Contentment (The Anti-American Dream)

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Contentment (The Anti-American Dream)

I don’t have to know where I’m going anymore. I’m fine with riding passenger. It’s taken a while to get rid of the bad theology of “The American Dream” (or most of it, I hope). I’m not the “master of my fate” or the “captain of my soul” as stated in Invictus. I’m content, joyful even, to know Jesus is leading me. Even with so many reasons to be discontented, I’ve found God has given me contentment. I’m less “in control” than I have ever been. I honestly don’t even know what this summer or next year will look like, what I’ll be doing, or if things will resolve in so many respects. Yet I know this is where God has led me. So how can I have contentment without any “game plan”?

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How to Have Peace in Any Circumstance

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How to Have Peace in Any Circumstance

I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life I haven’t been hoping for something. I’ve struggled throughout my life when there wasn’t something “to look forward to”. If there wasn’t anything, I planned something, anything. When things got hard I comforted myself by looking ahead and thinking, “But I just have to make it until ___ (something fun) comes.” My joy and contentment was very much controlled by the circumstances of my life. (Enter the difficult years.) It’s been a crazy past 4-5 years, full to the brim with difficult things. To name a few: a hurricane crushing our home, my mom dying after a sudden diagnosis of late-stage cancer, my husband having emergency heart surgery at 35, being homeless several times, PTSD, etc…Planning something to look forward to just stopped working for me at some point. When life is so hard you can’t look beyond the next few hours or when what you see ahead only brings more anxiety, you need something MORE. Better. Deeper.

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Spring Will Come Again

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Winter storms upon my heart
My soul bears the scars of loss
Like a barren branch I see
My life marked by the cross
There is no escape or hiding
Death will come for us all
Even here I must surrender
All that was green must surely fall

All this by my God’s loving hand
His new life awakens from the grave
Nothing is too broken to restore
Nothing dead He’s unable to raise
So let winter make his claim
I’m called by a more Powerful name
For I know death is just a doorway
And the spring will come again

Sabbath

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In the Sabbath stillness
I look up as I look down
Hear the rain upon the window
Delight in the dewdrops on the ground
I’m reminded that the God who loves me
Doesn’t dwell upon a line
He is above, below, around me
He exists outside of time

So I slow and still my senses
Rush blinds the eyes of delight
Find stillness (be present), because He’s present
Don’t let seeing too much block true sight
For I often hurry past Your glory
Even though it’s right in front of my face
I’m often deaf to the symphony
When all You’ve made is a chorus of Your praise

Did I ever really know You,
God, woven in and through everything I see?
Have I ever thought of You rightly,
God, I find ever increasingly all around me?
When I am still I am more awe
That You see me, meet me, want know me
And You invite me to know You - God!
So deeper I wander into Your rest, Your mystery

When You Can't Tie Up the Year with a Bow

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When You Can't Tie Up the Year with a Bow

It’s the time of year that many people look back on the year that is drawing to a close and highlight all the good or say “good riddance” and wish for a better year to come. I’ve thought often about what this year means to me in retrospect. It was certainly an “ebenezer” year, and I wish I had an actual stone to put somewhere in remembrance. It was a year I saw a true miracle: God spared my husband’s life when he had, at best, a 2% chance of survival. It was incredible, undeniable and I will never be the same or stop being grateful that we can all still be together as a family. But we can’t tie up our story with a nice bow. We can’t say “God saved Jonathan and this is why.” I can’t negate the dark valley I walked through afterwards or the fact that Jonathan still lives with a medical condition that gives him pain and hinders normal activity. He still can’t run around in the yard with our kids and he’s not back to 100%. The discouragement and limitations that continual nagging pain causes is hard for us both, especially because it looks like there may not be any resolution on the horizon apart from another miracle of God. 

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