Tag: inspiration

better love

My monthly reports are breathing down my neck, I’ve got suitcases and plastic bins stuffed to the gills around my feet, and I’m waiting with bated breath to hear back from my job interview in Brooklyn.

Sounds like madness, but it feels like the right kind.

I know as little as I did yesterday about when I’m moving to NYC, what I’ll be doing, where I’ll be living, and how I’ll be making ends meet.

And it’s okay. I am trusting in the Lord’s provision and leaning on His grace. There is no one more worthy to trust with my future than the One who knows it already. I can’t find a better love than His.

Fear is always lurking in dark corners, but joy is like sunshine starving it out.

I have a song to sing and this one by Green River Ordinance is beating like a drum in my soul today.

Posted on by Caroline 2

grounded in freefall

Do you ever get a sense that you are just floating – waiting for your feet to find land so that you can report a location? Everything feels in motion because you are in motion and it’s hard to orientate yourself when you are in a freefall.

Those typical questions people ask depend a bit on roots, like “Where are you from?” and “What do you do?” My answers, in this freefall, are fluid and sweeping and noncommittal and perhaps a little evasive. I don’t like to let people watch me grasp for ground – it’s uncomfortable to flail about when you are used to being surefooted.

I don’t know how to explain the strange and confident peace that covers my soul in all this uncertain discomfort. I sound like a broken record, but it’s always about believing. Believing the Lord will make good on His promise to provide, protect, and preserve. When we believe God is a faithful promise keeper, the freefall feels different.

When life gives you freefall, become like an astronaut.

Does that sound cheesy? Probably. But, I imagine astronauts do not spend all their gravity-less time wondering if they will ever touch ground again or if there is ground at all all the thousands of miles beneath them.

I imagine they know there is and I imagine they stretch to enjoy the float. I know that astronauts are not in freefall – that they don’t have to fear the impact on the other side of their floating. And my freefall in these uncertain moments is the same: I am secure in God’s promises, secure in the solid rock of His word, secure in the refuge of His wings.

He is my ground when there is none underneath me.

Christ is my identity even as I’m floating in freefall and flailing. I am His and He is mine. He is with me in my present and He is my secure future. I am reading through Galatians and this morning I read,

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:26-29, ESV)

My identity can’t change mid-flight. I am a son of God – my inheritance is secured in Christ in the middle of all the insecurities I might feel. I have already been named an heir, through faith.

This is my solid ground.

The beautiful thing about putting on Christ like clothes is that He’s with you in the freefall, closer than any other thing. He is my inheritance and secure future, but He is not distant and silent. He is breathing truth to my soul and filling my cup to overflowing. He is holding me together.

When I believe what He has promised, I do not doubt the ground. I do not doubt my future or my inheritance. My adoption means comfort more closely and hope more securely than any other thing.

God has called me His in this freefall. My flailing may not make sense and my floating might make people talk, but my heart is grounded in God’s promises.

 

 

Posted on by Caroline 1

You who are greater

I heard a sermon a couple weeks back and this little bit of Scripture in 1 John 3 keeps coming on back to steady my heart.

Because my heart sometimes feels pretty powerful – like it has the full force of Jeremiah 17:9 and that’s a scary danger.

“The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?”

I surely do not. Even when we think we are making unselfish sense, our heart still deceives and traps and tricks and we can still get buried in a place that is “beyond cure.” There is a place where cure can’t reach and that’s where you’ll find our hearts. Ouch.

Sounds impossible to cure a deceitful heart, doesn’t it? So, I must believe God for impossible things. I must believe in this moment through to the next that He is a promise keeper, that He knows everything, and that He is greater than my heart.

Though my heart is deceitful and fickle and incurable and fret-filled, God is greater than my heart. When my heart runs circles around the narrow path where my feet tread with doubts and taunts, I must remember who made my heart.

He that formed my heart calls me “child” and is always faithful to be greater than my fears.

He is always greater, always. God knows everything – there’s nothing about the darkest part of our hearts that surprises Him – and He is still greater than those secrets. In 1 John 3, we read that our salvation means confidence, that even the most fickle and incurable heart issues we have must bend to the One who abides in us.

I am not afraid of my dangerous heart. I believe that God is greater.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:18-24, ESV)

When I believe God to be greater than my heart, I trust that fear is replaced with obedience. I am not afraid of my dangerous heart because I believe God can overcome it and help me pursue holiness. I am not afraid because He has authored miracles that I can act out by living a life of love. I am not afraid because I know, in Christ, what it means to abide. Because of His grace, I am not afraid.

 

Posted on by Caroline 1

sweaty mess and sci-fi

Sometimes there is no way around it – my legs stick to the driver seat, my hair twists around in a knot atop my head, and a pool of sweat collects on my lower back.

#summer

But, I’m gonna be real honest right now: I feel like I’m lost in a sci-fi film. Every other moment I’m drowning and in the opposite moment I’m waking up like a child. I guess you could describe the whole disturbing scene stretching out these days as exciting, but I’m just barely hanging on.

Turns out, all that talk of preaching to myself better be more than blog posts, better be more than resolutions and more than my typical free-spirited whimsy. It better be more, because it’s getting serious. Every other moment (the drowning ones) require serious rescue and lip service won’t do the trick, ever.

Believing moment by moment is a catchy concept and one I can get behind – trusting that God is providing and will provide the strength to go on in His future grace.

We are banking on the overflow of future storehouses and you’ll always find me saying “Amen” to that.

But riding around in my car with kids I love so much it tears my heart out, that’s not a concept. Having to say goodbye to these kids is not a concept I can either agree or disagree with, it’s just going to happen. Looking at my bank accounts is not conceptual – the numbers are like Shakira’s hips, they don’t lie. Trying to sell my car Eddie, trying to juggle transition, trying to get hired… those are not concepts.

This is my reality. I’m not sitting in a church pew, throwing out “amens” when the pastor is on point and scribbling my sermon doodles about theological connections.

Believing is not a concept, it is reality. It has to be, or I sank a long time ago.

Every other moment (the drowning ones), I reach out for the reality of future grace. I have to believe with my mind, praying all unbelief into captivity (2 Corinthians 10:5) because otherwise I would be paralyzed with fears that everything won’t work out. I have to believe with my heart, trusting God’s protection and that He will complete the work He has started (Philippians 1:6). I have to believe with my soul, hoping with certainty in what God has promised for the future (Psalm 42:11). I have to believe with my strength, convinced that acting out of this belief is the best thing to do (Hebrews 12:14).

I try not to flail about, but I do very few things gracefully and getting rescued is not one of them. I scramble and scurry, but every inch of me knows that believing conceptually is not life-saving.

Real believing is a sweaty mess, a gasping-for-air ordeal that can make a person extremely unattractive in all the near-drowning desperation. But believing is also the only thing that will make us beautiful, as we become more and more like Christ.

Then there are those glorious every other moments (the waking up ones) when I slip into childlike skin and the believing is less work. These are great gifts and I cherish them, sandwiched between near drownings. God’s preservation of our childlike-ness is a very beautiful thing.

This is the little sci-fi memoir I’m living at the moment, making my life a sweaty mess. It’s probably just this heat getting to me.

Posted on by Caroline 0

in the middle of things

It’s easier to say “Nevermind.”

This afternoon is looking like stacks of files and a printer on overdrive. I’m going through the motions, pushing through for the coffee and my favorite clients on the other side of this afternoon.

Today needs a lot of preaching because I’ve never learned a lesson that sticks forever. In this case, less than 24 hours exhausted my memory. I need to hear Truth over and over again – in the middle of paper stacks and in between the email reports of my mom’s hospital stay, in the craigslist circus of selling everything and in the hunt for a cheap roundtrip ticket for an interview, in the late night prayer sessions with a friend and in all those moments when people ask, “How are you doing with everything?” and I just want to say “Nevermind.”

If I’m not hearing Truth, I’m hearing something else.

Truth is hope enough, grace enough, and love enough to completely cover the things I’m currently “in the middle of” and even to overwhelm them with plenty.

The question is not whether that is true. The question is, “Do I believe it?”

Sometimes, you preach truth to yourself relentlessly, believing God in the middle of and in between all the ways it doesn’t feel true.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 2

when you need a real rescue

Platitudes wouldn’t be enough.

I knew the conversation was S.O.S. caliber before it started, judging by the CAPS in the text message.

“AH! I’m just so frustrated, but it’ll be okay,” she said, when I got her on the line.

She was giving me the litany of reasons the day had unraveled and all of them were legitimate. This friend of mine is not one to over-dramatize anything, so when she says she is, “frustrated” and that “this is so hard” out loud… it’s getting desperate.

She knows.

She knows God is good and that’s why she followed her frustration so quickly with, “… but it’ll be okay.” She knows God’s character of faithfulness and that He is trustworthy. She believes it, too. But…

Sometimes we need to speak the depth of our drowning so we know to cry out for a real rescue.

We need to open our eyes underwater and see how desperate the situation in order to delight rightly in our rescue from those depths. It’s not enough to say “it’ll be okay,” even if we know it will.

Because that flippant faith doesn’t give God enough glory. He is God when we are desperate – not because our trials are little things, but because they are big. He knows all the thousands things that went wrong in our day and how desperate they have made us. He doesn’t want us to brush them aside with a simple, “… but it’ll be okay.”

Minimizing problems with platitudes does not glorify God’s magnificence.

Being honest about the depth of our drowning means being honest that we need a real rescue. A real rescue – not the kind that gives you a quote or a margarita at the end of a long day. Those will never pull you up from desperate depths.

Nope, an S.O.S. like I got last night is an opportunity for us to believe God to be faithful to reach as far down as our day has gone. And she did. She spoke out her need and called out for real rescue. She stepped into the kind of belief that makes God seem the glorious Rescuer He is. He will rescue, when we believe Him for it. 

My friend remembered Wesley Hill’s words recently in a lecture at Bethlehem Baptist, “Ignoring is not the path to redeeming.”

When we have sin and struggle and stress and sadness, our redemption will always come by way of an honest assessment that we are drowning and in need of a real rescue.
Posted on by Caroline 1

remembering the rhythm of Truth

I’m giving myself 15 minutes to write before I run this rhythm out. I somehow got in a sour mood today, is all. One of the little ones must have sensed it because my last appointment said, “Would you maybe wanna rap?” Apparently, she associates my rapping with my good moods… and I wasn’t in one.

We’re learning a new song in my car these days. It goes like this:

My God is so great,
so strong and so mighty
there’s nothing my God cannot do!

The mountains are His,
the valleys are His,
the skies are His handiwork too!

Naturally, it’s the song on repeat with the little ones and it’s all acapella. We mostly sing/shout it and today I was sing/shouting through the motions because I felt sour. When my last appointment asked me, “Would you maybe wanna rap?” I kind of snapped out of my stupor (for a minute at least) because the song needed a rap bridge and she knew it.

I realized anxiety had crawled inside and knotted all my muscles, so I was singing with furrowed brows. That’s no way to sing and she must have noticed. I can’t tell you which detail it was that really got under my skin, but I can tell you the bunch of them together was too much. I packed in too many visits and emails and reports and there weren’t enough minutes.

Have you ever felt like you ran through a day with shoes a couple sizes too big? Well, today was like a size 10 and I wear a size 6 (and I’m pretty clumsy wearing a 6). I looked like a clown and it all ended with my furrowed brow and this slump of a sour mood.

As fast-paced as I profess to be, I need a good bit of slow moving so my heart can catch up with my head (or the other way around, I’m not sure). I need to make my heart beat to the rhythm of Truth so my actions dance to the same beat. And this rhythm is never four sizes too big – it’s never out of reach or out of sight. The rhythm of Truth is as simple as two verses in a children’s song.

“My God is in heaven, He does whatever pleases Him.”
(Psalm 115:3)
“For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.”
(Psalm 50:10)
“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,”
Matthew 10:29-32

I gotta go shake off this sour rhythm and remember what Truth feels like – pray I find it on the running path.

Posted on by Caroline 5

God said so (and I trust Him)

This morning was just a morning.

The rest of the day followed in the same suit – the sunrise and the meetings and the reports and the visits were nothing magical. There were no moments where I caught a glimpse of the glorious inside the mundane of this Monday.

And I hated myself a little bit for it, because I know the glory is there. I hated that something in me didn’t melt when the little boy’s lips formed around the new word “moon” as he pointed to the sky. I want to see the glory always and I mostly write about when I do – the sunsets that raise my religious affections and the child’s laugh that unleashes my own spirit of freedom.

But some days just feel like days – sometimes running paths and book chapters and dishes are just running paths and book chapters and dishes. And there is no epiphany to write about on facebook or capture on instagram.

Some days are just days.

And this is the day when what I know becomes very important. Absent affections, when days are just days and work is just work and the people on the running path are just people, what I know to be true is very important. This is what I know:

You are faithful, never-changing,
age to age, You remain the same
Your steadfast love endures forever

So, I close my eyelids and stare at that strange nothingness. I know the beauty and glory of creation is lit up on the other side of my sight, but not because it feels like more than just a day.

I know it is beautiful because it is beautiful. God said so and I trust Him.
Posted on by Caroline 2

a willing heart, still incomplete

I want a lot of things. No surprise there, I suppose. The intensity might change and the objects of my wanting, but there’s no question: I want things.

And sometimes I get what I want. I will myself to do what needs doing in order to grasp what was once outside my reach. Like the limes I picked up today on the way home from church – I wanted fresh limeade, so I willed myself to drive out of the way to stop at the grocery store. In awhile, after I type out this bit of inspiration, I will sip the limeade that was only a thought a couple hours ago.

But steadfastness does not work that way.

This morning, as we were singing one of my favorite hymns, I stayed on these lines when everyone else sang the next stanza,

Gracious God, my heart renew
Make my spirit right and true
Thy salvation’s joy impart
Steadfast make my willing heart
Steadfast make my willing heart

Apart from God, my willing heart is incomplete – left wanting a faithfulness that is beyond my reach. Often (ahem, daily) my willingness wearies and wavers and no matter how sincere my resolve, I fail and fall. I will never be faithful on my own. No matter how much I want to be faithful, it will always be just outside my reach.

No matter how sincere, willingness does not a steadfast heart make.

There must be something outside of my will and outside of my sincerity that makes me steadfast, because my attempts at faithfulness will always fail.

What grace that God takes our willingness and adds His faithfulness to make us steadfast! Though we fall and fail, our steadfastness depends on His faithfulness and in this He never wavers or wearies.

We come willing and God makes us steadfast.

The exchange makes no sense because it is no exchange at all. We come with only a faltering “want” for faithfulness, but in Christ God adds His faithfulness and our hearts can be made steadfast.

Miraculous.

Posted on by Caroline 0

home chased and caught me

Home is not where I get chased to or chased from because home is chasing me. I know because it chased me across these five calendar days, begging for me to abide.

It had a little bit to do with the anxiety of job applications and a little bit to do with odd working hours and a little bit to do with prioritizing phone conversations. But, I can tell you it had everything to do with my heart being homesick.

I met a friend for a near-sunrise breakfast this week and I asked about the past weekend with her parents. She had one of those contented smiles on her face – the ones we wear when words won’t suffice – and she said, “Good. It was just so good.” And I knew just what she meant.

Home is that feeling you get when you are abiding under someone else’s roof.

But my parents’ home was not chasing me this week (although it is a wonderful place to abide – a place I don’t have to check the mail or arrange a social calendar or clear the dust mites from the corners of the closets). And to be honest, the “home feeling” has a time limit when it’s confined to a location.

I’ve called a lot of places home. After 6 months in Des Moines, “home” definitely describes my little street and the corner meat store and the running path to Gray’s Lake. I don’t have a hard time settling into new homes or missing them dearly when I uproot and transplant, but none of them were chasing me this week either. Because there is a limit to our earthly contentedness, an impenetrable obstacle to our earthly abiding even in the most home-ly of places.

This week the home that chased me was the one from John 15 and Psalm 23:6 and Exodus 36:4. It caught up with me mid-morning when I realized the ache in my gut wasn’t heartburn or indigestion or hormones. My heart missed home.

When the rain started to fall in the park, it struck me all of a sudden that my sloppy schedule and mishandled time management had cost me precious time with my Savior. I was doing things, some good and some just things, and somehow my silly feet had wandered from my true home.

I skipped my morning devotions.
I prayed mostly in transit.

I laughed and moped and chatted and filled all the space of the day. And then, I shook away the nudge to be still. I drank more coffee and went on longer rollerblading runs. I scribbled notes and made lists. I pushed down the prick of conviction and today it pushed back.

When I read this devotion today from Solid Joys, I remembered why it is good to be at home with the Lord, abiding in His presence. I remembered why my Savior’s shelter is the best place to abide. Because home is not where you run to when your vagabond shoes have holes and home is not where you run from in a dry season of discontent. 

Home is the forever love of the Father, who pursues us so our souls can best abide.

His is the home that never changes, never wearies, never rusts, and never tires. His is the home my heart gets sick for and the shelter that best covers my soul. His is the space where I want to abide.

Home chased me this week and caught me today. And as I abide out this Friday, His kindness is leading me to repentance.

Posted on by Caroline 2