"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him."
For most of those who will be reading this post, today is the first day of school. Young mothers are taking their babies to kindergarten and crying all the way home. Older moms are praying their college student can get up by themselves and make it to class. I'm in the post-group smiling to myself as I remember with fondness those days long past. I can smile because I made it through those days. And I made it through them because the Lord truly was my strength and shield.
There is nothing like experience to learn trust. As we walk with God daily we begin to build a relationship with Him. When we start out on our walk with Him we tend to be trusting and full of passion. Then life hits us between the eyes and we stumble - we didn't see that coming. We are shocked. Where was God? What happened? For a little bit we are disoriented to the ways of God and we are rocked in our faith. For most of us, that hit wasn't catastrophic and we get up and move on. Then after a seemingly brief spot of peace - here it comes again. Another whomp. Again we stagger. Again we question. And so on and so on. Sometimes we get up doggedly and move on. Other times we wallow in self-pity for a while and then get up. And then there are times we just refuse to get up at all. Despite God's words to the contrary, we feel duped.
But notice with me that the psalmist didn't say the Lord intervened for him - he said he (the psalmist) trusted and he was helped. He didn't say he got out of trouble. He didn't say that his circumstances changed. He said he chose to trust. I wrote a few weeks ago that things are not always as they seem. That is especially true when it comes to trouble in the life of a believer. I was sharing with a young woman last week about her breast cancer. I explained to her that as bad as it looked from her perspective God had a plan that was far-reaching. She had no clue what He was doing through her diagnosis. Her part was to cooperate with Him - fully and acutely aware that He was in control and working out her disease for her good and His glory.
If we choose trust, we will be helped. If we choose trust, our hearts will exult. I think that means faith will rise up and flood our heart and the result will be a song of thanks. Thanks in, not for the trouble. Thanks for the good God promises to brings from it (Romans 8:28). Thanks for our God who deemed us worthy to suffer for His sake. Thanks for the faith that will grow because we have walked with Him through good times and bad.
Sometimes it's a seemingly small matter - like depositing that little 5 yo in kindergarten and other times it's surrendering one to the earth in a coffin. God is in it all sweet sisters. He IS faithful. He does love you. He did not miss you because His attention was in Iraq or the presidential race. He is acutely interested in you. Madly in love with you. Doggedly guarding over you. When you and I truly believe that and take it to heart we will stand firm, rise above and sing....a new song.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A Time For Every Season
Maybe it's the weather but I'm sensing a change in the seasons. Maybe it's school starting again and thinking about the 5 year old little babies that will venture off to kindergarten or the 18 year old babies that will leave home for college. Maybe it's that I just buried my dad and moved my mom and stepdad to an apartment. Life is all about seasons.
At Firmly Planted, we are celebrating ten years in ministry. September 1998 God called me from a career in nursing to begin teaching His word. Little did I know that calling would lead me down the path of job loss, a move from my home of eighteen years, the death of a child, the marriage of two sons, the loss of my dad and on and on. Season after season - love and loss and joy and heartache. Such is life. That's why at FPM we are celebrating ten years with a retreat. We've never done this before but we know God has called us to do it. We are to return to our roots. FPM was founded on the development of an intimate love relationship with Christ and this retreat will be all about Jesus.
Our prayer is that God will plant the desire for you to come and hear what He has placed on my heart. I am so excited. The last few months of ministering to my Daddy have been filled with the revelatory power of God and I have so much to share with you. I know it will be life-changing.
Whatever season you are finding yourself in - God is in the midst of it. He is ever ready to equip you, teach you, lead you and uphold you. Trusting Him is the rock that will stabilize us in times of transition. Come and be filled. Come and reacquaint yourself with the God who moved heaven and earth to reach you.
At Firmly Planted, we are celebrating ten years in ministry. September 1998 God called me from a career in nursing to begin teaching His word. Little did I know that calling would lead me down the path of job loss, a move from my home of eighteen years, the death of a child, the marriage of two sons, the loss of my dad and on and on. Season after season - love and loss and joy and heartache. Such is life. That's why at FPM we are celebrating ten years with a retreat. We've never done this before but we know God has called us to do it. We are to return to our roots. FPM was founded on the development of an intimate love relationship with Christ and this retreat will be all about Jesus.
Our prayer is that God will plant the desire for you to come and hear what He has placed on my heart. I am so excited. The last few months of ministering to my Daddy have been filled with the revelatory power of God and I have so much to share with you. I know it will be life-changing.
Whatever season you are finding yourself in - God is in the midst of it. He is ever ready to equip you, teach you, lead you and uphold you. Trusting Him is the rock that will stabilize us in times of transition. Come and be filled. Come and reacquaint yourself with the God who moved heaven and earth to reach you.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Random Thoughts
I have spent the last six weeks taking care of my daddy and he doesn't need me anymore. He is healed - perfectly and completely. He is no longer bound to a bed with a mind ravaged by cancerous lesions and damaged lungs. He saw things in those last days that convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not afraid and that we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. But I'm a little lost. I don't know what to do with myself. I was so fulfilled caring for him. He was a true blessing to me and I am going to miss him. If any of you need a shave, a bath, your hair trimmed or food cut, I'm a really good caregiver. :)
Along with my rambling thoughts I thought I would tell you about the wonderful caregivers at Springlake Assisted Living in Paris. These are probably the lowest paid people in the medical profession. They are not licensed, they are not professionals - but these women and men have found their calling. They are the least of these who we will be serving in the kingdom.
One morning I couldn't sleep and arrived at Daddy's room at 5:30 am and there sat Wilma holding his hand because he was afraid and wanted company. Morning after morning Nita would bring him his coffee and eggs and cajole him into taking his medicine. Linda would arrive in the afternoon and laugh with him and sneak in ice cream. He died with a stash in his little freezer. Tabitha with her sweet country drawl washed his clothes every Tuesday and folded and put them away as though they belonged to her own family. Cecil visited everyday - often fixing the remote that Daddy would mess up and even came in on his vacation to check on him. Leah and Ronda answered his call light up to ten times in an afternoon when his mind began to slip away and he sat on the buzzer. And yet these sweet ones would come by day after day to visit and laugh and check on us. They even called us at home after he passed. What a wonderful group of people. Paid the least on this earth - rewarded the greatest in the one to come.
I would be remiss to not mention the hospice staff. They told me that there is much misunderstanding about them. That they are often referred to as angels of death - the ones to call when you are ready to die. That is such a lie. They helped my daddy live. He was able to live fully until the end because their concentration and purpose was to provide quality to his dying. Death is part of the continuum of life and it should be approached as fully as any other process. They made sure he ended his life prepared physically, mentally and spiritually. When Daddy's nurse Diana leaned over to try and hear his weak voice one day at the end, I was shocked to see that he did not speak to her ear, he kissed her cheek! That's living!
So all this is to say - things are not always as they appear to be. The first will be last; the last will be first. What appears to be the end, is really just a beginning. What seems to be sad and depressing is sometimes the sweetest of times.
Such is God's way. Don't believe what you see! Hold on to what you know is true. Look for God in everything. Believe Him! Life is good; death is not the end. I hope you enjoyed coming alongside me for the ride and.....if you get to heaven before me, Daddy's the one with the big blue eyes and the amazed look on his face!!
Along with my rambling thoughts I thought I would tell you about the wonderful caregivers at Springlake Assisted Living in Paris. These are probably the lowest paid people in the medical profession. They are not licensed, they are not professionals - but these women and men have found their calling. They are the least of these who we will be serving in the kingdom.
One morning I couldn't sleep and arrived at Daddy's room at 5:30 am and there sat Wilma holding his hand because he was afraid and wanted company. Morning after morning Nita would bring him his coffee and eggs and cajole him into taking his medicine. Linda would arrive in the afternoon and laugh with him and sneak in ice cream. He died with a stash in his little freezer. Tabitha with her sweet country drawl washed his clothes every Tuesday and folded and put them away as though they belonged to her own family. Cecil visited everyday - often fixing the remote that Daddy would mess up and even came in on his vacation to check on him. Leah and Ronda answered his call light up to ten times in an afternoon when his mind began to slip away and he sat on the buzzer. And yet these sweet ones would come by day after day to visit and laugh and check on us. They even called us at home after he passed. What a wonderful group of people. Paid the least on this earth - rewarded the greatest in the one to come.
I would be remiss to not mention the hospice staff. They told me that there is much misunderstanding about them. That they are often referred to as angels of death - the ones to call when you are ready to die. That is such a lie. They helped my daddy live. He was able to live fully until the end because their concentration and purpose was to provide quality to his dying. Death is part of the continuum of life and it should be approached as fully as any other process. They made sure he ended his life prepared physically, mentally and spiritually. When Daddy's nurse Diana leaned over to try and hear his weak voice one day at the end, I was shocked to see that he did not speak to her ear, he kissed her cheek! That's living!
So all this is to say - things are not always as they appear to be. The first will be last; the last will be first. What appears to be the end, is really just a beginning. What seems to be sad and depressing is sometimes the sweetest of times.
Such is God's way. Don't believe what you see! Hold on to what you know is true. Look for God in everything. Believe Him! Life is good; death is not the end. I hope you enjoyed coming alongside me for the ride and.....if you get to heaven before me, Daddy's the one with the big blue eyes and the amazed look on his face!!
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Ecclesiastes 3: 11
"He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end."
I have been sitting with my dad and watching him die. It has been an excrutiatingly painful two days....and it is not over. His body refuses to give up. Breath after agonizing breath....a heartrate fast enough to have run a marathon for two straight days and respirations labored and rapid with a cough that sounds like he is drowning and yet he lives. I know he's ready to go. He made that abundantly clear last week. He was happiest on Tuesday when I came in and he announced that he was going home that day. Said the Lord told him. Wanted to know why in the world we went to all the trouble to bathe and shave him when he was going to be cremated that night.
And then....he woke up on Wednesday and I'm here to tell you.....all hell broke loose. The man was livid. My previously sweet and docile father threw a temper tantrum that our family affectionately calls a "Rodgers fit." By the time I got there he had already taken on three of the staff and Billy and he looked at me with venom and said, "BETRAYER." Apparently since I had signed the papers to have his power of attorney I was supposed to have killed him that night - I had the "power." It would have been humorous had he not been so mad at me.
Anyway...I digress. My point is.....I have always wondered why our bodies keep fighting for life when there is no way to live. My daddy's body is consumed by cancer. His lungs are shot. His brain is eaten up. He is almost paralyzed now on the right and he goes to scratch his nose with his left hand and totally misses his face. His diseased body is failing. But breath by breath he fights for life. Why? Because of our focal verse.
God created us to live forever. Our bodies know it. They fight to maintain it. Isn't that something? My daddy's spirit is yearning to break free of its shell. As he grows increasingly closer to eternity my sister and I were catching him talking to someone in the room. Sometimes he was extremely serious and other times he would have a smile on his face. Mind you, his strength is gone. There is no voice, no sound. All energy is consumed with the task of breathing and yet that left hand will move up - to beckon or to praise? I'm not sure...but I believe there is something he sees that we cannot. I believe he is taking care of unfinished business - eternal business.
You were created to live forever. In God's timing your days will end and it will be the right time. My daddy will go when God calls him - he will not be late and he will not be early. Neither will you. You must make your days count for His sake. It is in your living that God will accomplish His plans and His purposes and it will be in your death that those plans and purposes will be revealed. Live well.
I have been sitting with my dad and watching him die. It has been an excrutiatingly painful two days....and it is not over. His body refuses to give up. Breath after agonizing breath....a heartrate fast enough to have run a marathon for two straight days and respirations labored and rapid with a cough that sounds like he is drowning and yet he lives. I know he's ready to go. He made that abundantly clear last week. He was happiest on Tuesday when I came in and he announced that he was going home that day. Said the Lord told him. Wanted to know why in the world we went to all the trouble to bathe and shave him when he was going to be cremated that night.
And then....he woke up on Wednesday and I'm here to tell you.....all hell broke loose. The man was livid. My previously sweet and docile father threw a temper tantrum that our family affectionately calls a "Rodgers fit." By the time I got there he had already taken on three of the staff and Billy and he looked at me with venom and said, "BETRAYER." Apparently since I had signed the papers to have his power of attorney I was supposed to have killed him that night - I had the "power." It would have been humorous had he not been so mad at me.
Anyway...I digress. My point is.....I have always wondered why our bodies keep fighting for life when there is no way to live. My daddy's body is consumed by cancer. His lungs are shot. His brain is eaten up. He is almost paralyzed now on the right and he goes to scratch his nose with his left hand and totally misses his face. His diseased body is failing. But breath by breath he fights for life. Why? Because of our focal verse.
God created us to live forever. Our bodies know it. They fight to maintain it. Isn't that something? My daddy's spirit is yearning to break free of its shell. As he grows increasingly closer to eternity my sister and I were catching him talking to someone in the room. Sometimes he was extremely serious and other times he would have a smile on his face. Mind you, his strength is gone. There is no voice, no sound. All energy is consumed with the task of breathing and yet that left hand will move up - to beckon or to praise? I'm not sure...but I believe there is something he sees that we cannot. I believe he is taking care of unfinished business - eternal business.
You were created to live forever. In God's timing your days will end and it will be the right time. My daddy will go when God calls him - he will not be late and he will not be early. Neither will you. You must make your days count for His sake. It is in your living that God will accomplish His plans and His purposes and it will be in your death that those plans and purposes will be revealed. Live well.
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