Merry Christmas? It's just not working.

This won't be a long blog. You're busy. I'm busy. The world is crazy busy, especially this time of year. And I need to get out and ring a bell.

In order for you to understand where I am going with this Merry Christmas? It's just not  working blog thing, you need to know that this year I answered a cry from the Salvation Army for more bell-ringers. I had been asking God to show me where I could serve...I tend to get paralyzed like a deer in the headlights at all the  opportunities to minister out there and I need Him to make is so clear that I couldn't miss it. And He willingly obliged. A call went out. I heard it. And now I ring. Simple!

One thing about the Salvation Army is that it gets the job done, providing shelter, food, clothing, whatever is necessary, freely, to those in need with little going into corporate pockets. I like that. I can stand in temperatures so cold that my mouth stops working and the bell tumbles from frozen fingers for a cause like that!

But yesterday I was struggling. I don't know how other people do the bell ringing.  I've heard that some bell-ringers sing and dance and do all sorts of talented things to draw people in. But me of little talent, I just sit there and smile and wish everyone that comes in front of me a Merry Christmas!

And this is where the trouble started.

After about three days and hundreds of Merry Christmas! wishes, I began to struggle. At first I thought it was the cold, making my words slur together, But then my greeting began to sound shallow. Wrong. Out of place.

First there was the man who stopped, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, Happy Hanukah! I blinked and then replied the same to him.

Next came the sad-eyed woman that sidled up to me and stood there. She needed to tell me that her mother had died this year and the Merry just wasn't there anymore. Oh my dear, I know your pain!

And the multitude of others who had stories to tell of loss and sickness and a year that was anything but Merry. And after each story my heart grew heavier.

Between visitors I found myself singing the song, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day...repeating over and over the one verse, "There is no peace on earth, I said."

Hour after hour a parade of broken humanity walked past me. My heart cry became, "Lord, how do I bring hope into these people's lives?"  A Merry Christmas! wish is not working.

And that question has been hanging on to my heart throughout the night. And this morning it's still there.

Options have presented themselves like tidy schoolchildren for inspection...

Peace! No, they'll think I'm from the 60's and some may give me the peace sign back, and then what will I do?

The peace of the Lord be always with you! Which says more but has too many words to say over and over again to all those people. They'll think I'm drunk as my speech begins to tangle after the first hour.

Happy Holidays! Oh my, no. That's got all the makings of our secular culture.

Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Good Evening! Ugh. It not only sounds like The Truman Show, but I'm back to the same problem...Merry/Good...not going to work.

What I wish I could do is stop. And listen. And take time to meet each person where they are at...where their pain is making havoc of their lives...where their fears and questions hang them.

At times I have wanted to fold up my bucket stand and walk away. How's that for true confessions?

But I can't.

I love that so many give money, freely, to a worthy cause. And that's really why I'm there. It's the greeting that I'm struggling with.

So, this is what I've decided...

Today, I will give the gift of Presence...right there in front of that food store, next to the Sun City retirement community.

By His grace I will greet each person with a smile and a God bless you!  because only God knows where each of those precious souls are in their earthly wandering and where they need a blessing. I sure don't.

You see, they know it's Christmas. I know it's Christmas. You couldn't miss it in our culture.

But what they may not know is the reason we celebrate Christmas...that it's not about gifts and parties and busyness. If that is the only star to follow, we will end up hopeless and exhausted and broke.

Instead, Christmas is a gift of relationship...from a God who cares so passionately for us that He left the glory of Heaven to come to earth as a vulnerable infant...Who, living a sinless life, was the only worthy sacrifice for our sins...ultimately dying on the cross for our salvation. This is the message we all need to hear...over and  over and over again...not only at Christmas, but every day of every year.

The true meaning of Christmas is that God loves us so much He provided a way for us to be with Him forever...Christ Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us.

And now, because of this Gift, we have hope every day, no matter what life throws at us.

And that is what I pray my smile and greeting will tell them.

So, on that note I leave you...it's time to get ready to ring. Thanks for listening.

And in expectation of ringing today, I say with a full heart, God Bless You!

May the joy and hope that Christ brings be yours in abundance during this season of celebration and throughout the New Year!

The gift of a handicap

Have you ever heard the saying, "If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans?"

Well, over a week ago someone said to me, "Send me your newest blog when it's ready."

And I, confident in my ability to foresee the future, replied, "Oh it will be up tomorrow! I'll make sure I send it on to you." Laugh. Laugh.

It is now nine days later. Like the pastor said during his talk on Sunday, "What makes you think you were ever in control?"

And that is really a very good question.

I come from a long line of controlees...people who were wired to "keep it together"...a direct descendent of William Bradford who took the ultimate control and left the Old World across the Pond to establish a colony in the New World....

A Swamp Yankee by heritage...born with a bootstrap in hand and an ingrained sense of how to pull oneself up by said bootstrap on a daily basis.

The thing about bootstraps is that the more you pull on them, the stronger your boot-strap-pulling-muscles grow. It becomes second nature to pull, pull, pull. After awhile, you don't even realize you are pulling anymore.

But eventually you do realize you are tired...very, very tired. And pulling gets more and more difficult. But you can't imagine ever letting go. Pulling is the only life you have ever known...how would life go on without your pulling?

And in that desperate moment God, in His infinite mercy, looks down upon you and plants in you a hunger for rest, which being the good controlee you are, only means you amp up your need to pull harder and make that rest-thing happen by golly!

Rest? Got it! Pull, pull, pull!

So God, in even greater mercy, steps up the trials and tribulations in your life. And you pull harder and harder...and the cycle goes on and on and on...

Until one day you can't pull anymore. And exhausted you let go, not seeing God in the midst of it, just believing that you must have failed. If you had held on just a little longer...pulled a little harder...all these trials and tribulations would not be happening.

Paul has a name for this merciful intervention by God..."The Gift of a Handicap"...

Cocooned by the will of God

It's been a long time since I've gotten excited about God.

Or anything for that matter.

I have been living in what I have called "The Year of the Great Darkness"...a year when so much has been stripped away...taken away...denied.

I have been dancing around God...eyeing Him...watching Him...waiting for Heaven knows what.

Who was this God I had bet my life on? And where was He during the days, no months, of anguish and tears and depression?

My feeble cry, my simple prayer, became, "Please, please don't forget the work of Your hands." That was it.

Some call this The Dark Night of the Soul and I have come to believe that's a fitting name for it, for the path ahead is unclear...you've never traveled it before so you don't know how to get Home.

And you begin to wonder...

"Suppose the darkness never lifts?"

"Suppose you are left to wander in it forever?"

"Suppose this is the new normal and you're not sure you want to live anymore if it is?"

The verse about people in darkness seeing a great light...Isaiah 9:2...has always been one of my favorite Christmas verses. It sounded so good. So right. So Christmassy. But I never understood the horror of it until now.

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. For those who lived in a land of deep shadows- light! Sunbursts of light!"

It's one thing to maneuver around your home in a power outage...it's another thing entirely to walk in a foreign place where you are completely unfamiliar with your surroundings. 

It's frightening. I feel those people's pain. 

Now I know you're thinking, "But wait! That verse doesn't end with darkness...there's light, too!"

Yes, yes there is.

But those people walking in darkness didn't flip on the light switch. God did.

And that's what's been one of the hardest things for me to understand...this God, my Heavenly Father, could switch on the light in a heartbeat. But He hasn't. Why?

Instead, He's allowed me to wander in the dark night...in the land of deep shadows. Why?

When it feels like it's always winter and never Christmas

There's a line in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe that goes like this...

"Always winter, never Christmas."

Have you ever felt like that? Like day after day after day you're slogging through the gray and the wet and the dreary, thinking surely there has to be a light at the end of the much-talked-about tunnel...but finding none?

For the last four months that's what I've been feeling...one day bleeding gray and hopelessness into another...looking and listening for a movement of God...but being disappointed.

It's like you've been put on hold and the silence is so noisy it's deafening...and you could scream!

To say I was feeling a little depressed...and set aside...and forgotten...would be an understatement.

Like a wild cat confined to a cage, I was beginning to pace. And roar. And lash out.

I hated who I was becoming but no matter how hard I tried, I could not fight off the darkness surrounding me.

There were many reasons for this...health issues...a restricted way of eating that was taking away all my comfort and joy and freedom...my mom being in critical condition, swaying on a pendulum between life and death...a husband in pain, awaiting a hip replacement...and on and on and on. On one of those stress scales I was probably off the charts, hanging on by a very thin thread.

I was angry at God...the God Who supposedly "Is There" but evidently not where I was. No matter how I struggled to apply all those spiritual disciplines that are supposed to yield fruit and answers, all I got was nothing. Nada. Just me, myself, and I in a dark night of my soul, waiting for the Son to rise...

And not doing it very well. Not at all.

Daring to be vulnerable

When I was in CT recently, I bought a stained glass piece at the Goodwill...the sight of a jeweled hummer perched on a branch overlooking a peaceful pond and majestic mountains brought me great joy...at a time when joy was at a minimum.

I have a passion for glass...I love how it embraces light and then throws it off in a myriad of shades of color. I have drenched my house in it...from an assortment of glass balls hanging in my windows to crystals that shower my living room in dancing rainbows when the sun comes up...all of it makes my heart sing. I'm not a pottery person, though I do own a few pieces. To me it seems heavy of body and spirit...like it wants to soar but it can't get its feet of clay off the ground.

So today when I read something interesting from my devotional about broken fragments...which my stained glass piece would have been in had I tried to fly it back with me on the plane...it touched something within me. I'm eager to get my piece home...it has been on my mind lately...and perhaps that's why this reading clicked with me. It is a little long, but it is all important...

Out of the ashes

What amazes me is how I am always motivated to write a blog post on a day that is already full to overflowing with things that must be done...today...right now...time is of the essence!

I like to think it's part of God's sense of humor...to remind me Who really is in control here...and to trust Him that if I do what He wants, when He wants, He'll be faithful to meet my needs. So, chicken coop cleaning, planting, pickle making, etc...you're in God's hands now!

Instead of my normal devotions this morning, I picked up the Pilgrim's Progress book that we are using for our group study tomorrow night, thinking that by doing this, with all I have to do today, I could easily kill two birds with one stone. Such can be my fickle thinking when I am busy!

But once again, God had the last laugh because writing this blog will take way more time than it would have for me to read both the devotional and the book!

So, let me ask you, have you ever wondered if your life is in vain? Not that you are ungrateful for your life, or you want it to end, but that sometimes it can be so hard to remain faithful in a time or situation that doesn't seem to be changing?

Or, maybe you're not seeing the purpose to your trials...

Or the fruit of your faithfulness...

And you're growing weary...and thinking it may not be worth it...and maybe it's time to QUIT.

If so, the following excerpt from Pilgrim's Progress is just for you! This classic was written in 1678...it is the epic story of a man from the city of Destruction who undertakes a pilgrimage to the Celestial City and all that he encounters on the way...

Rewriting the desires of your heart...Lord, it ain't easy!

Prepare yourself for an honest, heart-to heart blog...I need to write it but you are not obligated to read it! But, if you struggle with some area of your life, and sometimes it just feels so freakin' hard, read on...

*******

So this morning, after a night when I should have just surrendered and gotten up and watched old movies, I read a section from Made to Crave by Lysa TerKeurst, a fellow soldier in the war on satisfying our deepest desires with God and not other things.

The first part talked about man not living by bread alone, and that in itself was something to think about. But then it went on to say...from her heart...

"And I don't want this spiritual journey and the physical victories I've experienced to stop. So, the very next choice I make is a crucial one. Literally, it will determine if I am walking the path of victory or compromise. One wise choice can lead to two, can lead to three, can lead to a thousand, can lead to the sweet place of utter dependence on God and lasting discipline. A place more worthy than brief vacations every now and then. A place our souls were made to call home.

A place where discipline makes disciples who truly understand what it means to delight themselves in the Lord, for the Lord has been allowed to rewrite the desires of their hearts. It's a place not wrought with sacrifice but rather a place where they see healthy choices as overflowing blessings so pure and rich, they'd never trade them."

How does God know these things? Does He read minds? Does He sit there and look in a big book and say, "AHA! Today's the day I need to smack this one in front of her?"

Seriously!

Don't ever tell the Lord you want to hear from Him unless you mean business. He's way too good at what He does.

So, Hilton Head is coming up next week. Usually one of my favorite times of the year. All the things that bring me joy are there...family, bike rides, walks on the beach, my favorite garden center and birding spots...and restaurants that in the past have made my tummy sing.

And therein is the problem...

This year I don't want to go.  There, I said it. I don't want to go. Ted knows it. I know it. And God knows it. Because this year it will not be the same. And I desperately miss the same old same old right about now.

Going this year involves bringing a boat load of food, spices, oils, blenders and slow cookers and mixers and a gazillion other things I need in order to prepare what I can eat. And we are in a third floor condo!

It means doing things differently...letting go of a lot of traditions and forming new ones...all of which sounds like a lot of work to me.

And it's all the fault of this eating plan I'm following. Have I told you before how much it consumes my life? How it seems every minute of every day is either spent thinking of when I need to eat, what I need to eat, what supplement to take, or what test to monitor? And money wise? Yeah, I could build a covered deck and re-roof my house and take a few cool trips for what this is costing me.

Today I'm trying to figure it out. I went to bed last night in tears, and it was all over 2 e-mails I had received...one saying that I will need to cook for myself on this vacation, but yes, I can cook one night for the others. We had always divided up the nightly meals to give each of us women a break...which was such a help!

And then I went on to read that one night we would be having pizza! And that's what sent me to bed in tears.

Don't get me wrong...I know the e-mails were written in love, by those not wanting to sabotage my way of eating...it's so ridiculously fine tuned that no one should have to embrace it.

And the pizza part? Hey, it's tradition! Along with ice cream in front of movies at night, and ice cream cones at Sea Pines, and lunch out with the girls after our day of bargain shopping.

You see, no matter how much people say they are proud of me, or encourage me, they can't understand how hard it is to live with a health issue that involves something you deal with on a daily basis and definitely can't live without. I mean, heroin addicts don't hang out in heroin dens when they are looking to heal, right? Or alcoholics in bars? But what do you do when your issue is food and it's everywhere and you've got to have it?

And it's such a social part of life...

And its smells hold memories that you can't stop from invading your mind no matter how hard you try...

And all the places you used to go to and love are no longer compliant and it is no longer a joy to go out, but a BIG DEAL...

Or someone says "We're having pizza!" and your world crumbles and for a few minutes or hours you wonder, "Is this really worth it?"

Honestly, I miss some foods. They were my comforters...my enablers...and even though I know they are killing me, it's hard to let go of years of friendship with them and now call them enemies.

So, me and my organic coffee with coconut milk and stevia are sitting here on the deck this morning trying to remember how I felt when my blood sugar was through the roof...my blood pressure in the red range... my weight going up and up. Was it really that bad back then? I mean, at least I got to do some really cool food eating! And you know, I never knew how sick I was because of the food I was eating...my body had just adjusted itself to sickness and called it normal.

Then the Lord smashed into my thoughts and brought to mind what happened last weekend when I tried to re-introduce eggs into my diet...a simple thing like eggs! I felt like I wanted to die. Those traitors, we have been best buds for years! And now they have gone rogue, too? I'm not sure if I was sadder about the sickness they brought on, or all the things it meant I could no longer make without them.

Anyway, back to what I read this morning...

First, "Man does not live by bread alone." Well, ain't that the truth? Haven't seen bread in any form for over a month and I'm sure I won't be seeing it...gluten-free or otherwise...for a very, very long time.

But I don't think it was the bread part God was stressing, important as it is...

It was this part I shared above...

"And I don't want this spiritual journey and the physical victories I've experienced to stop. So, the very next choice I make is a crucial one. Literally, it will determine if I am walking the path of victory or compromise. One wise choice can lead to two, can lead to three, can lead to a thousand, can lead to the sweet place of utter dependence on God and lasting discipline. A place more worthy than brief vacations every now and then. A place our souls were mad to call home.

How does He know about my vacation?

How does He know that all I have to do is hear the word home and my heart melts?

I'm glad I don't have to get myself or my act or my face together to meet with the Lord this morning...I'd never hear from him otherwise!

Once again, it's all about choices...discipline (shudder)...reaping what you sow...for good or bad.

And once again I'm called to look at my life through a different lens...not the rose colored ones I wore for years...

One that doesn't see pizza and cheese and ice cream as fun foods...good foods...celebration foods, but as poison for me...

Where salads and meats and vegetables are my friends...not my enemies...who desire good things for me, and not ruin...

Where good choices (and God knows how desperately I need His strength to make them)...one day...one meal at time...are the daily key to victory or failure.

I know to many of you, these issues seem like small ones...but to me they are giants...breaking the stronghold of 59 years of anything is ridiculously hard.

My daughter says, "Be honest and share" so I am.

I am not a super woman.

I am not stronger or more able to make good choices than the next person.

I'm me....fragile and weak and at times very lonely in this new way of living.

But I don't want it to rob me of my blessings...gifts that God has placed in my life abundantly so I can remember how rich I am and why life is still worth living no matter how hard it seems.

So, today I will choose to see Hilton Head as a blessing.

Just a different kind of blessing.

And I will choose to do something else the night all the others enjoy pizza...maybe sit by the pool and read and eat a salad. Me and God.

And I will, by God's grace, do life one meal at a time...one choice at a time...one day at a time.

That is my choice.