Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
All tagged grief
Could God possibly desire brokenness above seeming fixed-ness?
Could God possibly prefer me broken and weak and at the end of me over held-together-all-by-myself me, because that is where He is? ...
When they glanced at that fruit
What did You feel?
Did Your heart tremble,
Your Spirit squeal?
Did you want to jump out and shout
‘Don’t do that!’ ...
Where are the faithful ones? Do you ever ask that question as a leader? It has been a cry in my heart at different stages in my life. I am currently so blessed to be surrounded by friends and co-workers who are faithful to God and to us but at times people who we spend lots of time investing in did not respond with faithfulness and it has been painful! ...
They say that it takes a while to discover your writing voice. A while to recognize your particular style.
Since December I have not written on the blog. I have too much and nothing to say at the same time. I hate the matter-of-fact, trying-to-put-everything-into-neat-little-boxes-to-explain-God-and-the-world style of my writing. God Himself and my life are so many layers of unknown to me right now that the very idea of trying to simplify and reduce Him or my life into pithy little summaries seems horrifying to me. Life is just too raw for sewn-up corners and neatly organized bookcases of thought.
But perhaps, in the hating of my style and voice, I have finally been able to see it...
Poetry is written to be read aloud - for the words to flow off the tongue and for rhythms to mix together to add meaning. When I wrote this poem, I wanted to share it, but I also wanted it to be experienced, not scanned over quickly - then it would mean nothing.
So I thought about how I could bring the words to life and came up with this short reading (around two minutes) set to some visuals...
When you are in the middle of the tears, you have no idea that as they drip on the ground they are watering new seeds.
As you struggle with the sledgehammer of bad news to the mind, a descending fog and a wondering if God is bigger than the overwhelming Tsunami coming over you, you have no idea that He is already carrying you on His shoulder out of the storm, but it is a long way before the damage is out of sight...
I remember waking up the first time I lost a baby a few days after the delivery. It was the middle of the night and I felt an extreme sense of joy welling up inside me - I could almost hear angels singing around me. It seemed so foreign and wrong to be feeling so joyful only a few days after losing a child. My first reaction was, ‘God, is this You?! How can it be You?!’ His reply came clear and strong: ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ ...
About a week after the miscarriage life was pretty intense for some other circumstances and with the stress of grieving the miscarriage, being thrown straight back into leading stuff out here with Mark and readjusting to living life back in Peru after two months of travels led me to really question whether or not I wanted to carry on leading out Oikos with Mark. Not that I had anything else I wanted to do, or any idea of where we would go, but I felt the enemy strongly trying to get me to give up and ‘go home’ wherever that would be! If God had offered me an accelerated ticket to heaven, I may well have taken Him up on the offer! ...
In the last few weeks I would say I have had the foundations re-done in my faith house. It is not that I ever desired or even thought about turning my back on God, but I found myself in a some very uncomfortable soul renovations. After I had the miscarriage I felt responsible for the death of the baby. Whether that is true or not is really irrelevant and besides the point - I wasn’t purposefully trying to kill my child, but what it meant is that I struggled with an un-shruggable feeling of guilt for a while...
I wasn’t expecting our last days in the US and our return to Peru to be so dramatic. We had a wonderful albeit super-busy time in the UK and US spending time with so many friends and family and making new friends. We were looking forward to coming back to Peru and beginning to process our trip!
However, the last few days of our time in the US, I ended up in the Emergency Room in Lexington, Kentucky, with horrendous abdominal pains...
Sometimes the questions are too big. The future is too unknown. Sometimes the answers are not there. Or not what I want to hear. Sometimes I don’t need the answers, but rather just the assurance that it’s going to be okay...
Yesterday an old friend of our community came and apologized to Mark. He had heard some things about us and had withdrawn his friendship to our community for a long time. He came to ask for forgiveness for having withdrawn and for having judged us. His apology touched us and saddened us. Not because of what had been said about us - we knew those things already and had dealt with them, but rather because this is what happens throughout Christ’s bride and creates divisions everywhere.
Today, on Christmas Eve, as I have finally stopped after an exhausting last couple of months, and realized all the presents I haven’t had time to buy and the preparations I haven’t done, I had a couple of hours this morning to hit the local shopping centre.
But I decided not to go...
Dear suffering one,
Oh, the privilege that God has lavished upon you to enter into His heart.
To feel deeply of His pain, to share more wholly in His distress – the breakdown of His creation – to understand part of the depth of God – to know a side of Him that many do not wish or allow themselves to experience.
