“That’s her!”

Last year, I had several uplifting conversations with a woman from my church. 

She is a talented photographer and graphic design type who took some amazing pictures of Gather (coffee shop), and the team in action. She introduced me to algorithms on social media, and a new and trendy style of still-motion photography. Every time I'm around this woman, she leaves me smarter and sharper. 

At the beginning of Spring, I spotted her taking pictures at church one Sunday. I walked right up to her and told her how I felt - that she was brilliant, and that I want to be friends with her. That night I told my husband that I believed God had planted a seed of friendship in my life, and a few days later, her and her husband walked into Gather. Excitedly, I said, "Kai! That's her!" 

Months and months have gone by. ... We've chatted briefly, here & there, in passing. She brings her teenagers to Gather often, and studies her bible. After some time, I started feeling like maybe she has a hundred friends, and she doesn't have time for another one. Or maybe, she just doesn't want to be closer friends with me. Every time I would see her, I would die a little inside; feeling humiliated. ...

Yesterday, she walked into Gather. We small talked for a minute, like usual. She asked me if I remembered saying that I wanted to be friends. Embarrassed, I replied, “Yes... I remember.” Then, she exclaimed, “I've been waiting for you to say let's get together or something!”

Oh my gosh! Isn't life so funny... :) "This whole time," she said, and that she gets nervous around me! Geez! To be continued!

First Born.

I want to share something, some insight (perhaps), that I have witnessed a number of times, recently, while I’m out & about at the beach, at the pool, etc.

We would do well to remember that our first born (children) should not take the brunt or the blame for the episodes of the younger siblings. Example: If a younger sibling snatches a toy from the older, that is the initial behavior that needs to be addressed. Not that the older child should simply give up the toy in order to avoid the tantrum that will ensue. I am speaking to a generalization, I do realize this. I know there are exceptions. 

It has been my experience, that in coaching my first born to his leadership potential, as I believe God calls him to be a leader, I have to demonstrate holding the younger siblings accountable to their own personal development, as well.

It takes the extra effort. It takes patience & perseverance. But it’s the right measure to take. So that we establish a trustworthy rule in our homes. That we will investigate the volume manipulation that occurs.

Otherwise, I cannot expect to effectively empower my first born to love & lead his brothers by example.

We need to strengthen our conflict resolution before the resolution is strengthened by our conflict.

Rip Currents.

I was at the beach on Memorial Day. 

Five feet of water towered over me as the waves were coming in, one right after the other. They were not coming straight on, but rather, angling left. I signaled to my youngest son not to come out with his surfboard. Into the distance and over to the right, I can see those waves angling inward, as well. A tide coming to shore in a convergent path creates what's known as a Rip Current.

A rip current is a dangerous movement of water that is flowing powerfully away from the shore with the strength of massive amounts of water. Like the shape of the letter V, the waves are breaking toward the shore, and in the center in-between, even the strongest swimmer might fail to make headway. 

I got caught in a strong rip current in 1997 at one of my favorite surf-spots called Tamarack Beach in Southern California. I only realized I was that far out because the waves behind me had suddenly become "rollers" - which is a wave at its swell before the break. I looked down at one point and saw the biggest sea turtle I have ever seen. If you can imagine all of my strenuous effort to swim back to shore was failing. I was panic stricken. I was exhausted, and fast. 

Eventually, another surfer who saw me struggling told me to follow him, and we made it back safely.  

Is there a collision? Are we colliding - even as we have the same hope in common? Trying for the same destination?

Time.

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2     a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3)

division

In a few days, I am heading out of town to talk about Division alongside of my brother and colleague who is talking about Unity. We humorously predetermined that we are each (possibly) better suited to talk about the reverse. Nevertheless, we are keeping our word. I will trail some of my thoughts here throughout the week.

John Stott on Conflict, "Self-love vitiates all relationships. Diotrephes (3 John 9-10) slandered (the Apostle) John, cold-shouldered the missionaries and excommunicated loyal believers - all because he loved himself and wanted to have preeminence. Personal vanity still lies at the root of most dissensions in every local church today."

anchor.

I received the sincerest apology letter this weekend from someone I give counsel to. I wouldn’t have, otherwise, anticipated the details expressed in the letter. And yet, I do feel repair. Something healed ... maybe just a tiny scratch of insecurity in me.

The burden that was revealed, brought wounds into the light. 

It doesn’t matter that the apology was unnecessary - it healed. I, recently, set out to do something undone, to start something new, and I left a myriad of questions and doubts behind.

We’re all dealing with life, and we’re all in this together.

I say it to my boys like this, “Meanwhile, back in the bat cave.” Meaning: what someone is putting out there - temperament, mood, aggression - might not have anything to do with you.

What’s going on in the bat cave?

We’re all dealing with things.

The person you applaud and the people around you - it’s all of us. It’s a pretty significant thought. I can take a spiritual turn here, but so can you. ...

We all need a Savior.

We all need an anchor.

Jesus.

Service Encouragement

“You don’t have to serve God long to be tempted to think your work is in vain. Thoughts come that your service is a waste of time. Results are hard to find. Regardless of what you think and see, God promises that your work is never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). That doesn’t mean you’ll ever see all the fruit of your labors you’d hope for, or that you won’t frequently feel nothing has come of all your efforts. But it does mean that even if you can’t see proof, your service to God is never in vain.” -Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald S. Whitney


I love these words - this truth, and the opportunity Christians have in retail and food service industry. Nothing will cause you to question your life more or contribution more than working here. You can choose to see your job, any job, in light of eternity. I believe in this work, that God can use it. That He will!



"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love."
1 Corinthians 13:1-7

"We love because He first loved us..."

1 John 4:19

People Who Love

The state of our heart is God’s business.
If we are battling people around us, cutting them down instead of lifting them up, this is an indication that our hearts are hardened to the mission of God. Not getting along with others is never something to brag about when we are called to love others as we love ourselves.

Life is hard enough. Why make it harder for someone else?

If you have been exercising a mean spirit toward someone at work or at school, make it right. You have a special role in God’s bigger picture, and can help others if you choose to be a person who loves.

Be Already Alive

She lays here having fallen asleep, feet tucked up under mine, having sobbed on a pillow next to my hip – heartbroken, and desperate for answers. I’m reminded of the kind of worry that sat with me for months even with my Bible open, my heart sounding a gong in my bones.

I spoke to her slowly as if I was coming to some great insight that I had come up with on the fly but the truth was I’d struggled in similar ways.

The answer finally came to me: you are ALREADY alive.

You are already alive. You do not become alive when you get into grad school or when you get married. You do not become alive when you leave your hometown for any significant amount of time or have children. You do not become alive when you hold a microphone to your lips, or when people speak well of you. You do not become alive when you fit in or when people tell you they love you without know you personally. You do not become alive at the end of your grieving or the next on your knees powerful prayer, and you do not become alive at some distant moment in the future when the dishes are washed and the kids are happy and the house shines with the light of some unattainable perfection.

You are ALREADY alive.

You are alive in the aching wondering unanswered. How gloriously alive I feel when I’m working at the coffee shop with a pair of fun earrings in, feeling beautiful and all? I was alive in the ocean at dawn just yesterday, and in the frightening stillness of that stained glass chapel where I stopped to pray.

This life. This life is already moving, already an ocean crashes, and the invitation is echoing, skin to heart gently whispering: will you be already alive? In Jesus?

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely Your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. -Psalm 23

Raising boys is an honor & an adventure. 

poetry

This is for the poems that stand defiant on the other side of the fence from you.

This is for the poems certain that they have escaped my grasp because my arms are left dangling, and I am too tired to understand them.

This is for the poems that read me better than I read them in the stillness of my half-hearted defiance against the ordinary. The poems content to watch me struggle in my third or fourth reading where I begin to read out loud in a slower way of speaking with the hopes of uncovering the meaning in the page.

I believe that some poems are purposed to hurt our pride.

They are bruising things to the simple notions of our thinking ourselves wise or right or people with understanding. Poetry tears down our defenses revealing layers of interpretation. In our desperation and as our thoughts continue in the battle, we know - this could take all night.

One after another they cling to me, and words dug deep into the crevices of my mind. ...what does this mean? To me.

I can hear them even now, their echoes.

“so, through me, freedom and the sea”...

“He had cancer stenciled into his face”...

"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall" ...

"Out on the flats, a heron still as a hieroglyph carved

carved on the soft gray face of morning.” ...

That’s Pablo Neruda meeting Edward Hirsch meeting Robert Frost meeting Leonard Nathan.

When a poem is a graph, I can map its meaning - untidy its grammar.

Poetry found in the midst of thoughts of images like letters in a shoe box or an empty box next to an open flame, lines of madness and rhythm starved of truth but full of signaling and scattered plots and I think they awaken a poet in me. A mess of structure, words on paper. 

What about the poems that wound my pride until it sits meekly in the corner, finally, aware that there are a million acres of understanding between me and the poem, me and the poet. Then those acres in an instant can become not distant at all. 

This is for the poems that tempt me to thinking 'maybe I don't enjoy poetry'...

Those same poems preach in my worried heart that I wanted to keep my mind. And then I fall victim to believing that they are the poems that will uncage me.

They are the poems that drench my ego.

May 9.

This life was always supposed to be about knowing, but it has frustrated. I'm the one, it has frustrated me. I realized this tonight in front of the marshmallows & fire. It has been a while since I knew something  - unbidden and unbounded by reason.

We do not spend our faith on each other enough, but keep it for ourselves. I am sad about that, when I let myself. I am sad that there are miles of experience flung about and not nearly enough of it has been about strengthening anyone else’s faith. I'm worried. Do I know my life matters. That Jesus loves me? O Cross. Have I spent myself on the worry? On silence - like water on all my desperation but caused a storm to stretch across the years because I was scared.

What do I even think the ministry is? But there I go, almost writing about what I think about the work, almost spending more words trying to describe what I want redemption to be or how I think maybe these words are the work because I'm putting them out there, and God can do infinitely more than we ask or imagine... (Ephesians 3:20)

O Risen King, thank You.

O hands. Pray bridges of life & wisdom with people; however thin it feels against the storm. To tell of Him, O Joy, who knows all things.

"If you have faith as small as a mustard seed... 

Nothing will be impossible for you"

~Matthew 17:20


Pray for people. Pray for the customers, and the people you work with alike... :) Be strengthened by your faith this morning!

In Jesus name.

a gentle whisper

“Go out & stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told Elijah. & as he stood there, the LORD passed by, & a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. & after the earthquake there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. & after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak & went out & stood at the entrance of the cave.

A voice said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

I heard God, recently (in my heart).

It was after being in a situation where  someone had explained the details of a conversation had about me, my tithe, and the assumption wasn’t a good one. It was hurtful to think about, and unfair. Neither the woman sharing it with me, and how she “defended” me, or the conversationalist involved do I have personal relationships with. And still, my feelings were hurt.

I contemplated what I would say if our paths crossed, and they did; yet, I said nothing. I almost wrote a letter. Days later, Let Them See You by JJ Weeks Band was playing at Lifeway, and I listened. After checking out, the cashier asked to pray for me! It was cool.

I heard God say, “Surrender.”

I remembered that when my feelings are hurt, Jesus is close-by. I remembered that His mercies are new everyday. 

This 4 minute song is so good to reflect on, and to be in prayer with...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgho0_JRetk

Lead

All this talk about leadership ...

Some people know, instinctively, that they are a "leader-type" - leading comes naturally, and I think other people find themselves in "leader-type" positions where the drive to lead is more challenging.

What I do know:

Leadership comes with criticism. Some people are going to see you as a strong leader, and other will be disappointed. All you can do - is to do your best. If you're not doing your best and you could be doing it better - then do it better. Filter the criticism you receive, and pray a lot! 

“Build from that place inside of you that is NOT big or loud or selfish or proud. Lead from that little spot inside of you that burns quietly and unceasingly for others.” -Hannah Brencher 

Love leading and lead with love. Leadership is a privilege. Be appreciative.

If God has given you an opportunity to lead - lead for the sake of reaching hearts, and never for the response from them.

If you can do something good, do it!
If you think something nice, say it! 
#GatherCode

Life hits hard ...

I don't know all of the medical science behind depression. It's my understanding that depression is a chemical imbalancement. It's a subject that can become controversial among Christians. 

What I do know:

The bible says that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. ... For what the law could not do ... God did by sending His own son ... to be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. -Romans 8

This morning, as I read over the word "death" the second time it's there - it reminded me of "depression." I say that not coming from a place of condemnation.

This is the human condition. We are sinners and life is painful. Spark that candle of hope that you have in Jesus. Everyday. And call upon God for rescue. Sometimes, we think we have prayed because something has been on our mind - but we honestly have not opened up and talked to God about it. 

Father, You already know. You know Your children. Give us comfort. Strengthen us ... The tattered and torn. Quiet our minds before You, O God. Give us faith. Father, forgive us. Safeguard our hope in You. Fill our hearts as we call upon Your name. All of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Cry Standing Up

My alarm. A familiar pain slows my breathing. O' sorrow. 
At the top of the staircase, I lace up my running shoes. 'Singing over you,' comes to mind. I know the bible verse. I hold on to it in that moment; in theory, and simply. I have something coming up later this week and maybe I will use this verse. Later. The thought presses through as I head downstairs and out of my front door. 
With you.
Singing over you. 
I put forth the effort to remember the words. 

"The LORD your God is with you... Mighty to save. He will take delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He will sing over you." (Zephaniah 3:17) 

Could this be? God? Whispering to me.
I don't think about it too much. While a stretch a bit, I look up at my bedroom window feeling like I'm talking to myself, in a sense. Nodding slightly, "Okay." The lump in my throat swelling, my eyebrows bowing.
I let my face hang low in the shower. If it wants to. I let my tears fall while the water washes over me. If I can cry standing up, I can believe I am getting stronger. 
God is good, and good to me. But I am depressed, and my sin is separating me from God. The great void. This is my story with depression, and it's fair enough to say that yours might be different. I want my life to change. I want my heart and mind to change! Jesus has died for me, taken my sin upon Himself.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." -Romans 1:16

Days pass. Weeks and months are gone. If I can) not feel anger and hostility, I will not. I try to not. When God sees me, I want to reflect back to Him evidence of HIS very grace given, and so received. I am always only in His will or outside of it. God is Love. 
My motivation has run thin before. However, I do believe God spoke to me that morning. This fire has not run out.
We are all going to have those days where we're down on the floor crying, and we have no idea how we got here or what comes next. The only way we're going to find out - is if we stand back up and try again. 
We were created for more. The truth is, if you are not motivated to do it right now, you're not motivated yet. 
I really, truly believe that we are in control of our own mentalities. If you don't like your life, you can change it. 

Give your life to God - faithful and good, again. Start there.
Go to church.