Category: Success

“Just As I Am/Tal Como Soy”

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I can still remember the sound of my grandmother’s aged, beautiful, magical, and throaty voice singing the stanzas of the hymn “Just As I Am” as she washed dishes and looked out the window of her Wisconsin home. I was right at her side rinsing and drying, but as her gaze alternated between the items she scrubbed in the hot sudsy water and the trees outside, she was somewhere else entirely.

Perhaps this is why this hymn remains one of my favorites. It’s also one of the few remnants of my childhood piano lessons that I still play a crude version of on the piano. I’m no longer the small, innocent child standing at my beloved grandmother’s side, but a middle-aged adult who is much more familiar with all the highs and lows, success and failures that this roller-coaster of life brings us. The song now resonates with me for more reasons than nostalgic memory.

Written by Charlotte Elliott in 1835 and composed by William Bradbury, “Just As I Am” gained new popularity when Billy Graham used it consistently as the invitation hymn in his crusades. How appropriate, for it perfectly describes what it means to to see ourselves as sinners in need of grace, desperate for the pardon of a Holy God. We are humbled that God not only grants it, but sacrifices His beloved son to death on a cross so that we might receive it. 

This past summer, I had the words “Tal Como Soy”, the Spanish translation of “Just As I Am” tattooed on my arm to remind me of God’s grace and mercy, but also of His unconditional acceptance of me as His daughter, regardless of my shortcomings, mistakes, and circumstances.

In the past few years, I have known what it is to be rejected by close family and friends, simply for placing some much-needed boundaries in my life. This injured me at the deepest levels and has been enough to make me completely question my identity and perception of reality. Although I acted out of my personal conviction and understanding of God’s leading, as well as the results of everything learned in several years of therapy, these things weren’t enough to protect me from distorted versions of what happened or to help me escape harsh judgement. I attempted to take responsibility for my roles in these situations and to apologize, but those too seem to have disappeared into thin air. I’ve heard that boundaries can be described as the distance between which I can love both myself and another person well. Somehow, those I’ve been in conflict with missed seeing the love and health in the situation.

And so, the tattoo–to remind me daily that however I got here, I’m loved and accepted by my Savior just as I am.

Out of all the lullabies, songs and hymns that I have sung to my daughter at bedtime, “Just As I Am” has been one of her favorite requests over the past year. What a gift from God that I am so compelled to dwell, almost nightly, on the words. One of my favorite verses begins, “Just as I am though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt.” How true, and yet these lead me through the journey of acceptance. I must learn to accept myself and my circumstances, and above all, accept how God sees me and the ways He is working.

Songwriter, singer, and worship pastor Jesús Adrian Romero has a beautiful song called “Tal Como Soy” (“Just As I Am”). In it he sings, “Just as I am, Lord. I have nothing to give but my heart” (My translation). How true. And so Lord, here is my battered, bruised, and misshapen heart. I’m all yours–do with me what you will.

“There Is No There, There” (Shauna Niequist)-

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The besetting sin in my life would definitely be perfectionism. I’m task-oriented, uber-organized, a performer, a big fan of structure, routine and predictability. I like my spaces, relationships, and life neat and tidy. So many things in the past have spun out of control. Somewhere along the line, I learned to cope by controlling the things I could in my physical environment or at least attempting to do so.

 

But control is always an illusion. Life rarely fits into neat and tidy compartments.  I’m learning, of course, but it’s such a struggle for me to let go. When I can do just that, when I can stay in the moment, each one is a gift. I love what Abraham Lincoln said: “Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery, today is a gift…that’s why they call it the present.”

 

Shauna Niequist has an excellent study entitled Present Over Perfect. That, my friends, is the goal: I want to learn to be present where I’m called to be, in each real moment, not continuously striving for an elusive quality of perfection that might even be termed destructive. There’s a phrase I learned through that study that often comes to mind when I find myself in one of those manic obsessive-compulsive drives: “There is no there, there.” North-American culture, as well as many others, can be so performance and appearance oriented. It’s as if we’re all striving to reach a perfect place where we will someday arrive, to find a euphoric Zen state to dwell in. But does it exist this side of heaven?

 
Shauna also talks about learning to flee a life where she was frantically searching for a diamond necklace, when all the time, it hung around her neck. Aren’t we all…just…searching? “There is no there, there.” A diamond necklace DOES grace each one of our necks. It was placed there by our Father God. His Presence perfects us, makes our present moments all they should be. The only way to be present over perfect is to accept that in His perfection, He made us totally right, made everything alright. He accepted us as we are, made us His own, and gave us all we need. May we each find the grace to receive the gifts we’ve been given, to open our arms and receive the provision that perfects our present.

Cracks…

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There really isn’t a time in my life when I don’t remember actively walking with the Lord, so one would think that as I begin my thirty-seventh year, I would pretty much have this walk down. Wrong. There are so many days when I feel distant from my Father, so many times when I clearly see my sin and flaws realized in bad behavior. This worn vessel cracks and leaks in ways that make it appear less than ideal for useful service. I hurt those I love most and fall short of God’s glory and my own ambitions every day. At times I am the judgemental older brother, at others, I know myself to be as the wandering and rebellious prodigal son.

 

As RZIM A Slice of Infinity author Jill Carattini pointed out, there’s an easily glanced over phrase in the prodigal son story, “…the prodigal ‘came to himself’ and, at this, he decides to turn back to the father…. The son is one who wakes to health and life again, having been unconscious of his true condition. Standing in a foreign field hungry and alone, the son comes to something more than a good decision. He is waking to an identity he knew in part but never fully realized. He is remembering life in his father’s house again, though for the first time.”

 

How easy it is to lose sight of our identity when we wander away from our Father’s house. How easy it is to forget who God says I am. Lauren Daigle’s recent song, “You Say” beautifully affirms that He sees me cleansed, perfected, and redeemed. He provides acceptance and belonging. No matter what condition I’m in, I can always turn back to the open and waiting arms of my loving Father God.

 

This vessel may be cracked, but may it come to itself, may it come home, and may it be of use. As the apostle Paul said in II Corinthians 5:7-9, “7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

 

Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen also summed it up well in his song “Anthem,”:
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

The Dance of Good Story-

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I’ve been struggling a lot lately with what a good friend calls “bad story.” Essentially, bad story is what I am under when I allow insecurities, lies, or the shadows of the past to dominate my thinking and identity, and convince me that I am anything other than the precious daughter God sees. In His sight, I am pure, prized, redeemed, righteous, and worthy of all the blessings He bestows on His children. This is the Gospel, this is good news, this is good story. This, my friends, is the battle of all our lives…to fight off the lies of the critics and the Enemy, and many times, our own. The loudest voice of all can be the critic inside our heads, and that critic can only be silenced by grace of God. I’ve learned I can only extend it to others as I learn to extend it to myself.

It’s a little bit like a dance, a simile I love to use for our relationships with the Lord and our journey through life. He takes a step, and we respond. The moment we step away or fail to follow His lead is the moment our dance loses its elegance and grace. The only way to continually stay tuned to Him is to practice looking in His eyes, following His leads, and choosing to believe His truth.

 
As Margaret Manning Shull of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries wrote, “Becoming a black-belt in karate or a seasoned dancer doesn’t happen instantaneously. Instead, each day offers multiple opportunities to practice whatever it is we want to become….If the grace-full life of Christ is the intended goal for those who claim to follow him, each day presents the opportunity to practice—to grow in the very grace Christ embodies. Each day brings circumstances and events that call for a response. Instead of fear, there can be empathy and hope. Instead of pride, there can be humility and hospitality. Instead of bitterness and resentment, there can be forgiveness or sacrificial giving. There is always a choice. And thankfully, there is always one who extends flawlessly the very grace we need ourselves.” I want to live under good story, to dance the dance of grace with my Father, and to help the world to do the same.

 

***Photo Credits: lovedoes.org

“I Like Myself Best When I Am Laughing” (Zora Neale Hurston)…

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I have a friend who loves to laugh.  She prompts me and others to laugh so beautifully. An entire wall in her home is covered with signs reminding her to do it… to laugh, and to keep on laughing. Her joy and amazing sense of humor are part of her spiritual gifting, a natural inclination and  talent that she has, a reflection of the joy and mirth in God’s own heart. But of course, life has tested and tried this pure joy. Circumstances and storms have attempted to destroy the very quality that most attracts those around her to Christ. She inspires me every day in her determination to resist these attacks and, as Proverbs 31 says to laugh at the days to come, but oh yes…she still has to remind herself.

 

Isn’t laughing such a reflection of a state of happiness, innocence, and lightheartedness? What a beautiful offering  to give to the world. Along with the childlike spirit it embodies, it seems to me it is also a symbol of trust and vulnerability, when we unabashedly present our truest selves to those around us and the world, just as they are, without holding back. Zora Neale Hurston said, “I like myself best when I am laughing.” Me too.

 

Unlike the friend I mentioned, laughing is not my natural inclination; I am more serious in heart and nature. But I believe it is a habit that can be learned, that must be practiced. I must learn to cultivate and love this voice and offer it to the world, for all its worth…for the glory of all He’s worth. Today, may God bring joy to your own heart. May you sense Him shouldering your burdens, looking you in the eyes, offering the twinkle in His own, and drawing out the beautiful laugh He gave you. After all, it’s like no one else’s.

 

***Photo Credits: lovedoes.org

Accepting Joy…

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Part of my very part-time employment at present is working with a woman who also has a severe neurological condition, though hers is far more severe. I model a few exercises and provide a little massage and stretching; she models so much more for me. She’s been sick for most of thirty years, and has spent thirteen of those paralyzed from the waist down and regulated to a wheelchair. And yet, she always has a smile on her face. When I asked her how she was able to be so upbeat and positive, she said that she wouldn’t want the husband who’s been her caretaker all those years to have to live with a grump. This made me smile; it almost seems like a casual and lighthearted approach to coping with illness, but it is most definitely far more. Long ago, she made a very intentional choice to live in acceptance, gratitude and joy, one I’m sure she has had to make that choice over and over again, but she has. Hers is a very cultivated positivity held perfectly in tension with practical surrender, and they end result is joy.

 

She calls it grace. It reminds me of what Ann Voskamp once wrote: “Grace is like the wind. It finds us as we are, but it does not leave us as we have been. All is grace.” Grace has met her anew each day in exactly the place she is; it continually shapes and molds her into the image of God. She’s a willing vessel in the hands of a skillful potter; anyone has only to look at my friend’s radiant countenance to be awestruck by its fragile strength. She’s a former elementary teacher, a mom and wife and daughter and sister and aunt and friend. She’s a quilter and a prayer warrior and a blessing to all who know her. I’m so very thankful: in a season of struggling to accept my own challenging circumstances, or perhaps simply arriving in the place where I actually have accepted them, God has given me this beautiful example. I want to accept the joy that fills and surrounds me and say with my friend and the saints of old, as voiced by the prophet Isaiah: “And yet LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter” (Isaiah 64:8).

 

*Photo by Ann Voskamp. 

An Iron Will: A Tribute to Georgine…

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Tomorrow is Independence Day, a celebration of what it means to know free life. The Fourth of July marks not only that for me: it is both the anniversary of a friend’s spiritual birthday in 1950, as well as that of her “home-going” sixty-four years later. She’s been gone for three years now, and it still doesn’t seem possible that’s a reality; I can hear her voice as if it were yesterday. From the day I met her when I moved to this area in 2008, she said I was a kindred spirit and adopted me as a granddaughter. She called me her “Sweet Pea”; I called her my “Mama G”. She reminded me of the grandmother I lost when I was nine years old: Mama G’s quiet strength, obdurate determination, compassionate presence and vocal faith mirrored those of my Grandma Thelma. I was instantly at home with her.

 

Mama G was an example of the faith and perseverance of the saints to all who knew her. She modeled for me how one could live well with serious illness, something she coped with admirably for almost half her life: the chronic and inflammatory autoimmune disease Lupus targeted her as a young mother. Everything she did over the next decades came at a cost, but she counted it all worthy of the price she paid. She told me often with great sincerity that she counted it a true joy to share even a small bit of the suffering that was our Lord’s, and she lived out its truth. Her best friend says she had an “iron will”. As Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” She helped all her loved ones (in other words, everyone she knew) to be shaped into the mold of our Savior. In the spring of 2014, she contracted pancreatic cancer, the same disease took my Grandma Thelma’s life. They say it’s the most painful way to die: since the pancreas sits on a bundle of nerves that travel throughout the whole body, its sensations are akin to those of crucifixion. Though a nerve block relieved that pain for a while, in the end she suffered its fullness. Again, she counted it all joy and faced it with that iron will, her eyes on Jesus. A few short months later, she went Home to be with God. In life and in death, she celebrated free life that did not come without a cost; her soul at last found its final rest. 

 

I am only one who loved this precious woman of God, she was precious to many, but I remember and miss her every single day. As I face each new dawn and dusk, I hear the words to one of her favorite hymns Carolina Sandell Berg, modeling the acceptant trust with which she lived all the days of her life, Day by Day:

 

Help me then, in every tribulation,

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Defined: Adequate or Inadequate?

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I am a teacher. This is how I’ve defined myself most of my adult life. It’s become not just an occupation, or even a vocation, but also an integral part of my identity. That wasn’t my intention of course, but unwittingly, it’s the identity I chose. Perhaps it’s because I’m single and “my kids” have been just that to me; perhaps it’s the tendency we all have, particularly as westerners and Americans, to let what we do define us. I’m reminded of an English movie I saw recently where two strangers meet and one asks the other, “And what do you do?” The new acquaintance responds, “My, aren’t you sounding American.” In any case, though our actions always speak the truth of our characters, and however much we are shaped by the icebergs of culture around us, I can’t let my career define me.

 

I’ve come up against this rather startlingly in recent months when it became obvious that I was no longer serving or caring for my students as their teacher should, primarily because of health challenges. Leaving teaching behind is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. To be honest, I guess I would say I feel a little groundless now, particularly in responding to the questions that characterize dinner parties.  My aunt has always wisely said it took her a long time to learn we are called human beings and not human doings for a reason. Just why is it so scary for us to offer up ourselves as we are without listing what we are doing and accomplishing? For me at least, it feels insufficient. But God says to me that He has made me sufficient. As Marilynne Robinson once wrote, and as quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech:

“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate; our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. You say, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God! Your playing small does not serve the world….and as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously liberate others to do the same.”

I am a child of God, defined only by how He views me: totally right with Him, completely accepted as I am, utterly worthy of dignity and delight. I’m clinging to that these days, trying to learn to see myself through His eyes.

Path Paved by the Son…

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Heraclitus observed that “The only constant in life is change.” This truth is older even than ancient Greece, yet in our own journeys, we often find ourselves surprised by & resistant to transition. Unexpected curves in our paths can throw us off balance & leave us searching for direction. God promises that His Word will be our lamp & guide, & also assures us of guidance as a component of communion with His presence. As Isaiah prophecies in chapter 30, verse 21, “Whether you turn to the left or to the right, your ears will hear a voice behind them saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it’.” Rather than an audible voice or a burning bush, however, we most frequently come to commune with our Savior by being attuned to His still, small voice. His paves our path gently by going Himself behind & before us, providing a guiding light & peace as gentle & as sure as the rays of the sun. In Jesus Calling (February 11), author Sarah Young says it this way:

 

 

“My Peace is like a shaft of golden Light shining on you continuously. During days of bright sunshine, it may blend in with your surroundings. On darker days, My Peace stands out in sharp contrast to your circumstances. See times of darkness as opportunities for My Light to shine in transcendent splendor. I am training your to practice Peace that overpowers darkness. Collaborate with Me in this training.”

 

Who better than our Lord to bestow light? Who better than our Savior with whom to collaborate? Who better than Jesus to plan our journey? May we discern His voice & surely as we watch the sun rise & set. May we respond to His leading as gently & pleasantly as we feel the sun warm & light our way.

“IF”…

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It’s funny how many of us are shocked when our lives don’t turn out as we expected, when most of us have been told from the beginning that’s how it would be. It’s almost as if we receive the warning as a challenge, clinging tenaciously to the belief our individual stories will be different from those of all others who have come before us. It seems we’re lucky if we begin life with this belief in the uniqueness of our journeys, but die knowing we’ve been proved wrong, with the certainty our stories are just a part of the greater human story told over and over again. When we’re young, we need to be powerful in our resilient hope; when we’re old, we have an even greater need to share a sense of connection and humanity.

 

If someone had told me, I’d probably still have had to learn it for myself. It’s a lesson I still learn over and over again, despite experience, and knowledge it shapes. Expectations are like cobwebs: even when we think we’ve shaken free, often, we later find them hanging on by a thread in some hidden and unexpected place.

 

In his resonant poem “IF”, Rudyard Kipling offers great observations for how to keep our heads in a world that rarely matched our expectations. These have inspired me time and time again, offering perspective and shifting paradigms:

 

If you can keep your head when all about you   

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!