Fly High!

We all have people in our lives who get to us at times, circumstances that are difficult, or frustrating bloopers. Each and every time, we have a choice: Fall or rise, optimist or pessimist, hope or discouragement, truth or lies. 

I was reminded of this as I spoke with a friend recently. What do we do when people see differently than we do and criticize us? What do we do, when there are hopeless situations that we can't change? What about the problems that look like they'll never budge? What do we do?

I've thought about this numerous times over the last week as I lay on the couch, and I've run to the Bible for answers when my hands came up empty. Jesus made it very clear to me that humility and love are key. There is absolutely no space for self on the road to glory. 

And oh, the absolute joy that comes when we pick the high road. Let me explain. If God has authorized you to walk a certain path and someone else criticizes you out of jealousy or misunderstanding, simply fix Your eyes on Jesus and keep walking. Let the rest fall. He has a destination in mind for you. If you're in the middle of pain or discouragement, do the same. God has it all figured out and you can trust Him. Keep walking with your gaze forward.

Too often, we let small things get us down: someone's opinion, a smashed plate, gossip, someone's late arrival, or our own shortcomings. Really and truly, these are tiny details in the grand picture of life. Don't let them steal your purpose or focus. You must rise on the wings of faith. Rise in prayer and praise. Rise by trusting your Creator and Saviour. He will come through and you will be able to fly above all the difficulties that Satan would love to trip you with. Fly high my friend. Your destination is heaven. 

The Art of Receiving

It's been a week. I've been humbled and grateful by turn. What else is there to do but lift your hands to the sky when the rain comes in torrents, but differently than you expected. 

Tuesday night, the wife of one of the board members said they were there. Putting in a chair lift so that it would be easier for me to go up and down the stairs each day and avoid some pain and crutch-hopping. Inwardly I cringed, and then sat there with my emotions empty, completely unsure how to feel. I felt hollow; the very last strands of independence had somehow escaped my hands and melted into thin air. I was grateful; really, I was. Actually, deeply, profoundly grateful for such caring and compassionate people in my life. But, I had no idea how to receive it well. 

I asked God to teach me and this verse came to my mind, "By love serve one another..." It didn't take me more than a few seconds to realize that in order to serve, there must be someone on the receiving end. So, I determined that it must be my turn to be the receiver. I turned my gaze upward, and asked for help to be a gracious one. 

It is hard though. Our insides (at least in the case of some of us hard-headed independent ones) kick at the very thought of being cared for or given to. We like to be in charge, in control, and serving others. God knew I needed a reset and so He let my knee hurt for awhile. I knew all along that He was teaching me some lessons, but I certainly didn't realize how deeply they would cut, or how much of my identity they would completely revolutionize. So, I sit here receiving, again and again, day after day. 

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I live on verses from heaven. God gives me one each morning as I wake up; my daily manna. When I lie there writhing in pain, I replay songs of worship over and over and remember the mercy of my Creator who carries me with His peace and strength. As I watch my friend do my laundry and clean my room, I am sad she must do it but glad that she does. I receive lunches from mothers and thank them for chicken, rice, and beans. Perhaps the hidden gift in this is that I get to eat Russian Mennonite food. 

On mornings when things just don't go, my kind and gracious father stands at the kitchen counter trying to figure out how to fold a flimsy wrap with extra chicken and mayo on it (his necessary manly additions), or building a sandwich so big I can barely fit it into the box. I sit there on the same counter watching him and eating my easy-to-make peanut butter bread for the second or third morning in a row. I feel a little too much like the helpless 11 year old girl he carried in his arms when her boot got stuck in the creek. 

I let my students carry my purple chair in and out. They carefully set it up and take it back in. They move their toes to make room for my wheel chair, and wait patiently as my crutches tap their way to class. My song book, bible, and pitch pipe travel upstairs for devotions in their well-tanned hands. The older boys carefully set my keyboard up, and water the plants too high for the little ones to reach. They make sure the game starts while I am still slowly travelling to the playground. On pain days, they gently push my unreliable wheelchair over the bumpy ground while I hunch up in in it tiny and ant-like. I rely on them each day when I think it should be the other way around. 

As I go to church on Sunday, someone holds the door for me. I used to like holding the door for others, but I guess what goes around, comes around. People ask how I'm doing. How weird is that? I used to make sure everyone else was ok. I tell them to the best of my knowledge, unsure of how to make it accurate without asking for a pity party. They carry on and I leave knowing I'm loved. 

I visit the NAPA parts store for my father on a Saturday and feel like a fragile princess among a tribe of brawny males. As I enter the store, every single man behind the counter is at the immediate assistance of this poor disabled woman on her crutches. Doors are opened. The welding canister lifted. Tailgates shut. You name it. All for little me. I feel well cared for and humbled. 

So I am learning to receive. One act of kindness at a time. Each, a drop of rain falling upon the ground of my heart. Each grain of mercy a reminder of God's love and His people. 🤗 

Extravagant Love

I picture Him standing there with the weight of a rugged cross pressing into His torn, ragged flesh. The excruciating pain fills His mind with a haze and all He can do is turn heavenward. Pain does that sometimes; reminds us of what's important and where our help comes from. 

But there is something in His eyes that halts us. The mocking passerby won't see it. The terrified children might miss it. The soldiers pounding nails and throwing lots for his clothes gloss over it. Only the one looking closely, perhaps his closest disciples, will see it. His eyes hold a heavenly light. A light that points to something so endearing and so enduring that it causes our breath to gasp and our bodies to still. "There is a purpose here," we say. Something so vast and infinite that we cannot wrap our minds around it, much less grasp it with our hands. 

His eyes hold the light of love. True, piercing, redeeming love. It is the kind that stops a sinner in his tracks, the kind that holds a panicked child still in strong arms, the kind that makes a haughty spirit bow down in surrender, the kind that lifts the hopeless to his feet, and the kind that breaks through mountains of defeat and humanly-manufactured walls of defense. It cuts to the heart of the most carefully guarded and softens the most violent anger. 

I know no other force on earth that can work so intricately and so strongly as this. It has caused me to sit back and marvel. Why for me? Why for you?

I asked God one time, why He did all that? I'm not sure that I'll ever completely understand the entire answer but one thing I came away with is that I ought to share it. 

And I see it. God's true people are full of this love. They forgive when others press charges. They love when others walk away. They give second chances when the first is blown. They keep investing when the results are grim. They walk into the lives of those who are down and out. Why? Because they were loved first. Because they KNOW the absolute life-changing, life-giving result of love and they want others to have it. 

You are loved. More than you can ever grasp, more than your biggest failures or smallest secrets, more than your defects and flaws; you are loved IN SPITE of them all. In fact, Your redemption was paid for while you were still in the middle of it all. Accept it. Believe it. It is finished. ❤️