Archives For seasons

May Sabbatical

April 30, 2013

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It’s been a year since my last writing sabbatical and I wish, oh I wish, I could say this May will be spent much like last May was. It won’t. But it will, however, be a sabbatical from this blog.

I always feel a bit guilty when I do this, but on the other side of a month away from the blog I am a healthier and happier writer. And this year I need it more than ever. I’m not sure what happened in the past year, but it still feels a bit like whiplash—a good kind of whiplash, but whiplash nonetheless. I’m writing regularly for multiple publications, trying to finish rigorous classes, coming off of an unbelievably busy March and April at work, still keeping up with 100 in 2013, prepping to co-lead a 12 week course this summer, and have a little more on my personal plate than I have stamina for.

I need a break.

And not only do I need it, God assures me there’s much joy in taking it.

This morning we read Isaiah 58 in class and I loved this short section:

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly,
then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. 

I don’t know about you friend, but I’ve been hobbling along in the valleys of the earth for quite a few months, riding on the heights sounds like a good plan. I’m grateful God designed our bodies to need rest and wish I was better about giving mine the rest it needs. But I’m going to just thank Him for the small ways we can step back and call the void of doing a delight.

While I’m gone I have a passel of friends who graciously fought all over each other to fill four weekly slots for the month. Why only four? Well, I suppose I figured a rest might be good for you too. These four ferocious friends are all steadies for me, men and women who love Jesus deeply and extol His name beautifully. I’m excited to share their words with you. I hope you’ll enjoy their posts and you’ll click through to their sites.

A post like this gives me an opportunity to just say thank you to all of you dear readers. It sounds a bit trite to say that, or I don’t know, gushing, but I truly mean it. As truly as I can mean it. I would still write without you, but it means so much to me that you all just keep coming back and telling your friends about Sayable. I read all your emails and am constantly encouraged by how transparent and hopeful you all are in them. Thank you for sharing your stories with me, telling me how much you love good theology, how it changes you and is changing you. Nothing brings me more joy than to know the God of the universe has dipped his hand to you and brought you to ride on the heights of the earth with Him.

He’s a good, good God.

See you on the flip side!

(I will have April’s 100 in 2013 up later this weekend, but that’s it. Promise.)

In abiding, balance, rest, seasons
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A Squeaky Wheel Comes Clean

April 9, 2013

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It’s strangely easy to be brave when nobody expects you to be. You are the deus ex machina, sweeping in and rescuing with your words, your actions, your bravado. But then the standing ovation comes and who can take a bow without feeling awkward and out of place?

Maybe you’ve noticed, or maybe you haven’t, but it’s been a little quiet around here. Or rather, it’s been a little less than deep around here.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here’s what happened: a year ago this month I started working on a book and when you start writing a book people in the know start talking about your platform and your reach and whether there will be a market for your words. So instead of scribbling your words on scraps of paper and in the margins of life, crafting sentences while you drive and wait and walk, you instead start working on an author’s lifeline: readers.

Did you know that the real worth of an author’s work is not in her bound or published words? It’s in how many people read those bound and published words. No one wants to say that of course, except the publishers when they’re squabbling over whose mark will be on the binding. Everyone else still wants to talk about your words and how they are needed and unusual and pretty and pithy and such. But deep down you suspect the real worth of your words is what someone will pay for them.

Sometimes they will pay for them with their emotions and sometimes their pennies, but pay for them, they will.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A few someones have told me I am courageous and I look down at my person: can’t they see this? This frail and fearful lot? Can’t they see that whatever worth I have is not what I can do but Whose I am? I can put on a show, but the Author is the Finisher and the Principal Player.

I am studying Romans 6:13 this week, “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” The chapter is about sin and how we, like Christ, have died to sin—but what is sin if not the full spectrum of brokenness touching our every part? Hear me when I say I struggle to say fear is a sin, but whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, and fear is the lack of faith. See?

A year ago I took what had previously proceeded from faith and continued the work in fear: would I ever measure up? Would anyone important ever read me? What constituted success? Would I know it when it came? Would anyone care about a book if I even wrote it?

And now here I am, people expecting me to be brave and confident, to have the words and the theology and the answers, and the truth is, dear readers, I spent more time presenting myself to you than to God this year. Or at least more energy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not discouraged. I can trust He is actually the God in the Machine and I am simply a gear or a bolt, or more likely a squeaky wheel or rusty washer, and we can move on from here (hopefully). I am not brave and I am not strong and I am not whatever good thing you think I am.

I’m just one person with words inside of me about a God I love and Who loves me and that’s the only story I have to tell.

And for His glory I want to tell it well.

In books, discipline, life, seasons, writing
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Did God Grow Tired?

March 25, 2013

We know Jacob, the one who wrestled with God, because flannel-graphs and coloring books told us the story of a man who went toe to toe, head over head with the Almighty. We know God wins, because God always wins, but it was Jacob who showed determination: I won’t let go until you bless me.

Would the Almighty have let go first if Jacob hadn’t said so?

I ask myself this often. How much does my determination result in what God considers a blessing?

I ask it that way on purpose because what I consider a blessing might not be what God considers a blessing.

God blessed him, yes. Changed his name, yes, but touched things that felt right, knocked them out of place so that they were right. And left him with a limp.

I wonder if this was the blessing Jacob thought he would get. I wonder if walking with a limp for the rest of his life was the sort of reward he wanted for pressing in, doing battle with God.

Here’s what I pause on this morning: When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Did God grow tired? Did He sigh in frustration as He finally did the only thing He could do to make the man stop? I worry about that. I worry that God grows tired of me. That He is tired of my pestering, my asking. That He wearies of me when I am driving, walking, laying, talking, and there are prayers punctuating my breathing “Help me. Don’t leave me. Show me.” I worry that God will knock something out of joint, leave me with a limp. I worry that the tightrope I am trying to walk, careful, measured steps that guard me from being ungrateful or a badgering witness, I worry that God will finally knock me off completely.

And I know He will not. I know He is Father and He is good, but it doesn’t stop the wrestling, or the worrying. Sometimes I wonder if the wrestle or the worry is in itself the limp with which I walk.

You and I and all of us, we walk with limps. Probably so accustomed to the limp that we barely recognize it anymore, it is the way we walk, slowly, painfully, determined, though seemingly normal, for us. But a limp is only proof that we have wrestled and He has won.

‘Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue,
Or touch the hollow of my thigh:
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms Thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let Thee go,
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Charles Wesley

What limp are you walking with today? Is it an Ebenezer? Your “thus far?” Or do you feel debilitated by your limp?

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In abiding, glory, grace, seasons
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Sucking on Stones

February 19, 2013

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Sometimes we just need to stay hungry, she says to me through tears, and I remind her that Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him. We are silent for a few minutes before thanking one another for being bread and fish.

Last fall I wanted to ask for something or someone and the Lord told me no or wait or yes or maybe but that He would sustain in the meantime. What I did not expect was the sustainment He gave. She lives on the west coast, in rainy Portland, she studies Hebrew and is a whole head taller than me. She’s blond and beautiful and has a sleeve tattoo and we regularly cry through our conversations. I didn’t ask for her—she was not what I asked for.

Sometimes, she told me once, we think we’re asking for bread, but we’re really asking for a stone, and when He gives us bread we don’t recognize it because we’re still looking for the stone.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I read a quote from Kathy Keller in the book she co-wrote with her husband, the inimitable Tim Keller, “Sometimes a pig doesn’t know the worth of a pearl, to him it’s just a pebble.” I underlined those words, scribbled beside them, and cannot stop thinking about them.

Sometimes I’m asking for a stone instead of bread and sometimes I feel like a pebble instead of a pearl.

I find it a bit strange that Jesus said He would built His Church on the rock, crooking his finger at Peter, petra, Rock. On the backs of men who would deny Christ three times before He could forgive His followers saying they know not what they do? On the backs of those who sink after three steps out on watery faith? On the backs of those zealots? Those fools?

It occurs to me that God is the only one who knows the worth of stones, pebbles, pearls, and rocks.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If we don’t ask for bread, we might feel satisfied for a long time sucking on the cold, hard emptiness of a stone—thinking it was all He had for us. Or perhaps we have ourselves convinced, like the old fable, that our stone soup is satiating and full.

And still, somehow, He’s building His Church, accomplishing the will of the Father, on the backs of stone-sucking fools like us.

Jesus said to them,
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me
and to accomplish his work.”
John 3:34

In beauty, faith, gratitude, seasons, spiritual growth, trust, Uncategorized
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Leading Ladies Everywhere

January 21, 2013

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I am, however, still interested in faith trends. I’m lured by them because I love the culture of heaven and I think it ought to affect the culture of earth, and what are trends if not culture’s response to heaven’s delay?”

Continue reading Leading Ladies Everywhere over at Project TGM today.

While I am calling to mind the things for which I’m grateful this week, it seems that singleness is topping that list for real. I italicize that because I have exercised that muscle of gratefulness before, but it has never felt familiar, good or right. It has always felt like a cheat, stealing away the best years of my life, chances for babies, young love and all that.

Continue reading Every Single Season over at Single Roots today.

 

 

In complementarian, Project TGM, seasons, theology, Women and Theology
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