Shadows and Scriptures

The world isn't easy. Life is often dark and dingy. It looks pretty good until the sun shines in, illuminating the dust filling the room. It's a mess.

The Ukraine and Russia. The Middle East. Ferguson, Missouri, the homeless on my street, and my heart skips a beat. You can't escape the brokenness. The world's fallen and down to my own problems that now seem so small, and sometimes it's overwhelming, I'm suffocating in the messiness of it all. Crying, where and why.

I am comforted that we are not alone in the valley of the shadow of death. But I wonder, too, why is there a darkest valley? Why must the world be covered in shadow and grief?

Why does a good God allow a dark valley. It just doesn't seem fair.

And it my own little world, where my small problems seem so big, I wonder why it doesn't get better. When I spend time every day in prayer or reading the Bible, pouring through blog posts and theological books, why do I often feel alone? Why do I find myself struggling for joy, when it used to be bright world I lived in and now often feels like a window I only get to glance through, taste the light for a moment before the blinds are shut.

But I'm praying. I'm reading Scripture each day. I'm doing all the right things, so why don't I get the results I want?

A few weeks ago I journaled,

"I feel like I'm being broken so I can be built up. Life just feels infinitely harder recently. I'm struggling to find my identity in Christ, to be filled with joy and thankfulness, to live changed by the Cross. Yet I'm praying, reading scripture, having a quiet time...and often God feels far away or He's there and we're talking, but I still feel like I'm sinking and I don't know why He won't pull me out. I feel like He's just talking to me, not acting. I need rescue. Even though sometimes I resist it. I need Him to rescue me even on the days when I think I don't want Him to. But maybe that's the process. Growth is painful and humility takes work and I'm being torn down to be rebuilt. If beauty comes from ashes maybe I still need to burn. And I feel like that's something God is speaking to me as I asked why He wasn't just helping me and why life feels so hard and His love so difficult to grasp. And He said, "I am." In the sense that He has to break me first...Maybe I need this season of feeling incapable of joy and fulfillment in Christ to realize how much I can't do it myself. I guess what it comes down to is that I've asked Him to make me His, totally free and fulfilled in His love, no matter what it would take to get me there. And I said I knew it would be hard and painful, but I want to be brought to my knees before Him. My everything must be rooted in Him and I need His help to get me there. It feels like I'm doing a lot on my own right now, and maybe that's part of the process. I don't know why He would make me do this alone right now. Maybe it's to help me really, truly see that I cannot do this life on my own and I really do very desperately need His grace to cover my sins, His strength to cover my weakness. He is Lord. He must be Lord. And I can't pick and choose what and when I surrender, I have to surrender it all."

There ya go, my dose of vulnerability for the week, a peek into the scribbled pages of my soul.

A few days later, rather arbitrarily, I decided to read through Lamentations. There's a passage I've always loved and I wanted to read through it again,

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end; 

 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness. 

 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

It's one of those nice, feel-good verses where you highlight just that one part and forget about what's before and what comes after. At least that's how I'm tempted to read my Bible. Find the pretty passages that sound nice on a pillow and forget about the mess of sin. 

So this time I payed a bit more attention to the whole passage. This is a bit of Lamentations 3. It's long, so I won't copy it all here, but I strongly encourage you to read the entire passage.

I am the man who has seen affliction
    under the rod of his wrath;
² he has driven and brought me
    into darkness without any light;
³ surely against me he turns his hand
    again and again the whole day long.

though I call and cry for help,
    he shuts out my prayer; 

¹⁷ my soul is bereft of peace;
    I have forgotten what happiness^[a] is;
¹⁸ so I say, “My endurance has perished;
    so has my hope from the Lord.”

²¹ But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;^[b]
    his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the soul who seeks him.
²⁶ It is good that one should wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.

²⁸ Let him sit alone in silence
    when it is laid on him;
²⁹ let him put his mouth in the dust—
    there may yet be hope;

³¹ For the Lord will not
    cast off forever,
³² but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
    according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
³³ for he does not afflict from his heart
    or grieve the children of men.

Who has spoken and it came to pass,
    unless the Lord has commanded it?
³⁸ Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
    that good and bad come?
³⁹ Why should a living man complain,
    a man, about the punishment of his sins?

⁴⁰ Let us test and examine our ways,
    and return to the Lord!

⁴⁴ you have wrapped yourself with a cloud
    so that no prayer can pass through.
⁴⁵ You have made us scum and garbage
    among the peoples.

“I called on your name, O Lord,
    from the depths of the pit;
⁵⁶ you heard my plea, ‘Do not close
    your ear to my cry for help!’
⁵⁷ You came near when I called on you;
    you said, ‘Do not fear!’

⁵⁸ “You have taken up my cause, O Lord;
    you have redeemed my life.

I'm not sure who wrote Lamentations, but he clearly experienced intense grief, torment, pain, loneliness. He sought the Lord and did not hear from Him. It says God shut out the prophet's prayers. He lacked peace, he forgot what happiness was. Yet in spite of all this, he finds hope in the Lord's steadfast love. Despite feeling alone, and knowing that might never end, the Lord's goodness and mercy never ceased. His faithfulness still great. 

The nice feel-good passage about God's love and faithfulness is preceded by the prophet being alone, even losing hope in God. Then he remembers and calls to mind the greatness of God. And yet still after this, acknowledges there are times of great suffering, loneliness when it seems God has turned His back and is simply silent. 

So what is our job? Is it to just read the nice passages you can hang on your wall and cross-stitch onto a pillow to give away at a wedding? Or is it to seek God, regardless of circumstance. 

The prophet talks about how he has been mangled and attacked, without rescue or comfort or help from the Lord. His prayers have gone unanswered, he has been shut out. Yet the prophet still finds hope, because of the unfailing truth of who God is and because of a trust in a bigger picture. It's easy to "trust" God when times are easy, but hardships, times of silence, that determines true faith and trust. 

God isn't good when my life feels nice. God is good because God is good. Regardless of what my life looks like, my God is great, faithful, enduring in love and steadfast in mercy. 

My job is to call that to mind. To find hope in His unfailing mercy. Not because I feel it. Not because I'm constantly joyful. Not because  I have the job and the car and the house. But because His steadfast love says, "do not fear." For He has taken up my cause. He has redeemed my life. No matter what my life looks like, it is redeemed. And in that truth I will stake my ground. I will find my hope and salvation in the Rock that is higher than I.

For Joy

Joy. It often seems so elusive. Deeper than happiness, harder to obtain, but absolutely transformational if captured.

If it can even be captured.

Where do we find this thing, this joy that wraps itself around our lives. It doesn't stop the arrows life is often shooting in our direction, but it changes your response to them. But where do we find it? Because if the world is broken and messy and the arrows are sharp, the last thing I can do is just be happy. Where do we find joy in sadness, glory in pain?

Today I met a man named Dale. He broke my heart. He lives in a hotel on the meager provision of his disability checks and the money people hand him from their car window as they drive by his corner. His legs were amputated due to a flesh eating disease he got while fixing up an elderly woman's house for free. Where's the justice in that? He said some people are nice. But not all. He said people throw things at him sometimes.

How do I find joy knowing there is so much suffering? How does he find joy sitting in his wheelchair in the hot sun with a cardboard sign day after day? Because these moments aren't happy. I can't smile and make it all okay.

But then this morning I went for a bike ride and I just felt so light as I spun through a green park with the wind on my face, so filled with something far greater than happiness. A taste of what it means to truly be free. How can I have both emotions in one day, heartbreak rolling down my cheeks and a giddy glee that makes my heart sing?

It must be more than circumstances, this elusive thing called joy. It must be something that marks my life in the good and the bad, something deeper and stronger than a tear or a smile. 

I read this the other day, "God is using this season to say, 'Am I your joy?' John 15 talks about how following Him is really for His glory and our joy. The word joy really struck me, and I thought, I can't get that manufactured in other places, it needs to come from Him. Time with friends is good, and working out is good, and time with  my husband is good, but I have to find my joy in Him."

It has to come from Him.

Joy is this beautiful, pure, untarnished thing that can only be found in the Lord. "The joy of the Lord is our strength." It doesn't make the painful moments less painful, but it gives them more meaning. Because there is something greater, there is something deeper, there is something more glorious than this moment, this trial, this pain, this question.

Joy cannot be something that I experience when life is going my way. Happiness is an emotion, coming and going as the world ebbs and flows. Joy is the thing that changes the way you see the ebb and flow of life. It doesn't change with the seasons, it is the son always in the sky.

If God is not my joy, then I have no joy. For it is only found in the Lord. It's His love that promises to one day make everything right. It's me knowing that as I cry over the broken life of Dale, His tears flow too. Joy comes from me knowing that God's heart breaks for this messy world, and that He has already begun to make it right. He died to make it right. It hasn't been perfected yet, but it will. Oh it will. And in that I find joy, in the pain, in the smiles, in the anger, in the laughter, in the hurt, in the questions, there is joy.

"Am I your joy?"

This I must ask myself each day, as I seek and strive for a relationship with Jesus that is so changed by His love I can find joy every moment, no matter the season.

My Psalm

I've been reading through the book of Psalms in the Bible recently and realized, I'm essentially reading someone's journal. David's poems were the prayers, praises and petitions to the Lord he wrote down, now there for us to see. They are powerful because they are raw and real, deeply honest and vulnerable. They speak to where David was at in moments of doubt, hope, desire, joy, heartbreak, failure, brokenness. They speak to us because we can identify with them. We understand his words of peace, lying down in green pastures and beside quiet waters, finding refuge in a God who is ever-present in times of trouble. We can identify with the moments when David cries, "Lord, where are you? Why are you silent?" We all have moments of doubt. Moments when (if we are really honest) we wonder if God is even there, or if He is, if He actually cares. The trouble is, we often aren't willing to vocalize those fears and questions because we aren't comfortable with the vulnerability, or not always having it all together. This is why David's words resonate with so many people in different stages of life and places of faith. Because it's David speaking to God exactly what is on his heart. With all of that in mind, I want to share a prayer/poem I wrote down recently as I sought the Lord in my brokenness and wrongdoing. 

God, 

I have been so self-centered

focused on me all day long

as if I'm God

as if my ways are right and just

Or, at least,

more important than anyone else's 

As if, 

I matter more

or my little world even 

matters at all

You know, the one where

I'm on the throne and

You give me glory

That world doesn't exist,

but I pretend it does

I live like it does

so often,

too often

Live for my comfort,

live for my fame,

ruled by my "right" to

"my rights"

as if they existed, when really

I surrendered my rights 

the moment I

surrendered to You

Yet

I'm trying to take them back

as if my will mattered

or my ways were

right and true

Righteousness

is from You alone

Self-righteousness, the burden 

on my back, take

this burden away

The sin I carry

Lord, 

I need you now

Direct my thoughts away

from me and my selfish ways

where I care more for

my comfort than

the people around me

Turn my face to You

Only there do I find rest

my peace is in You

And when my eyes are fixed

on the throne

Yours, not the one I 

try to construct

Then justice rolls down

mercy will I see

love, an outpouring

of the Love I've been shown

grace will I give, for

You gave it to me

And my world will shrink

never more to be seen

consumed by your

all-consuming, gracious sea

Lord,

help me

help me be

like You

Walls

I am
     the only wall you will ever need

                                                    Stop hiding
                                                   Stop fighting
                             against the wrongs you have committed
                               things you wish could remain hidden 

Shame is just a mask
Guilt a hidden dagger
         stabbing you again and again
                   never letting you get better 

The beauty of grace 
is you don't have to be afraid
Mercy new every morning
I've taken your cloak of shame 

                                        You can hide behind me
                                    because grace is an ocean and 
                                   I've already stopped the storm

When everyone says, 
                               "be perfect"
My outstretched arms say, 
                               "I already am"

When you hide behind a wall
a construct of your own two hands 
You limit a grace that is greater

           Shut everyone out
                           box yourself in 

It's not about what you can do
             
                                         It's about what I've done  

I'm tearing down your walls 
because I'm the only one
you need

Grace

Grace

for my independent self feeding off lies and trying to live on my own

Grace

to pull me back to the throne

Grace

because I say what I'm doing is divine,

but the reality is

those plans are all mine

For my glory, for my fame,

but instead He gave up His name

Came to earth and

bore a cross for my shame

Grace

because I know I don't deserve it

Yet

I'm still trying to earn it

Living as an orphan

instead of a child

No longer lost, because for me

He was meek and mild

Lamb of God, slain

On Him all of God's wrath lain

So I could be free,

grace covers my iniquity

Grace

because I say I am strong

But really, it's His grace

that carries me along

Grace

because all that's left to see

is the cross as I cry,

have mercy on me

Grace because it's free,

and the beauty is I can never earn or deserve it

Grace that has set me free

Grace that says I'm redeemed

The Loved One

I seem to always "discover" something new each time I read the Bible. A verse sticks out that never did before, a phrase means something new because of a new life experience or struggle. And some things always stick out, always make an impact, or always leave me with the same bit of leftover confusion or lingering questions.

I've read the Gospel of John numerous times, and with each reading, one phrase sticks out to me and leaves me with a slightly unsettled question.

"...the disciple whom Jesus loved..."

The verse is repeated multiple times in the Gospel of John, and I've never quite understood it. As far as I'm aware from scripture, Jesus doesn't love some people more than others. Yet it seems like John, by commenting that he specifically was loved by Jesus, is saying he was most loved. The only other alternative I could come up with, which I have been more inclined to prescribe to, was that John was just a little prideful. Why else would he feel the need to comment that he was the disciple loved by Jesus?  Like he was the favorite, when I'm pretty sure Jesus doesn't play favorites.

But then my perspective was changed. The emphasis isn't on "the" in "the disciple Jesus loved," and it most certainly doesn't say "the disciple Jesus loved most." No, the emphasis is on "loved."

It's not about John. It's about Jesus, and Jesus' love.

John was the disciple "who never got over the fact that Jesus loved him."

John wasn't trying to say he was Jesus' favorite, he was simply in awe of the fact that he was loved at all.

John never got over the fact that Jesus loved him.

He didn't take Jesus' love for him for granted. Rather, he was so in awe of Jesus' love for him, he couldn't stop talking about it. Instead of a prideful, "I'm loved by Jesus," it was a humble awe that "Jesus loves me." The focus isn't on John, it's on Jesus.

Man, I want to live that way.

I remember a point in college, which lasted for probably about a year, when I was so in awe of Jesus' love for me. I was so astounded by the fact that He did love me. That the God of the universe, all-powerful and incredible, knew me personally, loved me intimately, and had such compassion and mercy on me that He died for my sins. It legitimately brought me to tears when I thought about it.

And if I'm really honest, it doesn't bring me to tears like it used to. I long for those days, when the mere thought that Jesus loved me brought me to my knees and caused me to praise Him.

It's like I've become so busy (isn't that the catchphrase of our culture), that I've forgotten why I'm even where I am, why I'm doing what I'm doing, why I am who I am. Because of love. Because of beautiful, perfect, sacrificial, undeserved, substitutionary love that gives me life and hope and freedom and breath.

I want to live like John. So humbled by the fact that I'm loved that I never get over it, never stop talking about it. I want to live in utter awe of His love for me.

He loves me! Jesus loves me! That's amazing. Beautiful. That should change my life, change my every moment. I was lost, and now I am found, freed, and deeply loved. How can I do anything but praise Him through eyes filled with tears at the indescribable beauty of being completely known and unconditionally loved.

It's a love that changes lives. It's a love that leaves you with no option but to sing and to serve.

It's a love you can't get over.

I too am the one Jesus loves, as are we all.

Living as a Child

I stood at the kitchen sink, washing the remains of dinner from a pile of dishes as my fingers slowly wrinkled, my mind racing with a thousand thoughts and worries, to-dos and trying to figure it all out. And I had a sudden realization. 

I'm a Martha. 

Not the Stewart kind. But the worrier who was too busy "doing" to sit at Jesus' feet and be present in a moment with Him. 

Story of my life, even though I'd rather not identify as a Martha. I want to be Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning and growing, worshiping and enjoying the relationship I have with Him. 

But just like I've identified with Peter in the Bible and found hope and redemption in that, I can find it in my similarity to Martha as well. Because while I may be like her now, I don't have to be like her forever. There's grace for that. There's hope for a changed heart and a changed life. 


As many of you may know, I have joined staff with Cru and am currently raising support to be a full-time missionary working with college students in Denver (read more here). It's an incredible experience in learning to trust God and rely on Him wholly, and so I am deeply grateful. At the same time, it is hard, stressful, and not my favorite learning experience.

Through this process I have learned what I've always known but never fully realized. 

I work hard, I'm diligent. I'm disciplined. But honestly, I also work too hard, am too disciplined. I don't rest well, I feel guilty taking breaks to do things just "for me." Things that don't seem "productive." 

And what I am realizing as my stress level increases and my prayers become more urgent, is that I am afraid. 

Because I truly do trust God. I have complete faith He can provide the ministry partners I need to raise the money I need to be fully funded and do the work He has called me to. I also have complete confidence that He will provide those funds. I am utterly convinced of my calling to ministry with Cru in Denver. God has made it clear again and again, moved my heart countless times, kept me safe and provided for my needs. 

But my actions don't match what my heart knows is true. 

I work like I don't believe He can and will provide. 

Almost like God is my backup plan. Like the plan is to work in my own strength and hope that will be enough, and if it isn't then God can provide. God shouldn't be my Plan B, there shouldn't even be a Plan B! 

The only plan I can have is God. 

But I work like God won't provide, while saying that I trust He will. So do I really trust Him? 

My realization a few days ago was this: I trust God can provide, but I'm so afraid He will choose not to that I think it's safer not to ask. 

I was talking about this with my Denver team leader (Shawn Cramer, aka best-boss-ever-other-than-Jesus). And he described it like this (I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember his exact words).

It's like I'm a a child living like an orphan rather than a son. As an orphan I have to rely on myself, I don't know where my next meal will come from. My time is spent worrying about where I will sleep and how I will eat because I am on my own, instead of living like a son who can play carefree, not worrying about their physical needs being met because they trust their parents to watch over them and provide. 

I think this may even be some of what Jesus talks about when He tells us to have faith like a child. Children are so trusting (barring tragedy that removes their innocence at a young age and teaches them not to trust. The tragedy of our broken world). Living as a child of God means I can "cast my worries on Him, because He cares." 

Childlike faith. Wonder in the cross. Awe of His sacrifice. Life changed by love. 

One of my favorite photos - my dad and  brother when he was little,
who also happens to be adopted from the Ukraine.
What a beautiful representation of God's grace manifested in human relationships.
No longer an orphan, but a son.

When that is my focus, I'm not worrying where my next meal will come from, because I can trust it will be provided for me. It's not even something I think about, because I'm so confident God will provide, in His perfect timing, that all I need to do is rest in His love and live a life changed by the Gospel. 


And so I will recognize that my broken tendencies lead me to work instead of worship. But by God's grace I will learn, as I'm sure Martha did, to let go and obey God in whatever He asks of me. Whether that be meeting with people to tell them about my ministry or taking a day off to serve my family or spend a day praying and reading my Bible, and trust that God can, and will, still provide. 

Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. 

I am learning to wait.

I am a child. No longer an orphan, but a daughter of the Greatest Father.