A couple weeks ago i was doing the dishes, when Elliot walked up and asked me if i could go get Kyla. My heart stopped as it suddenly occurred to me that it had been quiet for some time and as i scanned the room i didnt see or hear kyla anywhere. "Where is she?!" I asked, totally freaked out while i jumped over the kids gate i had put up to keep the kids from pulling the dishes out of the dishwasher as i loaded them in.
Elliot replied calmly, "She's in time out."
Oops.
Yesterday my friend Janice and her two girls came over. Kyla had climbed on the table and when i told her to get down she just looked at me and shook her head no. So into time out she went. Janice hadn't seen what had happened other than Kyla going in time-out, so a while later when she was correcting one of her girls for something i begin to tell her how a little while ago Kyla had flat out shook her head no at me when i asked her to do something. I hadn't gotten very far in the story, when it occurred to me "Wait... is Kyla still in time out?" Janice nodded her head yes and smiled as though she had been wondering just exactly how long i normally subjected my child to time out. Awesome.
And then today... I was sitting on the computer and noticing that Elliot had been playing nicely by himself next to me for a while. I could hear Kyla making occasional noises in her room, but it was odd she would be playing by herself for so long. I figured this meant she must be getting into trouble so i asked Elliot to go see what she was doing. He came back and said "She's just sitting in her room." He usually jumps at the chance to tell me when she's doing something bad so i figured she must be ok. Another 5 min go by and Elliot asks "Mommy can Kyla come out of time-out now? shes been in there a real long time."
Im starting to wonder how many years im going to be forgotten about while i wait in purgatory to pay this off.
A little over a year ago I had two kids in diapers and had just moved into a project house. I'd had a house full of pets my entire life, but came to a point where there were just way too many entities in the house whos poop and messes i was required to clean up after. So I became petless for the first time in my life. It lasted a year. It was a very nice break. But now that Elliot's potty trained, Kyla's not nearly as demanding of constant attention, and the immediately necessary house projects are taken care of - I got the itch again. It was probably mainly Scott and Janice's fault with their adorable new puppy that Elly and Lucy just adore. Mixed with the fact that my kids had become terrified of getting near anything with fur and this was disturbing to my soul. Most people would think i was mainly a dog person, but really im an all animals kind of person. Its just that Keith is an anti-cat kind of person, so we had not had any cats. But he made the unfortunate (for him) mistake of wondering out-loud if cats were less work than dogs, because he was also disturbed at our children's fear of animals and thought a pet might help. That was all it took, and i spent the next couple weeks reminiscing about the cat i had growing up and searching the classifieds for a kitten. My plan was actually to find one that looked just like the cat i had growing up, name it the same thing, and pretend it never died. I got as close as i could, but since the gender was wrong and the little white paws were different, i decided against calling the poor boy "Mitzy" and gave him a nice respectable masculine name. Rambo. When I was picking out which kitten i wanted, the guy told me this was the friendliest one. At the time i thought it sounded so cute that he followed the guy around everywhere. He wasn't kidding! Rambo follows me everywhere meowing, lays on me and begs for attention all day long..... oh yeah - and climbs up my back to sit on my head while im working on the computer.
I've been taking some time processing my end of the week thoughts towards our church's week of prayer. But as I allowed a 'couple days' to pass while I thought about it, the things going on in my life continued to change the direction of my thoughts. One phrase that kept coming to mind during the week was something i heard at our last women's retreat. We talked about all the things in our individual lives that hinder us in coming to God. Events, fears, insecurities. I was kind-of wondering what we were going to do with that information. Were we going to find healing from those things while on the retreat? Were we going to learn the magic secret to getting past it? At the end of the retreat when it seemed we were running out of time to fit in all that magic damage repair, this is what Angel said that stuck with me,
"Stop pursuing freedom. Pursue God."
Of course my initial reaction (after i block out the whiny voice deep inside that just realized i wasn't going home with my magic freedom) was to think "ok, so if i start really focusing on pursuing God then I will get freedom from this other stuff." Now I had a problem. I knew that I was still really pursuing freedom. As though if I were conniving enough, I might trick God into thinking I was doing great at pursuing Him so he would then miraculously heal me. So now what? How is it even possible for me to get past my extraordinarily self-serving nature to truly pursue God just for God and not for the benefits I hoped it would bring to my brokenness?
This past week (after the week of prayer) Satan has hit me pretty hard. And I came to a decision that may not be true for everyone, but it feels like a light bulb in my brain to my dilemma in pursuing freedom.
There is no spoon.
Or in my case: There is no freedom.
Not in this world. I am an exile. I will always have the desire for freedom. I will always long for my true home as a child of Christ with a new heart that deeply aches with the pain in this world. But I cannot hope, cry, or claw my way away from it. Freedom isn't to be found here. It will come like a white knight whisking off the damsel in distress when our Savior returns to take us back to the home from which he sent us into exile. In that lies my hope. In that I hope to accept what is, and move forward to pursue God just because He is God.
Tear down the walls, see the world
Is there something we have missed?
Turn from ourselves
Look beyond
There is so much more than this
I don't need to see it to believe it
Cause I can't shake this
Fire deep inside my heart
Look to the skies, hope arise
See His majesty revealed
More than this life there is love
There is hope and this is real
This life is Yours, and hope is rising
As Your glory floods our hearts
Let love tear down these walls
That all creation would
Come back to You
It's all for You
Your Name is glorious
Glorious
Your love is changing us
Calling us
To worship in spirit and in truth
As all creation returns to You
Hillsong United Tear Down the Walls
I began this week at first not really sure about how this week of prayer and fasting was going to play out, but with some excitement just at the thought of doing something different – out of the ordinary. First day and I’m immediately hit with fear. Wait a second – I’m not sure how I feel about ‘out of the ordinary.’ Ordinary happens to be working out just fine for me right now. It could take me places I really wasn’t willing to go. Could be scary, could be painful.
And then the very next time I devoted some time to talk with God about it, I found multiple Bible passages that spoke right to me. Things I already ‘knew,’ but in the moment I felt them. Although nothing had changed, simply taking the time to express my fears and then read the living and active Truth of God was able to elevate my perspective on things – bring it slightly higher than the self-absorbed depression of this worldly view.
Keith and I decided to take our fasting to a place that was a little more unfamiliar and difficult for us. We decided to fast from food for the remainder of the week. Taking another step out of the bounds of ordinary. I honestly wasn’t really sure what this was going to do, other than make me hungry and irritable. But I wanted to give it a shot. Believers kept on doing it all through-out the Bible so I figure there’s a reason even if I’m not quite sure I understand it correctly. Some reasons I thought of included taking out the distraction of eating in the sense that you can use that time to pray, or that the strong and constant hunger pains will remind you that you are dedicating your week to prayer. Perhaps just the act of disciplining yourself, strengthens your discipline muscles which are essential to any believer’s life.
At first I think I focused more on trying to distract myself from hunger, than on praying. I set aside time to pray and I shot little prayer darts to heaven when I felt those hunger pains reminding me to. But I was pretty sure that since I spent the majority of the day doing whatever I could to avoid thinking about food, and didn’t spend the whole day on my knees as I envision the Bible characters did – that there might not be much of a point to it.
Day 2 is looking a little different. I woke up with some trepidation at facing another long hungry day, but I also had a little bit of this strange feeling that felt entirely out of place with the stomach growls. Fun. As Keith and I got out of bed and laughingly grumbled about what a hard day it was going to be, I realized it was fun to be doing this together. I thought about how our whole church community is going through this week together. We are individually fasting in our unique ways and praying often on our own, but we are all taking this same week to pointedly come before God and show our intentionality in seeking His will for ourselves, each-other, our world, our city, our church, our leaders. It’s kind-of fun.
This morning Janice and I got together to discuss a book we’re going through. Captivating , by John and Stasi Eldredge. Yeah, it’s a touchy feely book and I’m kind-of embarrassed to admit it, but ironically that disownment of the seemingly derogatory traits of femininity is partly what the book is about. Did I just make it sound sillier? Well it’s not. We read three chapters and it pretty much has me pegged. One of the things it discusses is the desire for adventure. I thought through my life and didn’t really view anything as movie or book worthy adventure. Then this afternoon I sat down to pray. I was praying for Eric and Dejah who are moving to Tijuana to work with Outside the Bowl. I specifically was thinking of Dejah and how she was dealing with some fears of anything happening to their newborn Malena on account of them moving there. As a mother I can relate to the depths of those feelings. Something happening to my children is my greatest fear. But what Eric and Dejah are doing sounds so exciting. They are following where the Holy Spirit is leading them, regardless of their fears. Then it hit me. They’re on an adventure.
I began to visualize myself in a pathway. A little ways down the pathway opened up, as though in a scene from a Narnia book going through the closet into a beautiful, unknown land. Adventure. We all long for adventure, right? Well adventure entails danger. It entails risk. It entails fear. But in our story where the devil is the enemy – we already know we will conquer. We know God will give us the strength to be the heroes of our story whatever hardships befall us. My family is not mine to risk – they belong to God. They are under His protection and His will for their lives. My responsibility is me. Is God calling me to something bigger? To be a part of an adventure full of risk, danger, excitement, and the promise of eternal victory?
God promises that when we seek him with all our hearts, we will find Him. (Jer. 29:13.) It is amazing to hear God. To feel His comfort, to realize His truth. Why is it I seek Him so rarely?
Hebrews 10
23-25. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to faith and good works, not neglecting to meet together...but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
35-36. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.
39. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
When I was pregnant with Elliot and went into labor, I was convinced that pain is all in your head. I figured I was mentally strong and would be able to rise above, and it wasn’t going to be that bad. When the labor was getting pretty rough and they asked me if I wanted drugs, I said no, but I really wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to take it if it were going to still be a long time. The nurse assured me that if I’d made it as far as I had, that I would be fine. I took this to mean it wasn’t going to get much worse and it wasn’t going to last much longer. A couple of hours is not too much longer compared to many women’s stories, but it was an eternity to me – and the pain got MUCH worse. As I approached going into labor with Kyla, I had of course forgotten the extent of the pain and figured if I’d done it once, I could do it again without drugs because I believed in the long run it was better than the chance I’d need surgery if the drugs affected the process negatively. As the labor intensified and my recollection was awakened, I became terrified of the pain to come. Having gone through two natural births and having survived them, I would think my natural response to other physical pain in life would be to say “There’s nothing I can’t handle, I’ve gone through labor and childbirth!” But that hasn’t been the case. I’m actually quite afraid of physical pain now, though I never remember having that fear before I experienced childbirth.
One of the prayer points for this day in the week of prayer and fasting (see previous post), is prayer for God to continue to refine our character. I went all day avoiding that prayer point and focusing on other things instead. I’m a stubborn person, and I know what refinement tends to look like for stubborn people. Painful.
I’ve experienced some serious refinement. And it entailed more pain than I thought a person should be able to survive. And although it probably won’t ever fully go away, I am at least to a point where I can look back and realize that I did, in-fact, survive.
However, having had serious refinement by no means negates that I am still in need of serious refinement in innumerable ways. But I can’t bring myself to ask God to refine me. I’m terrified. I’ve experienced God’s miraculous power and Sovereignty over my life, yet I still sit here paralyzed with fear with the memory of pain still fresh on all my senses. It angers me to know that in this, the enemy is winning. How can I get there? How can I get to the point of truly giving everything to God and jumping off that cliff?
Today is the first day of the annual week of prayer and fasting at my church 2nd Mile. Im eating icecream as im writing this, so obviously the concept of "fasting" has been left to flex with our ideas on what will be the most effective for us. Honestly, im not really sure how i feel about this. I am curious to know if there is thought or reason out there that fasting ought to be from food as it is in the Bible. My experience with this is pretty much limited to a '24 hour famine' I did with my church in junior high. We camped out in the church building for 24hrs with no food, but for some reason were allowed unlimited amounts of coffee among other fluids. Not really the smartest idea on the part of the poor adults who agreed to watch us.
The idea of this week is to eliminate something from our life that takes up our time or thought and devote that time to prayer instead. I wasn't sure how effective fasting from food would be, given that I still have to spend the time making meals for my kids and i wonder if I'd start viewing the week as a crash diet instead of a somber devotion to prayer. As Im thinking about it though, perhaps food is the most common form of fasting because hunger is such a strong and constant feeling that it would bring with it the reminder to pray in a strong and constant way. I may still decide to add this to my week.
I was thinking through what things take up a lot of my time that i could be using for prayer. After deciding I probably shouldn't fast from dishes, laundry, cleaning, or my kids - I decided to go with the obvious: facebook. It's kind of depressing to realize this is so much a part of my day throughout the whole day that its going to be quite difficult for me. But at least I know that with the amounts of time i normally click that tab on my computer, I will be reminded to pray constantly through the day instead. The other discipline I'm going to be adding on to my week is to wake up before my children for some time of prayer. Since I can't really give them away for the week, the only way to avoid their distraction is to get my butt out if bed earlier than they do.
These simple tasks seem daunting to me, yet I'm pretty excited for this week. I spent the month of December mentally gearing up for the new year. I love the beginning of a new year. It feels fresh and new. A chance to start the year with a clean slate, full of goals and ideas on how you're going to do things different to make this year really count for something. So far this new year has bombed. Not in a cool slang 'bad means good' kind of way. Its just been a rough month all around. Its really been a rough month for all of Tucson as well. And as the week of prayer and fasting approached, it occurred to me that I was putting my hope in the magical properties of flipping a page in a man made calendar.
I'm so grateful to be a part of a community of people who have made a determined effort each year to spend a week putting aside the trivialities of the world and putting our focus on God - the only true giver of hope.
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