I gather the stories from all these girls. This is the only JOY that can walk through pain and survive.

 

Posted on by Caroline 3

Occupy Life: Spanish at an Irish pub

This is another in a series of posts called Occupy Life. Each day you and I occupy physical time and space, making bold statements about what is most important in this life (whether we’re holding picket signs or not). Other entries: pancake batter, tying ribbons, Alejandra,  Lunch Hour, Delaney and Roland or the original post Occupy Life: Things One Might Do While Unemployed.

The scene is an unlikely one – Iowa’s attempt at a small Irish pub – but as good a place as any to brush up on my rusty Spanish skills. I’ve given up thinking my heart is capable of uprooting and replanting an endless amount of times. Instead, I believe my heart has magical roots that span states and countries and oceans. And maybe for that reason, I still kind of introduce myself as 100% catracha. If you don’t understand, then you probably aren’t Honduran. But, it might explain why the invitation to tell stories of Honduras in Spanish made my skin tingle.

The excitement came like a flood as I talked about all the faces and places and valleys and mountains that led me to discover a fuller picture of my God. And then I realized my words tripping over words may not make any sense to my friend – especially in Spanish. I offered to switch back to English, but my friend said my blabbering was preferable to Rosetta Stone.

And then it hit me. The words flew out of my mouth accompanied by hands waving and another wild (probably unflattering) smile stretched across my face, “a la orden!”

“A la orden” is a Spanish phrase that means, “at your service” and it was thrown around as often as Midwestern “hellos” when I was in Honduras. I noticed whenever one of my high school girls complimented another on an outfit, the response was always, “a la orden,” which meant that the outfit or shoes or whatever could be borrowed at any time. It was “at their service.” I started to think that we should have the same response whenever anyone compliments our talents.

My friend looked amused. I was trying to gather my jumbled excitement and put it into words… words that could somehow communicate how passionate I am about this idea that NOTHING I can do/say/sing/write/give is mine. Nothing. I don’t own my talents. There is no Caroline Copyright on my abilities. It’s ALL the Lord’s and it is ALL on loan for the purpose of loving God and serving others.

Right there in that cozy, Irish-looking booth I gestured and exclaimed and squealed and probably got more excited than the average, sober Irish pub-goer. But it was like re-discovering this beautiful Truth in a new context called Ames, Iowa.

I live here. I work here. I serve here.
How can I love God by making my every talent available to others?

Oh, you like my whimsical bubble letters? Let me know when you need a poster made.
Oh, you like the way I chase your kids around? Let me know when you need a night off.
Oh, you like my acapella singing at work? Let me know when you need a karaoke buddy.
Oh, you’re looking for a Spanish speaking buddy? Let me know the time and place.

Seriously, just TALKING about a la orden makes my heart sing.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
by turning compliments into acts of service

Posted on by Caroline 6

still singing

“Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10

This verse has wrapped itself around my soul several times and given comfort when all else seems crazy.

Today, I remembered this Truth is half-way. I’ve allowed the imprint on my heart to only sink to surface level. I forgot to memorize the rest of the verse from Psalm 46:10, “…I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

God invites us into stillness and knowledge of Him while He is inviting us into world-sized worship; He is inviting us into mission with Him that can only and will only result in an international song.

The excitement of Christmas seems like a vague memory now that we’ve hit our January stride. We’re already knee-deep in next things and we’ll be lucky to get thank you cards sent out for the gifts we received.

But, every once awhile – on a day like today – I’ll sing a song that gets unfortunately confined to a small winter season, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

On a day like today, I’ll let the rhythm beat with my feet and the wind carry the words,

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Emmanuel – God with us – the story of the Gospel. The story from Genesis to Revelation of God’s Holiness, our sin and His overwhelming grace to bridge the gap. Stories are never, ever meant to be secret. Stories, especially great stories, are meant to be shared.

And so I am still singing.

O come, O come, great Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law
In cloud and majesty and awe.

I am still singing with great joy that Christ came – God came to be with us, to wear skin, and to become our pardon. Christ came to live Love and I am still singing this song of tragedy turned redemption.

I am still singing the song that anticipates Christ’s return, because the story isn’t finished. We are not only meant to be still and know God is God. We are not called to walk out on Christmas being reassured of our future eternal home.

We are called to join with God to haste the day of Christ’s second coming. We are commissioned to share the greatest story ever told.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

Rejoice, rejoice – because God came to dwell with us and to be our righteousness. Also rejoice because we carry around a story that will bring the nations into stillness and knowledge of Him.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

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Posted on by Caroline 4