Recharge

Friday:
School got out last week, so I've been at home this week with the dude, putting him through potty boot camp.  I've had a few God whispers through that process, like what a proud parent God must be when we have victories.  And the loving forgiveness (and probably a little disappointment) He must feel when we mess up.  But I figured most people wouldn't want to read a full blog post about potty training.

For that reason, I've been waiting on my next scattered moment, the moments that drive me crazy but at the same time teach me lessons and put me in my place.  And today, I got one.  I mentioned in my first post that I was using an old laptop with an exploded battery that had to stay plugged in.  It isn't a huge issue except that the charging cable is magnetic and easily gets bumped and then you have to restart everything.   So thankfully, it's summer and I got to check out my work laptop.  Well, this morning I was ready to sit down and do some work and the laptop was totally dead.   I had just charged it yesterday, but the charger was nowhere to be found.  Here, I had this perfectly useful tool that could help me accomplish anything I needed or wanted to do, but without power, it was useless.  Dead.  And it occurred to me, or maybe God whispered to me, that that's exactly what we are.  We are God's tool, capable of doing anything He wants us to do.  But without being plugged in to Him, we are useless.  As good as dead.   

Saturday:
That's where I stopped yesterday.  I felt like I was being pressed to write on this topic of recharging, but I was really struggling with where to go with it.  So I just let it sit and marinate.  

A few minutes ago I got a text that our church homegroup was meeting tomorrow and discussing the next chapter in the book we are reading.  So I after things settled down, I sat down and read the chapter.  On Saturday night.  At 9 p.m.  Then it hit me.  I am that person...the one that waits until Saturday night to prepare, like I'm studying for a test.  Here's the shameful truth.  This was the first thing I had done to recharge this week.   As Christians, we know what to do to refuel daily:   1. Read the Word (Hebrews 4:12).  2.Talk to Jesus (1Thessalonians 5:17).   I am quick to make excuses about why I haven't done that this week.  But the excuses don't matter.  These are the things that plug us back in, that recharge us, and equip us to be useful for God.  So I challenge you to ask yourself how often you have been recharging.  

And maybe we are all at different places.  For example, when my phone sits on the table all day untouched, the battery holds up for a long time. It just needs to recharge at night.  But when I've had a busy day and it's really been through a lot, it may need to recharge several times.  Then there is my poor 10 year-old laptop that is so broken it has to stay plugged in directly and hold on for dear life to even stay on.  See where I'm going?  Life means we have times when we are untouched and can keep going a long time on one charge.  And it also means there are times we are so broken we have to be plugged in directly to even get out of the bed.

I suppose a good test of whether we are recharging often enough would be measuring our output.  There is a direct relationship between our power source and what we are accomplishing for God.  We can take it back to the vine.


John 15:5  I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Jesus says that if we are plugged into him, we will be productive.  That's pretty black and white.  Staying powered up=being useful for God.  And in case there is any more question, the fruits are spelled out in detail in Galatians 5.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

I also think it's important to emphasize that these aren't attributes we are supposed to try to attain, rather they will appear in us when we are properly connected to Jesus.

So, in my effort to be transparent, I shamefully admit that I need to recharge more.  I need to be better at my "dailies."  I want to be useful and productive for whatever God needs to me to be.  I'm challenging myself to read my Bible every day in the month of June.  And I don't mean just skimming through a verse just to check it off my list (been there, done that), but really read and really listen.  Every day.  Maybe re-read one of the gospels.  The book of Proverbs has 31 chapters..start a day early and you'll have one for every day of the month.  I'm not even sure what I'm going to read yet, but you really can't go wrong, can you?  Who is with me?

Waiting

Welcome to the latest installment of my crazy, scattered life.  One would think I might be able to make it at least a week without new content, but not so much lately.  I imagine it's all the craziness of the "close of school" requirements--you know, the ones that aren't part of your normal routine that are just piled on top of all the normal stuff.  That's probably what's depleting my brain cells.  Well, that, and the two year old person (whom I love dearly) that is stealing my pillow, along with my sleep, these days.

To recap, I've had a flat tire and broken my cell phone twice, along with my typical losing jewelry and mates to shoes, within the last month.  So it shouldn't be a surprise that I got ready to leave school this afternoon and couldn't find my [one and only set of] car keys.  Well, technically, I did find them.  They just weren't too useful to me where they were--locked in the backseat of my car.  I texted my husband that I was calling a locksmith, and that I would go ahead and pack my bags for my mom's (joking, of course), when he reminded me calmly (love his merciful self) that our roadside assistance would handle it for free.  And just as an aside, apparently it is not acceptable or wise to lock your car from the door rather than the remote, even if your hands are so full you can't physically hit the "lock" button on the remote.  That's what elbows are for, right?

So there I was at 3:30, with errands to run, with an hour long wait to get into my car.  This is the moment that should have induced stress and frustration, but wildly enough I was content to sit at a picnic table in the shade and wait.  Things have been so crazy and non-stop lately that just sitting there was a welcome change.  There was a warm breeze and birds were singing, and I got to have a nice long phone conversation with an old friend.  All things that would have gone unnoticed and undone had I not made my stupid scattered mistake.  As I was sitting there I started wondering what the lesson was for me in this situation.  It came to me pretty quickly.

This was a simple example of something that happens to us over and over.  We have plans.  God's plans are different, things don't work out like we expect.  We wait.  And what we do with that wait, well that's just as important, sometimes even more important than the thing we are waiting on.  I'm sure you can insert your own circumstances into the scenario.

I've been there a lot.  And I know I will be there more.  The time my husband was out of work....and we had to wait for a job.  That was some seriously hard waiting.  Of course God provided for us, but having to trust him so fully was a huge exercise of faith.  One that battled doubt, fear, anger, frustration, and control.  But that wait caused us to lean on God in such a new, big way.

And then there was the infertility.  I didn't publicize it much then, but I know it's my responsibility to share it now.  That was SO not my plan.  Words can't express that pain and the way that "ailment" consumes your life.  That wait was torture.  But that wait also brought me close to so many friends who had walked my path.  I experienced God's love and hope through his children like never before. And peace.  Peace that surpassed anything I could understand.  That wait...I wouldn't change it for anything.

Waiting on little man.  Wow.  There are no words.   Going in to the hospital pregnant and not knowing if you are going to come home with a baby...I can't even...   This is the wait that got us the most.  This is the first time in our lives that we had to surrender everything.  In the other waits, there were actions we could take to make ourselves feel like we were being proactive.  But here, all we could do was be still and wait on God.  I don't know how we did it.  There is only one explanation, and that's that God was there in the wait, loving on us, whispering peace, shushing our tears.

Then little man was here, and once again we waited.  We waited for him to grow enough to come home.   This had its own challenges as we struggled with all the new parent things in the most unnatural setting.  Being separated for seven weeks totally brought out the best and the worst in us.  To be completely honest, it wasn't a period that I spent a lot of time in prayer.  I'm confident that I just existed on the prayers of everyone else.  Like Mary, I took all these things and pondered them in my heart.  It was the longest and shortest seven weeks of my life.  It was the closest and furthest away I've ever felt to God.  That wait was special, something that I could never explain, but would never ever change.

And now we wait again.  What does God have next for us?  Will He grow our family, and if He does how will that be?  All we can do is wait.  But I've learned that waiting isn't something to curse. Waiting is where we are pruned, where we lean on God, and where we experience new blessings.

So I encourage you, whatever you are waiting on, don't grow discouraged.  Seek God, soak up what He is offering you now.  Don't miss your life now for looking only toward what you are waiting on. Great things happen while you wait.

Psalm 37: 3-8

Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
do not fret-it leads only to evil.

Mercy

I am thinking I very appropriately titled my blog.  My life is bringing about plenty of content for it!  A couple of weeks ago (like literally 2 weeks ago), I dropped my phone and shattered the screen.  It didn't have a case on it, and I took responsibility for it.  I even let my husband say "I told you so" without putting up a fight.  To my dismay, the most sensible option was to pay more than the cost of the phone to have the screen replaced.  So the problem was fixed, and I got over it.  Come yesterday morning.  The little one had a fever, and we had plans for later in the day.  So I rushed to get a shower, and raced to get to the doctor's office before they opened.  As all moms know, that's what you must do in order to not spend your entire weekend there.  So as I was jumping out of the car with my wet hair and make-up free face, my newly replaced phone slipped right out of my hand onto the asphalt.  Shattered.  Worse than the first time.  This was reminiscent of the time I backed my car into 3 different things in one month, but I digress.  I fought tears back and got settled into the waiting room and was filled with that feeling you get when you know you've messed up really bad and you have to break the news to someone.  I fully expected my husband to lash out in frustration with his not so sweetly scattered wife....which would have been understandable.  But, he didn't.  He very calmly took a deep breath and told me not to worry about it.  And I heard that word again in my spirit.  "Mercy."

It's a word that was brought to my attention about a week ago while I was watching Veggie Tales with little man.  I had been praying for some guidance about a situation, and that's how God delivered it!  We were watching "Jonah," and I heard a little different perspective on the story.  In all my  recollections of hearing Jonah's story, it has been spun as a lesson about running away from God.  But on the other side of this story is God's mercy for Ninevah.  I had to do a little research to check my facts, but Ninevah was a very powerful and evil city.  Jonah was raised to hate the Assyrians, so when God asked him to go preach there, it was natural for him to run.  Jonah didn't want Ninevah to be redeemed.   Isn't it like us to think we know better than God?  But...God wanted Ninevah to repent, and in the end, because Jonah was eventually obedient, they did just that.  God showed them mercy.   Jonah was frustrated with God for showing them mercy, because he didn't think they deserved it.  Ultimately, God used a vine to show Jonah that he had no right to be angry over God's compassion.  I won't recount all those details....you can find it in Jonah 4.

In the Veggie Tales video, the word "mercy" was defined.  I looked it up and found it defined as "kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly."  I think the kid friendly definition was something like "giving someone another chance when they don't deserve it."  


Knowing that, I think of all the mercy I've received.  Over things as small as shattering my cell phone to as huge as the sum of all my sins.  Shouldn't I, then, be merciful to those I don't think deserve it?  After all, God created them all and loves them all.  And wants me to show compassion just as He would.
Luke 35-36


"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.  Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."

As I sat to write this post, still searching for what to say, the song "Mercy" was the first to come up on my playlist.  What perfect words to help us remember the measure of mercy we've been shown.  if you've never heard it, I encourage you to listen.  It's one of my favorites.

Sweetly Scattered

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've braved the blogosphere.  In this world where I've tried to back away from oversharing, cut back on the social media, and live life face to face, I feel the conflicting urge to empty my heart of the jumbled noise running through my head--the need to see it transform into something meaningful with each stroke of a key.  It's a need that's mostly for me, as I know my thoughts become more clear as I see them in front of me.  But there's also a little whisper in my soul that tells me that as God speaks to me, He might also be speaking to someone else.  So while I know that this blog won't make me famous, or even have more than a handful of followers, I feel led to stretch my comfort zone just a little and see where God leads.

This is different from the other blogs I've had.  My purpose is simple:  Be real.  I won't go to the trouble of having a perfectly monogrammed and polka-dotted custom page design.  Because I don't have a perfectly put together life.  I sit at this moment in my bed, typing on a 10-year-old laptop that has to stay plugged in because the battery exploded about 5 years ago, looking at a playpen that is now used for a clothes draping device, and sneezing because of the dust that covers the furniture.  And I can look at it all and chant my new mantra "It's a beautiful mess."  All these things are results of blessings, and I am learning to soak it up.

As I was thinking and searching for the perfect name for a new blog, I wanted to reflect 2 Corinthians 12:9  But he [Jesus] said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."  As I thought about my weaknesses, I was reminded of the song "Sweetly Broken." I visualized brokenness as a vase broken and scattered.  And then I realized that scattered was the perfect way to describe myself.  Sometimes I feel like I'm pulled in every direction, a thousand little pieces that are suppose to be together.  And that's where the "sweetly" comes in.  If I was able to keep it together, what need would I have for grace?  Galatians 2:21 "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law [my own effort] , Christ died for nothing." 

I'm here to boast about my weaknesses, because when I am weak, He is definitely strong.  I pray that by being open about the thorns in my flesh, others may see how God's power has rested on me.  And I pray that by letting you see how scattered I am, you can be encouraged when you aren't so perfectly put together.