Sanctification Through Infertility

One of the greatest privileges of my life has been walking alongside my friends who struggle with infertility. In them I have found a kinship: we have both prayed for what we see no evidence of ever getting. Carissa Bleecker is one of those friends. In the past few years that I have known and loved her, we have wept, prayed, rejoiced, struggled, and seen God move in our lives. Here's some of her story for you.  I thought I would have 2 or 3 children by now.

Instead, I'm a childless 28-year-old business owner. There is more pain and joy in that statement than I can possibly express. I love the beautiful things the Lord has done in these past 3 years of my life. He has blessed me richly, a fact that I often have to remind myself of, because I didn't get blessed with what I wanted - baby.

"Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."

Psalm 127:3-4

This verse haunts me, the very core of me. I wrestle with God over this verse. I often wonder, "Why doesn't God want to bless me?" "Would I be a bad mother, and that's why God won't give me a baby?" "What's wrong with me?"

I have watched dozens and dozens of my friends and acquaintances announce pregnancies and have babies, some two or three times in the last few years. I have been invited to numerous baby showers that I could not bring myself to attend. I have listened to people tell me they are pregnant and have barely held it together until I could get alone and weep bitterly. Not because I am not excited for them. They have been blessed with something incredible and I am overjoyed for them. But it reminds me of what I don't have, of what I may never experience.

All of these things are a painful reminder that God can and does bless people with children every day, just not me. Because, make no mistake, God is in control. God creates life, we do not, though we may think we do.

I know this because of the many pieces of advice I have received on how to get pregnant. They range from "Just relax and it will happen" to being asked intimate questions over dinner, to being told "Just ask your sister to be a surrogate." And many many others. All of these "helpful hints" just reinforce my sinful desire to control my life.

I went through a period of time where I took all the advice I could get. It was incredibly painful because I got caught up in the lie that I could control getting pregnant. It made me crazy.

About a year ago, my Husband and I decided to adopt. Adoption has been a desire of ours even before we met each other. So after a year and a half of trying to get pregnant, we decided that God was leading us to start our family this way. There was a mix of emotions over this decision. We were excited about being parents and so thankful to have something to look forward to, rather than grieving over someone who wasn't there. But it has also been hard to let go of starting our family the way we wanted to.

We started out with foster care, wanting to care for children that had been neglected and/or abused. We spent months going to training, filling out paperwork, and working on extensive home improvements to qualify to be certified by the state. I love foster care. It is a beautiful ministry, sacrifice, and joy to the families that do it. But in the end, I could not. I was overwhelmed at the thought of having a child in our home for a year and them going back to their parents. And that is the whole point of foster care, to reunite families. A very good thing. But my heart is in such a fragile state that I could not bare that. Not now. I want to adopt a child.

So we decided to do a domestic adoption. We are still in this process, finishing up paperwork and waiting to be chosen by a birth mom.

I have no doubt that there will be greater joy than I can imagine when I finally get to hold my adopted child in my arms for the first time. But, I wonder if this pain of not bearing a child of my own will ever leave me. There is still a part of me that wonders if it will be enough.

And I know that it will not be enough. Because having children will never make me whole. Only God can fill that place.

The Lord has torn my hands off of my desire to have children and placed them onto Himself because He knew that if I had children of my own right now, they would be in His place. He loved me enough to break me. And furthermore, He has taught me that raising children is not about me. Raising children is about imparting the Glory of God to the next generation, and that has nothing to do with whether they came from my body or not.

A Body of Grace

Tara-Leigh Cobble is one of God's great blessings to me in this season. A few weeks ago we were in the car on the way home from dinner with friends and she was talking me through some thoughts she'd had following a month long fast. I practically begged her to write them up for me to post on Sayable, so I'm happy to share her words with you all today. 

“Do not be anxious about your life, 
what you will eat or what you will drink, 
nor about your body, what you will put on. 
Is not life more than food, 
and the body more than clothing?” Jesus, in Matthew 6:25

I've exhausted myself for years, watching successes stack up against failures. I've felt the blows of vanity and insecurity, pride and despair, all stemming from the same root: my body.

A righteous relationship with food always seemed just beyond my reach. And while the bulk of my food choices are healthy ones, I'm bent toward gluttony, specifically toward mindless eating in social situations. I've always been jealous of the people who can get away with those little indiscretions, enjoying a handful of dark chocolate almonds at a Christmas party without wondering if their pants will fit on Monday. For me, there is no margin for error. Slight deviations from a strict diet have never paired well with my DNA.

For most of my life, I've been content to let vanity control my approach to gluttony (as though vanity were a lesser sin), instead of killing them both with equal vigilance. I exercised my way through those occasional party cheats. But as my pastor often says, pitting sin against sin is no path to freedom. So I prayed for obedience and discipline. I established the habit of yielding each food decision to God before I sat down to eat. “God, what’s on the menu for this meal?” I asked. If He is my Lord and Master, if He owns the body He purchased on the cross, then He gets to call the shots, right? So I prayed and obeyed.

Vigilant obedience is a good thing, unless it is a means to an end instead of a means to God's glory. When I realized my “obedience” wasn't yielding the effect I'd hoped, I despaired. Surely my Lord and Master wanted me to be thin? Why weren't the pounds falling off in response to my yielding to Him? 

I began to monitor myself with greater detail. This time, the sin in the ring with my gluttony had a pretty name that is listed as the fruit of the Spirit: self-control. But this wasn't Spirit-prompted self-control; it was sinful control, fearful control. Since God and His menu weren't helping me, I needed to take back the reins. Calorie counting and attention to food origin are good things, but they have a way of taking up more brain space than the Gospel. They gradually consumed my thoughts. That doesn’t sound like freedom to me – that sounds like bondage.

I'd pitted gluttony against everything I thought could take it down – vanity, vigilant obedience, sinful self-control—and I lost every time. Where was the freedom and victory His Word speaks of?

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

Not long ago, while I was on tour in Europe, I sat alone at a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. I had already gained three pounds during the month I'd been on tour. As I browsed the menu, I asked Him my question. “God, what's on the menu for this meal?” But this time, instead of the “egg white omelette with spinach and tomato” that I expected, I sensed a prompting in my spirit, a redirection. It felt like He asked me a question in reply: “What does a woman who is deeply loved by God eat for breakfast?”

“A woman who is deeply loved by God” doesn’t gorge herself, trying to fill a void, because she finds satisfaction in the great love of God. “A woman who is deeply loved by God” doesn’t starve herself, trying to win love and approval, because she rests in the great delight of her Father. That kind of woman doesn’t measure herself against what she isn’t, what she once was, or what she wants to be in the future, because she knows she is fully loved in the present.

I paused, thinking through the question. Then I chose my meal. It was still the egg white omelette, but somehow my heart felt different – not fearful or punished, not like I was pulling myself up by my bootstraps or muscling through the act of obedience, hoping for a reward. Instead, my heart felt like it was being courted by a generous, loving, attentive King.

This has become the question I ask myself at every meal. As a result, I have different thoughts when I look in the mirror at the body my food choices had sustained, the choices made in response to God’s great love: “This is what the body of 'a woman who is deeply loved by God' looks like.” Even though that body looks mostly the same.

Maybe my DNA isn't inferior after all. Maybe it's God's grace toward me – His way of making sure I can't get away with favoring certain sins over others. Maybe my body and this struggle are two of the tools He is using to point me back to His great love and His total sufficiency. God's love freed me up to eat to the glory of God. I was no longer wrapped up in weight gain or loss, no longer trying to sin my way out of a sin pattern. God loved me in my sin, and God loved me out of my sin.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31

Tara-Leigh is a touring musician, speaker, and writer, and I want to also take this opportunity to point you to her newest project (and the one I'm most excited about for her), Kiss the Wave. Tara-Leigh says it's "a book about celebration. I want to tell you personal stories that I pray will bring joy, hope, and a richer intimacy to your own relationship with the God who loves you deeply, the God who is "a rewarder of those who seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).

I hope you'll consider checking out her Kickstarter Project and giving toward it! 

The Dichotomy of Decreasing

Today's post comes from Sarah Van Beveren, a blogger from Ontario, Canada. Hope you'll check out her blog and give her a follow on Twitter.  Divorce came looking for my family when I was six. My earliest memory is a moment on the driveway, saying goodbye while being reassured that this wasn't goodbye. I didn't understand the normalcy of divorce, that this happens to half of us, and in my naive eyes we had created this mess. He would be living in the basement of family friends, and the only concern I remember having, was that their daughters would see him more than I would. And in a split second our family went from nuclear to broken, and there we stood. Devoured. And a seed of self-doubt was planted inside of me.

I have known the feeling of looking back on your life and realizing that decades have been spent on a fool's errand. The search for personal glory and belonging in a world that never seems to deliver. It took me years to realize that insecurity and pride can coexist in the same soul. Insecurity was my wound but arrogance was my salve, and the need to be recognized hardened my heart.

I have broken my back to find worth in myself, worth given to me by this world, and have come up empty. The simple truth is that I am not meant to deliver myself and have no need, because deliverance has been had for me.

I think of John the Baptist, a man with a voice that was ripe with anticipation. He didn't bother with bandages or aids, no time to fuss with temporary helps, healing was on its way. He called out in the wilderness and prepared a way for the Light that was to be revealed. He knew where his worth came from, the Lamb of God who came before all of us and has surpassed each of us. His assurance in the eternal always makes me stop and pause.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. John 3:29

I have spent most of my life unaware and unsatisfied with my identity, desperate to climb higher than the position of attendant. But John had no interest in himself, he knew where he stood. He was not envious that the bridegroom was the greatest of all or that all eyes would be watching him. John wanted this; his life's desire was to see this flesh out. And not because of any credit or accolade he would receive in his life, we know what John endured. But because he believed and he knew Christ was his life.

He had no desire to be the bridegroom, only desire for the bridegroom, and he rejoiced at the sound of his voice. What God had called him to do, the path he was chosen to make a way for, had arrived. And his joy was now complete.

I think of my own struggle for fulfillment and I think of John. How there is no new joy left for me to find, no new treasure for me to discover. Joy is here, complete and full and mine to claim. And with this joy I will seek to be poor in spirit, and see the kingdom of heaven. To mourn, and be comforted. To practice meekness, and inherit the earth. To hunger and thirst, and be filled. To be pure of heart, and see God.

He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30

The Keys of Comfort

Mike Leake is a fairly new name on my blogroll. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't read many blogs regularly. Less than five.  Mike Leake is in that number solidly. I resonate with much of what he writes concerning depression, suffering, fear, and more. He's one of those bloggers who isn't just standing on a podium, he's suffered in the valley. I have great respect for men and women who write from that place. (This is the last of May's guest posts, thanks so much for giving me the month off!)

 “The Lord keeps the key of comfort in his own hand” –John Newton

I think I respond to this truth like a drunk-guy wanting his keys so he can drive home.

He has the key to my comfort. In my stupor I demand that he follow my whims. “Give me the keys, Jesus!”

The Lord, like any friend that is closer than a brother, refuses to give an idiot keys to a car that he is not fit to drive. And so I get angry. I try to pry them out of his powerful hands. I throw a fit. I rant. I rave. I call him evil and wrong and mean for not giving me the key to comfort.

He doesn’t budge.

And I’m glad.

I’m glad because I don’t have to be like the bleeding woman—trying to find comfort in a million different places. I simply need to grab hold of the hem of His garment and follow Him; even if he is walking to a cross.

He holds the key. He is very good. He is very wise. We are going somewhere and I trust Him. Even if we pitch our tent in rubble and ashes, I trust that this will be a means to prepare me for dancing in the palace of heaven.

Sure I’ll ask him for the keys whenever I hurt. I’ll beg him to take away pain. I’ll long for the days when the clouds and darkness lift. I’ll use every means necessary to fight the things that rob godly comfort and peace. But if the clouds don’t lift and the darkness continues to break in, I’ll just wait.

No more pursuing other remedies. No more pouting. No more screaming because I don’t get the comfort that I feel I am owed. I will simply assume that if the Lord does not give me the key of comfort it is for my good. He knows better than I do. He knows when pain will strengthen and comfort will shipwreck.

I pray that I will be so enamored with Jesus that I can say with Samuel Rutherford:

“Whether God come to his children with a rod or a crown, if he come himself with it, it is well. Welcome, Welcome Jesus, what way soever thou come, if we can get a sight of thee. And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bed-side, and draw aside the curtains, and say ‘Courage, I am thy salvation,’ than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong, and never to be visited by God.”

I’m glad he holds the keys.

The Shape of Hope by Haley Cloyd

I'm the "she" Haley talks about in this post. Haley and I dream about a lot of things, but for all our dreaming, this girl is one of the most grounded friends I've ever had. She challenges me, pushes me, corrects me, laughs at me, and doesn't let me ever, ever, ever hope in anything less than the gospel, straight up. She loves the word of God, delights in it like a small child, studies it with the fervor of a scholar, and rests in it with the confidence of a disciple. She writes here.

We talk of many things. Serious things. Funny things. Sad things. Joyful things. Empty things. Hope-filled things.

Some times when we talk we talk about house things. Not appliances or DIY projects for the living room or yard, but whole houses.

Sometimes it is the old house in New England with the wrap around porch, a porch swing in the front and two hammocks in the back. There are chickens and a vegetable garden and dogs. We live in this house, the two of us, no longer as young as we were when we first met. Her hair is still as crazy as it was, but there are streaks of silver mixed in with the auburn and chestnut, and mine is still as stick straight as ever, but amidst the gold there is now white. In the absence of families birthed of our own bodies we have chosen to create family together here. We wile away evenings warming hands with mugs of tea, and begin mornings with coffee on the back porch with the dogs at our feet. We sit sipping tea on an evening in May, and our eyes and smiles meet, because somehow this day has become real.

Sometimes it is the old house in New England with the wrap around porch, a swing in the font and a tree house in the back. There are chickens and a vegetable garden and dogs. The screen door flies open as her brood of curly haired children come spilling out and run down the wide front steps and collide with the toe headed brood just escaped from the station wagon parked in front of the house. She pushes open that same screen door with one hand, while her other holds his. She smiles at something he’s said as they come to a stop on the top porch step as the kids merge into one big mob halfway between car and porch. I wait, my hand in his on the other side of this little sea of life we’ve created, smiling over the tops of curly mops and toe heads. Our eyes and smiles meet, hers and mine, because somehow this day has become real.

We talk of these house shaped things and in them I see hope. The houses are not the hope, but each image speaks of hope. And if I’m honest each house contains false hope.

Because houses crumble, no matter how solid the foundation, when the foundation is anything less than the Gospel.

So we talk of many things. We talk of the fullness of life and the emptiness of life.

We talk about our house shaped hopes and the ways they both remind us of a God who knows us intimately and of how easy it is for the created things to become our hope instead of hoping in the One who created all.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20:7

This hope to live full and love big burns deep. Sometimes it seems uncontainable, and other times I wish it were something I could ignore or even stop. Because hope in the ache of the emptiness hurts.

And to see emptiness here, now is to misunderstand both that for which I hope and that which is here and now.

It is true that I hope for those house shaped things and all the porches, chickens, dogs, swings, and maybe even children and husbands that go with them.

But they are not what I hope in. They are not who I hope in. They are not who we hope in, nor are they the sustainer or fulfiller of that hope.

Hope takes the shape of the One who knows my heart and my head more intimately than I could ever hope to. Hope takes the shape of the God-Man whom death could not defeat. Hope takes the shape of the Comforter who is with me and whispers, “Hope, beloved, hope.”

Kabede, This is Going to Get Heavy by Seth Haines

The first thing I knew about Seth was that he was a poet and a father, a husband who loved his wife, who spoke like an elder in the gates about her. A man like that is trustworthy enough on those merits alone. Then he asked me to join his team of church folk over at Deeper Church where he is editor. It is rare to have a good editor, one who pastors and who picks not at grammar and structure and prose, but who sees each piece as a mere stone in the cathedral, a beam in the sanctuary, part of a whole. Seth is that kind of editor and that kind of friend.

Our driver’s name was not Kabede, but for the sake of giving you the sense of things, it will be his given name in the following. The English translation of Kabede is “getting heavy,” so it seems appropriate, and I must admit, when I discuss my time in Ethiopia, it tends to come across this way.

As a caveat, I mostly prefer to confine my discussions of Ethiopia to the internet real estate of others. I do this for two distinct reasons. First, I enjoy stirring the pot, although this enjoyment is typically confined to the pots sitting on my neighbors’ stoves. Secondly, writing in another forum allows me some notion (perhaps a feigned one) of plausible deniability, whereafter I can pretend as if I never penned these words, as if I never opened this can of nightcrawlers. I can either hide or not, depending upon how the weather hits me at the particular moment, and currently, I feel it’s cloudy with a chance of rainy season.

Plausible deniability is, of course, the playing field of the cowardly. But lest you think I am finished with the caveats of cowards, allow me another. The following account is fictitious. Not really. It is, actually, less of a fiction and more of piling up of various nonfictions. It is a synthetic work comprising the stories of various taxi drivers, in various blue cars, pointing out the various Chinesings of the Ethiopian landscape. This is the way it has to be on Lore’s real estate, because the discrete works would take days and days, and her real estate is no more mine than the Ethiopian real estate is the Chinese. And this synthesis of peoples, stories, and taxis must, by its very nature, be Kabede.

Things are getting heavy, see.

The roads leaving Addis Ababa were slick black, fresh tarred like those of some new suburban enclave in Fort Worth, except without all King Ranch trucks. Kabebe rolled his window down because the air on the road to Adama, the wind coming up from the Great Rift Valley, was dry and clean. Arm hanging out the window, he pointed down to the blacktop and yelled, “Chinese.”

“What?” I asked over the rip of the road wind.

“Chinese,” he responded, and then added, “they paved these roads!”

“Come again?” I responded.

Kabebe rolled up his window and reached down to his iPod. He pressed play and Johnny Cash sang “it burned, burned, burned, the ring of fire.” Kabede turned the volume knob to a mere background level and said in singsong tenor “the Chinese, they’ve built all these roads. See that?” He pointed across my chest and out the window. “That is a warehouse. Chinese built that, too. They do not allow Ethiopians in, so we are not sure what’s behind the walls.”

Kabede shrugged his shoulders as I examined the warehouse. There were two empty guard shacks and a high iron fence topped with barbed wire which surrounded the complex. The yard was pristine with no signs of life, though the facility itself was larger than the ones in my hometown that produce the various and sundry Whirlpool and Rheem appliances. We sat, each internally stoking various conspiracy theories. I considered whether the yard was the staging ground for some coming Armageddon, or whether, instead, it was merely a low rent widget plant. Perhaps it made Whirlpool and Rheem knockoffs.

“I hate the Chinese,” Kabede offered. Of course, this was an offensive notion to me inasmuch as I am an American and have always been taught that racism of any sort unacceptable. “Racism,” my sixth grade math teacher once said, “is the province of unenlightened redneckery.” The application of my grade-school lessons to Kabede, however, seemed dismissive and equally unenlightened, so I turned to him and asked, “Why, Kabede, do you hate the Chinese?”

“They have come here to fix Ethiopia,” he said, which was no explanation at all. I have found this is one of the crowning qualities of the people of Ethiopia. They lead you to the water, yes, but they never make you drink.

Kabede reached for a handful of roasted barley.

“Is it so wrong to come to fix Ethiopia?” I asked. “What do the Chinese ask in return?”

“Ahh,” he sighed. “They have come here to fix Ethiopia, and in return, we give them natural resources. We give them our minerals, our energy. We give them the stuff of our ground. They come here to fix Ethiopia. They give us roads that may last twenty years. We give them resources that make them rich. And the people of Adama? The people of the Awash river? They are still poor.”

Kabede chuckled.

“They come to fix Ethiopia, and they go to our tourist traps; they dance to our music and throw us coins. They bring their karaoke.” Now he was laughing full-bore. “I hate karaoke,” he said. “And I hate them. That is okay, right?”

I had not the heart to tell him that karaoke might actually be a Japanese term, mostly because I was afraid that the Japanese had likewise offended him and I could not stomach this much talk of other people groups. Instead, I said nothing and we drove closer toward Adama as Johnny sang about a boy named Sue.

“This is my favorite,” Kabede said. “An American gave me this cd. It is my favorite of all American music.”

I inquired as to the American, but Kabede said he did not want to talk about it. I pushed further, and he said only that the American came for an adoption. “They came to take their baby home to America,” he said. “He was a cute baby.”

“How do you feel about that?” I asked Kabede.

He smiled and said, “they took their child home. That is all I have to say about that. Actually, I suppose I have more to say. They took their child home, and they left me this cd.”

Kabede paused.

“What is it that you call Johnny Cash?” he asked.

“The man in black,” I said.

“Ah yes,” he said. “That is right, sir.”

And with that, we drove into the outskirts of Adama.

Catch for Us the Things that Crawl by Andrea Levendusky

Today's guest post is from Andrea Levendusky, one of my oldest and dearest friends. I told her yesterday I would never stop loving her and there are few people I think I can really, really say that to and mean it. This girl is a journey-walker with me and I love her for it. She blogs here. 

I'm obsessed with the trail of sugar ants that are streaming into my living room from under the baseboard. And by obsessed, I mean, neurotic. I mean: I close my eyes and I feel ants crawling on my eye lids, under my knees and down my back.

One little half-eaten lollipop forgotten and left under a chair has led us into this mayhem and epic battle of man vs. creature. Because I can even step on them and they don't die. I mean, what kind of creature can withstand the power of a frightened, human foot?

CREATURES WITH THORAXES. (Gross.)

I fall asleep thinking about them. I wake up thinking about them. I started my plan of attack by researching organic methods to calmly rid my home of them. And a few aggravating days later, I find myself frantically grabbing RAID and the most chemically-damaging, possibly cancer-causing repellents and traps I can find. My living room is surrounded with small black traps and gooey Borax solution, luring the tiny creatures in.

Killing a colony of ants is no small feat. I can kill a few but the truth lies in the dark of what I can't see. The source of their home. The queen who waits to be fed and nourished and the reinforcements are sent out hourly, and I pace the four corners of my living room to see if we're seeing any progress.

If only I had just seen that half-eaten lollipop, I tell myself.

Last night, I laid awake in bed with my heart pounding in my chest. I felt it in my throat, in my temples, and down to my finger tips. Sometimes I forget how to breathe when anxiety sets in, so I closed my eyes and tried to settle my heart in silence.

We are in a season of change, my daughter and I. Moving, school changes, career changes, relationship changes, traveling, planning, events, church, community… and at night, when my heart is pounding, I try to find the root. I try to find the source. I want to name the one thing that has left me spinning and then problem solve to cure it.

Because somewhere in my mind, instead of taking everything to my Father in prayer, I tossed fear and worry under rugs and left half-eaten hopes and dreams to rot. And then the ants came. The army started in single file, then swarming, to feast on the unattended doors and cracked floorboards in my heart.

And swarm they do.

And crawl over my ever moment, they do.

Let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. Song of Solomon 2:14-15

I lay awake and think of the foxes.

And the ants.

And all the things I let swarm and spoil the beauty of Gospel rest and trust within me.

The things that dig at the soil where I've laid my work and striving to rest.

The creatures that creep and crawl and steal and choke, and leave my heart pounding at midnight. It's then, when I'm seeing shadows dance with streetlights, that I realize I've bought into the lie that diligence to preach the Gospel to myself doesn't matter.

That I can make it a week, a day, an hour, a minute, without falling on my knees and begging for daily bread. Bread that doesn't spoil with things that seek to destroy.

"If I covet any place on earth but the dust at the foot of the cross, than I know nothing of Calvary Love." — Amy Carmichael

Answer to Praise: a guest post by Renee Johnson Fisher

  Renee Johnson Fisher is a spirited speaker to the 20-somethings and author of Faithbook of Jesus & Not Another Dating Book. She loves her husband, and their newly rescued pit bull named Rock Star. She blogs at Devotional Diva. 

Sometimes I pray and pray and God answers. Other times I pray without noticing--at least right away--His answer.

Last night, I attended an event for an author friend of mine. Before she got up to speak about her new book, three ladies led worship. I wasn’t expecting much because they were much older than me (just sayin’).

It’s not that I can’t enter into worship with someone I don’t know, but I couldn’t follow along with the ladies song choices.

I used to be a worship leader, and I didn’t even recognize the songs they were singing!

I was looking around the room when the friend I brought with me leaned into me with a pretty grin on her blonde face and she whispered to me: sing a new song!

Those words chilled my body and my skin couldn’t help but erupted with tiny little bumps. Because earlier in the day, I posted on Twitter and Facebook a verse from the Psalms,

“Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth” (Psalm 96:1, NIV84).

Technically this wasn’t a prayer request. I just knew this verse was good for those who needed encouragement--including me, of course.

Recently I’ve been struggling with finding the excitement in the regular routine of life. I must say--it’s kind of neat when God answers a prayer request, excuse me--praise request, when I wasn’t even asking in the first place!

Do you ever feel like you’re going through the motions in your Christian walk? Like it’s an obligation, a duty, or because it’s the right thing to do?

You pray and pray and God answers. Other times when you’re not expecting it--God shows up and lifts you off your feet with a new song of praise.

Today I choose to sing even if I don’t know the words or it makes me uncomfortable. For it’s in the discomfort, the unknown, the mystery--I find Him--the answer.