Happy Birthday

I share this day of birth with a few friends. One of them is turning 16. I'm turning 30. I wrote this in her birthday card, and wanted to save it and share it with the rest of the beautiful women in my life.

For Sabrina

Young women are like flowers,
Adorned by God with beauty and strength.
They need roots to ground them during life's strong winds,
To give them life during depressing drought.

As you go throug life,
Whatever ups and downs God has planned for you,
May you at once feel your roots grow stronger,
Deeper,
As your beautiful face turns up toward heaven.

Fill the Jars with Water

I'm journaling this for my own sake. But you may benefit from it as well. I'm trying to capture the ideas as fast as they are coming to me, so this isn't going to be very fluid or verbose. I just don't want to miss what God is saying to me right now.
John 2:1-11.
The place - A wedding reception that is about to end prematurely because there is no more wine.
The people - Mary, Jesus, servants, master of the banquet
Mary remarks to Jesus about the state of the reception. She then tells the servants to be ready.

Jesus tells the servants to fill six stone jars with 30 gallons of water each. That's 180 gallons! Heavy! Tedious! How far do they have to walk to get the water? How many of them are there to carry the jars? Why doesn't Jesus make it easy on them and materialize the wine without them having to haul anything?

Pascal calls it the dignity of causality. God ALLOWS us to take part in His miracles. He doesn't need our assistance, but He delights to delegate responsibility to us so we can take active part in something He is doing. Wow!

This is powerful to me because I am at a dried up wedding in my life right now. My church, by whom I am employed, is struggling to survive. I want to leave the wedding and find a more fun place to hang out! But God has given me the responsibility, NAY, the privelege of filling jars of water. I don't know how long it is going to take. But I know the end result will be a miracle of fullness, joy, and provision. What will I do - leave the wedding? Or fill the jars with water?

Hmmmm.

Thanks to Helen and Peter Lee, Ministers at Korean First Baptist Church of Dallas for this word.

Have horse, will travel.

My husband loves "pioneer" movies. We recently got roped into the TV mini-series, "Broken Trail" - mostly because we love Robert Duvall as an actor.

Have you ever noticed how the frontier men and women always have the same seemingly insurmountable odds ahead of them? Mountains, rivers, restless natives, misappropriated food rationing, and the occasional horse theif. Whatever their destination, it is always, "Just on the other side of those mountains, boys!" And somewhere along the way up the face, the wagon wheel busts. Some poor sap with a broken leg is always pulled on a stretcher behind a sure-footed horse. But being the hardy pioneers that they are, the motley crew manages by sheer grit to crest the mountain.

Some days, I don't have enough grit to walk around the den to find a misplaced remote control. After watching that movie, I laid in bed with my husband and said, "We need to own up to something right now: We are lazy people." But I am just getting to the point that I'm tired of being on the wrong side of the mountain. I want more accomplishment in my life. I want to be at a healthy weight. I want to have a baby. I want to have control over my finances. I want to have more time with my family. I want to be able to provide and care for my aging parents.

What are your mountains? I'll bring the wagon. You bring the horse. We'll cross them together.

Count...

James 1:2 says to "count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds." I'm not very good at that. So, I've been doing some studying. My goal was to learn how to psyche myself into "feeling" joyful when circumstances dictated otherwise.

Here's what I've learned: in the Greek, the word translated "count" means to evaluate - to consider the value. The value of what - joy? Nope! The value of trials.

How are trials valuable? Keep reading - "Know that the testing of your faith produces endurance." Is endurance valuable? Duh. Yes. "Endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing." Is maturity valuable? Yes, again.

I recently heard a seminary professor ask the question: What's the difference between trials and temptations? He didn't have the answer, or at least he didn't share it with us. But I think the answer to that is this - Trials do not conflict with the character of God. Rather, they are His tools, meant to draw us closer to Him. What we do with the tools reveals how far we have to go on the maturity-meter. Temptations are in direct contrast with the character of God. They are Satan's tools, meant to draw us away from the Father. But like trials, what we do with them reveals how far we have to go.

And that is valuable.

Now, don't get me wrong. When Hurricane Rita landed on our doorstep at the same time that our pastor moved and left me as the "Lone Ranger" on staff at my church, I didn't walk around in a joyful haze muttering, "Maturity is valuable. Maturity is valuable, " while I did damage assessment and disaster relief with our congregation. I cried, as usual, and asked God why He saw fit to leave little ol' me around to handle the ensuing months of recovery.

No answer to that yet. Do I "feel" more joyful? No. But I have endured. And I have learned something.



Maturity is valuable. Maturity is valuable.

I Was Bored

My favorite places to be:
In a rainstorm, preferably with lots of thunder and lightening
Knee-deep in wildflowers
Kicking up fallen leaves
Walking a path under a canopy of trees

I desecrated a perfectly good desk calendar to make this.
Enjoy.

The Positive Negative

Mayhem -
My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for about three years now. I must have spent a few hundred dollars on pregnancy tests. My body hasn't been very "predictable" since I quit taking birth control three years ago, so I have to keep testing before I take different medications and do things to correct this unpredictable behavior. And while I know the result I'm about to get will most likely be a negative one, and I prepare myself for that result, I still feel like I got kicked in the gut when the control line pops up and the positive result never appears.

I got kicked in the gut again last night.

So I laid down to sleep, praying and crying - mostly crying - and tried to have faith to see the bigger picture. I've been doing this for three years also. For the first year, it was a good thing I wasn't pregnant because I didn't have insurance. I worked at a private school, and it wasn't provided for me. Then the second year, we moved while my husband was completing school and we were living off of my income-which wouldn't have been enough, but I was trusting that God would provide by the time a baby came. But this year - this was supposed to be the time. I wanted to be pregnant before I turned thirty, which will happen in about three weeks.

I can usually be a lemons to lemonade kinda girl. But too much lemonade will still rot your teeth and burn your stomach. There are still positive reasons why God might be waiting to bless us with a child. My husband is ready to go further in graduate school, which means another job or life change for us. We will have time to prepare financially. And I can take some big steps to get my body ready to house a baby. Let's face it. I'm not in great shape, and I whine about it more than I do anything constructive about it.

Still, won't somebody please cut down the lemon tree?

Music -
"Blessed be Your name in the land that is plentiful, where your streams of abundance flow.
Blessed be Your name.
Blessed be Your name when I'm found in the desert place, when I walk in the wilderness.
Blessed be Your name." - Matt Redman

What's in a name?

"Rain on a Tin Roof" comes from the lyrics of a song I wrote at the end of a distressed time in my life. The song, "Even So", comes from Habakkuk 3. It's a declaration of faith in God despite difficult circumstances. It seems I'm never lacking in those types of circumstances. But occasionally, I am lacking in the faith it takes to walk through them. That's where the rain comes in. Rain on a tin roof is a paradox of music and mayhem-the same kind of music and mayhem you get when you're trying to worship but tears keep choking off the song. And you wonder if God has seen you, has heard you, still loves you. And from somewhere in the recesses of your spirit, you wimper, "Even so, my heart will rejoice in the Lord."

So, sometimes, I'll write like I've got it all together-and sometimes like it's all falling apart. But always with a little music and mayhem. And maybe through reflection on life and the word of God, and maybe through your comments and encouragements, our wimpers will turn into shouts of rejoicing.

Homework: Go read Habakkuk 3.

For Fun: Go to www.cdbaby.com and artist search for Joanna Miley "The Way I Know You Now" to hear the song.