Simply One Life

The day is moving along but the fog outside has intensified.  By nine it should be dissipating, driven away by the newness of the day and the sun shining bright.  But today, this second day of the year, it’s worsening.

Sadness crept into my heart in much the same way.  When things should be the most joyful, sadness can be as the fog, thick and relentless.  In some ways I welcome it, that old familiar feeling.  I allow myself to wallow in my surroundings, in the things that shouldn’t be, but are.

I want to feel entitled to my sadness.  I want to feel justification that the world is against me and that life is harder for me than those around me.

Selfishness is the root of sadness.

I needed to climb out of the hole of self-pity, but first I needed to let myself cry.  To feel the feelings that God gave me, even if they are no indication of the life He has for me or the nature of His goodness.

I spent evenings in the ambiance of the Christmas tree lamenting what doesn’t seem quite right.  Selfishness gave way to self-reflection and I could hear God calling me to more.

I remembered years past, the sewing, the painting, the embroidery that I would put my identity in for a while because I saw others doing it and knew I could too.  Then I was tired and burnt out with no time or space left for projects.  These four, almost five, children have taken up every nook and cranny of our small house.

God began highlighting how important creating is for my own, wait for the dreaded word, self-care.  But self-care isn’t selfish if it connects me with my Creator.

I thought back to the prophetic word I received last spring, the one about how I would write and that would snowball into big and beautiful things.  The word that I’ve tucked in my back pocket just waiting for God to make happen.  It turns out sometimes He’s just waiting for us to make the move.

Writing requires nothing more than a pencil and a piece of paper and certainly I have plenty of room for that.  My laptop easily slides under the couch for a few words here and there.

Writing.

Always something I’ve dabbled in for a few months and then lost interest or inspiration, God has prompted me to look past the need for “inspiration” and just put words on a page on a regular basis.  He’s pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I want to write short stories, maybe an entire novel someday.  Not today, not tomorrow, but soon enough that will feel possible.  I just need more practice.

Brad is the writer in this family, but who says there can’t be more than one?  It only makes sense to take advantage of living with the best editor I know, the one who has taught me everything I know about writing.

To top it off, I get a pretty good discount.

I woke up with piercing pain in my right thumb. It’s not a new pain and has visited often the past couple of years, making it difficult to do nearly everything from opening toothpaste tubes to writing.

I have received prayer for it and for a time it was healed. I’ll go for weeks not thinking about it but then out of nowhere it begins to hurt again.

I retrace my steps over the previous days. Did I eat too much sugar? Have my phone in my right hand for too long? Perhaps I have a gluten intolerance that is causing inflammation?

I went through all these motions this morning and I even googled arthritis.

Googling, of course, is never a good option and I shut that down quickly. I reached out to a couple of friends for prayer and reminded myself that I am strong and pain is mostly a mental game. If I do things a certain way without bending my thumb it doesn’t hurt, so I rely on my other 9 digits.

Something made me remember, the divine interruption of the Lord I suppose, that this was the finger that I severed as a child, crashing my bike on a steep hill.

Gosh, is that it? Is this an old injury coming back to haunt me?

God told me, “I want to heal you of your past wounds.”

This is a message for me, but I also believe it’s for others dealing with emotional scars. Past wounds can look healed, but are often underlying triggers for pain, hurt and anger.

We think back and wonder if it’s because we didn’t get enough sleep, watched the scary movie, or should have taken a bubble bath instead of mowing the lawn. We feel guilt because we thought we had finally overcome the negativity that was holding us back.

Even when we look healed on the outside, we can be bleeding on the inside.

God’s desire is for us to be free of all pain and to be healed of all wounds. In fact, he already died on the cross for that freedom.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1 ESV

The enemy wants to hold us in a place where we think we are OK, but we just can’t place our finger on the rage that wells up, the sadness that grips, or the worry that gnaws. That is NOT the goodness that our God has promised us and it’s time we rise up and take back territory that the enemy thinks he has “claimed”. Good news, the enemy was ALREADY defeated when Jesus died on that cross.

We wait patiently for the day that we get to live in the new heaven and new earth that God has promised us, a place where there will be no more sadness, suffering or pain.  But we’re not there yet and now must contend and fight for our freedom and joy.

He canceled out every legal violation we had on our record and the old arrest warrant that stood to indict us. He erased it all—our sins, our stained soul—he deleted it all and they cannot be retrieved! Everything we once were in Adam has been placed onto his cross and nailed permanently there as a public display of cancellation.

Then Jesus made a public spectacle of all the powers and principalities of darkness, stripping away from them every weapon and all their spiritual authority and power to accuse us. And by the power of the cross, Jesus led them around as prisoners in a procession of triumph. He was not their prisoner; they were his! Colossians 2:14-15 TPT

There is abundant freedom that comes from stepping into the identity that God gives us.  The powers of darkness can no longer accuse us there, the grips of evil can no longer hold us down.  Life with Christ is evermore stepping into the power and authority that he gave us when he died.  There is still evil in the world and bad things are still prevalent, but God in His abundant mercy has made a way for us to move through and around the powers of darkness by recognizing that Christ bore it all!

*If this resonates with you, please reach out to me or someone you trust for prayer. I believe God has healing for you.*

This morning I took the kids to our favorite secluded park to pick black raspberries.  I was certain I would hit paydirt, but instead most of the spots had already been picked over.  We had a great time wading the creek and walking around, but my measly one quart of berries was less than I had hoped for.

I drove away slowly craning my neck for just a few more, and then I spotted it, the mother load of berries!  I gleaned more in a couple of minutes wading through that brush than I had in an hour tromping through the park.

Life with God is so similar.  Just as we’ve shifted our expectations to accepting something is over, lost or gone, He shows up in big and amazing ways.

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Black raspberries are a fruit of neglect.  The less you do to your property, the more likely you are to grow berries.  This is truly the perfect kind of harvesting for people like us who strive do the least amount of work possible and don’t care too much (but a little) about how overgrown their place looks.

Our neglect is the earth’s abundance.

Of all your harvests, those
Are pleasantest that come
Freest: blackberries from
Wild fencerows; strawberries
You happen on in crossing
The grassy slopes in June;
Wild cherries and wild grapes,
Sour at first taste, Then sweet;
Persimmons and blackhaws
That you pick up to eat
On days you walk among
The red and yellow leaves;
And walnuts, hickory nuts
Gathered beneath the trees
In your wild foragings
The earth feeds you the way
She feeds the beasts and birds.

An exceprt from Wendell Berry’s poem “The Farm”

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The first summer we lived here we went on a trip to Disney World.  I ran down over the hill early the morning we set out on the journey to Orlando and found a patch of wild berries.  I had never eaten a wild raspberry before, despite having grown up in the country, but I plucked one and popped it in my mouth.  We drove off and I spent the next couple of hours worrying that I had in fact ingested a poisonous berry masquerading itself as a harmless raspberry.  Spoiler alert: I survived.

My confidence has grown quite a bit since then, in many ways, and I now find myself plucking weeds out of the ground to dry for salves and counting down the days until our blackberries finally ripen.

God wants to take care of us in the same sort of way if we allow Him.  We don’t have to work hard pruning and cutting and mowing because He will do all of that for us.  He is a good and gracious God that provides us with way more than we could ever imagine.

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Picking berries is a poky business.  I suit up in my tall boots and long pants, but still get pricked and poked trying to reach that clump of beautiful berries just a little too far into the bramble.  The scratches are worth it, though every time I think of the first person to successfully receive penicillin because a scratch from his rose bushes turned into a life threatening infection.  Apparently, scratches can be deadly.

Oh, but one bite of those juicy, complexly flavored morsels is worth the bug bites, the scratches, the tromps through the high and itchy grass.  The greater the risk we take the higher the reward, and earth doesn’t give much greater rewards than a ripe black raspberry.