This Isn't the "Newness" I Signed Up For

I would have been with my siblings the week I first started writing this post, but life got in the way. Instead I spent it cleaning...and writing...and caring. Cleaning and writing because I can control those activities. Caring because I love. However, I am getting ahead of my story. Let's begin with "newness." 

My small 8 am church family begins each new year with the tradition of picking a star. The stars are taped all over church with the words hidden. I chose this star because I liked the glittery silver color. When I turned the star around, I liked the word even more. I like "new" -- not more than "old"; rather, I like "new" as much as I like "old." 

In that time of winter becoming spring, I ran into the word "new" in so many places, and my heart embraced each one. Isaiah 43:18 -- "Behold I am doing a new thing." Lamentations 3:23 -- "God's mercies are new every morning."

Then, spring became summer. Nothing new happened this summer. Nothing. Except. Days of depression! Depression hung around me like the cloud over Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh books. Fear, I know; depression, I do not, at least not like this. I have had a day of being "down", "blue", depressed, but I could usually attribute it to something: a situation, a cloudy day, a drop or elevation of hormones. I tried to blame the depression on cloudy days. We had a few, yet on some sunny days I might as well have had Eeyore's personal cloud over me! I pushed back. Believe me, I tried every trick on my Pinterest boards! Then it occurred to me that it was the first summer I could think of when I did not have something going on, something to look forward to. My work slows down in the summer. My children are grown, and I did not even have my grandchildren with me as often as in the past. I wasn't going to school, and I wasn't traveling. 

I wasn't being used by God. It turns out that I'm okay with not being used by God. In April of 2016, one of my teachers taught on the fallacy of believing God USES us. We use forks and spoons, and power tools, and pencils. I find it difficult to be around people who "use" people, but somehow a theory of a God who "uses" people persists. Still those of us in attendance were a bit startled at the beginning of this teaching, but I won't go into that here. I will recommend the teacher's book:

I don't recall Chris Webb including the discussion about "using utensils" within the book; nonetheless, why God does not "use" us will become clear. Meanwhile, I'm going to write what I did not know to say during that gathering and teaching. I did not know to say, "We all need something to look forward to." Many people look forward to being "of use", and when they find themselves no longer useful, they feel they have lost their worth. Our worth, yours and mine, comes from God who loves us and delights in us. We can look forward to a God-soaked life which might include activity but definitely can include creativity, no matter our physical state of being: young and healthy or in the deepest of physical woes. I think of Corrie Ten Boom, stricken speechless after a stroke, unable to physically do anything. However, she continued to live a life of prayer and community. She woke up in the mornings looking forward to her days with God and others. 

This thought took on added importance as another "newness" that we did not sign up for came about in the fall. My husband came down with life-threatening cellulitis that landed him in the hospital. That apparently triggered an arthritic flare up in his natural knee (last year at this time he had knee replacement surgery in the other knee), and the medical trials and tribulations have continued. 

While these events are not the "newness" I signed up for (and would not recommend signing up for); nonetheless, we have been loved throughout by God and by others. We have seen the fingerprints of God, the God-soaked life in too many ways to write of here (making a long post even longer). I hearken back to those verses I first rejoiced in at the beginning of the year. Lamentations 3:23 "God's mercies are new every morning." How did I miss the Lamentations part? Insert wry chuckle here. The writer spends 21 verses lamenting! Then comes verse 22: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They (the compassions) are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness." Truly we have seen this. 

And, Isaiah? Um, yeah...that chapter has flood waters, fire, wilderness and desert...BUT, it also has "Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine" (there are certain verses that I just love the King James, forgive me 💕) "When you pass through the water, I will be with you...you are precious in my sight...fear not: for I am with you..." and 43:18 in full reads: "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."  

I did not sign up for this kind of "newness"; however, I find a song continually in my thoughts and in my heart: "Give thanks with a grateful heart; Give thanks to the Holy One. Give thanks because He has given Jesus Christ, his son. And, now let the weak say, "I am strong"; let the poor say, "I am rich," because of what the Lord has done for us. Give thanks." 

I give thanks for ways in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, fingerprints of God in a God-soaked life. 

2nd Day of Advent: Love and Waiting in Hope

In this four generation picture, love abides. My father has Alzheimer's. He doesn't remember my name but still remembers some of the time that I am family. He gets up in the middle of the night and doesn't know how to get back to his room. He doesn't like to take showers or baths. He is like a little boy, but he is a little boy who still knows what love looks like. 

My dad is "waiting in hope", another phrase for this advent day. 

"Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord...I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in his word do I hope...My soul waits for for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning...for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption..." (from Psalm 130). 

And, when my dad does not remember to wait in hope, we stand in the gap and do the waiting for him. That's what love looks like. Love is a choice. We choose each day to love, to will the good of others. What is the good of others? Can't get much better than really looking at how Jesus treated people: patiently, kindly, courteously, humbly, wisely, gently, lovingly. Nothing can separate us from this love. 

"...neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (from Romans 8: 38-39). 

Yesterday's #adventword" "shine" was a struggle when the day was cloudy and "flexibility" was a more important word than "shine." Yet, this morning, the sun broke through! 

The sun doesn't always "come up tomorrow", because life's griefs are great, but I wait in hope knowing that God's love abides.

"And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 

The One who shows this perfectly is Jesus. This Advent season, I prepare not for the coming of a baby (wonderful as that advent is), but rather for the coming of Jesus who chooses me and chooses to be in relationship with me, with nothing separating me from His love. While I can not show this love completely, it does not stop me from following like a child after Him: loving God and loving others, waiting in hope. 

I Begin Yet Again for the 3rd? 4th? Time

I've used this title before "I Begin Again." It's an appropriate title for continuing to write after close to two years of silence. It's also an appropriate title for explaining the work of Christ-centered spiritual formation. Each morning (not just for the third or fourth time, but again and again and again), I begin again.

And, God meets me, right where I am. Today, as I was struggling to begin again, forgetting much of what I had learned about how to set up a blog and working with a computer that needs to be updated fully, I had given up being able to find and upload an image of "His mercies are new every morning." I had decided to skip the image (and leave off writing) but to check out the blogs I recommend on my page. There on Learning Along the Way Coaching's post from yesterday -- "Finish Well"-- was this image. God used Lisa Lewis's finishing well on her 31 days of blogging to encourage me as I strive to begin yet again.

You might have had a bad day yesterday, this past week...month...year...you might be in the midst of a struggle this minute. Begin again...and again...and again. As I begin writing again, I hope to explore what Christ-centered spiritual formation looks like -- on the slow track. And, I hope to keep it short (yes, I know, you'll believe it when you see it).