When you’re feeling heart-heavy and like life has kinda given you second-best on Valentine’s Day

You wouldn’t know by her confident stride or joyful eyes that she battled with unbelief of whether she was forgotten. 

No, you’d feel her warm laugh and remember her soul shoot straight through to yours – she wasn’t afraid to love. To be real. To be rare.

Most days were graces but sometimes the times were fresh with disappointments or hollowed holidays or meant-well comments from strangers.

Has He forgotten about my favor?

Her dream – Her. One. Dream. 

Why would she grow up with hopes of knights on white horses and Cinderella stories if the truth was it was a lie that true love came true if you only believed?

Truth is, she believed that God is Good and she believed that He is Love but she struggled that this love and this good were so painful. 

Painful as she goes to sleep curled up alone after another draining day, painful as she walks off another slow dance stage, painful as another birthday passes and she sees no sliver of change.

Painful as she walks every day in communion with God and yet she feels estranged from the same old mundane page too stubborn to sway. 

If she had known years ago this waiting would be her one true weakness she might have tossed away this whole true love appeal most of her twenties. 

She wondered if He was disappointed  by her own disappointments. She wondered if He truly understood her fears of second-best. She questioned whether He’d ever act on this beating in her chest for a heartfelt prayer waiting to be blessed. 

She struggled. She wavered. She thrashed with doubts about the plan given to her from her Savior. 

Yeah, this true test was the one that caused the most unrest. 

So we bowed together in that Walmart parking lot in our Sunday afternoon’s best, such a mess, eyes smeared and hearts quivering – and she gave a meek faith offering – I don’t understand but I will trust in what You know is best. 

And it was there that we met Him soul-deep in our chests. 

Because what if your biggest weakness was where the blessed and the best came to rest? 

What if your biggest fear come true was more than you needed than any dream at face value? 

What if this fear come true was where we meet our true need – the Truth. 

True Love at it’s best. 

She squeezed my hand as she pours it out what my heart is exploding in deep – your heaven perspective is what I really need.

Your heaven perspective is what I will choose to believe. 

You see, maybe it is the unseen that makes you really not simply see, but know – know that there is no such thing as second-best. 

Because here’s the thing — the unseen says no good thing does he withhold to those who are redeemed.

The unseen –heavenly hope — is to what we cling.

And we will bow down on our knees, fully seen — I will believe because I know that even through this seemingly life scenario mistake that You are working as I wait. 

So we keep breathing and we keep believing because we know where we are going — we are chosen. 

Our heavenly holding seems like a lifetime’s unfolding but in a vapor-thin moment in His presence we’ll be glowing. 

Glowing from the trials He’s completed in us, to trust, He’s enough — I’m enough. 

Glowing from the Truth He’s birthed in us, breathed in us, and dare I say it, joyfully consumed us — I trust you give me only the best, and I am overwhelmingly blessed. 

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” – (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). 

Lord, 

I don’t always understand the life plans that are given to me, but help me to trust You. Thank you that You are in full control and You love me perfectly. Thank you that Your grace covers my mistakes through the sacrifice of Jesus Cbrist. Increase my heavenly hope and set my eyes on the freedom of focusing not on the temporal, but the eternal. Amen 

When you look beside you and don’t feel you’re measuring up

There she is. She’s sprouting up and beyond and into the wild wind. She’s got the kind of beauty that’s wholly, makes others whole and they stop dead at the sight of her, yeah even flying cars freeze to linger her, to wonder her.  

And when they stop she doesn’t have to say a word because her living says it all. Her living that transformed from her being  — and now this moment of fixation brings no hesitation to admit seeing for a glimpse of time something tangible of perfection, of peace, of glory and everything deep down to the soul that satisfies.

Yeah, she speaks no words, she just lives and looks up and grows up. And her companions just like her, just as glorious, grow with her, around her. No comparison to each other, no looking down and around, just up. She has no choice but to grow up towards her life source – the sun.

Yeah that girl, she’s a sunflower. Yeah, a literal sunflower knows it so well — grow towards the sun, your life source, and you grow strong. You grow magnificent. You grow into who you were made to be. 

So why do even more beautifying beings, worth so much more than a flower that fades, continue to look down and around in anxious defense? 

Grow with one only one straight shot gaze, they cry out, to your Life Source – only then will you grow to who you were meant to be.

May you reach broad and wide up the horizons today, with firm roots only tangible through seeking up at the bright Savior, aiming to soothe our size-up reflex and instead savoring those growing around you. 

Only then will the parade of awed faces freeze to linger it in, this harvest of unique, brave beings in the wild wind.

#growlikeasunflower #eyesupnosizeup #preachingtomyself #yourspringbloomiscoming
 

Dear Battered and Broken

I don’t know who you are, or why you are here. For some reason, though, our two paths, each traveling in their own directions through eternity, have crossed in this specific moment in time. If you are anything like me, battered, bruised, and broken down — then we have much in common. And if you have ever ran along your path sprinting towards that sweet destiny that promised to satisfy, only to discover the surprising sourness that it really offered — then we have both tasted those similar subpar promises. Because more often than not, I find myself dreaming and wishing rather than living and thanking. However, these dreams are often tainted by the screams of this world — be smarter, be thinner, be more accomplished, be better than anything but yourself.

Maybe for you these screams come from a literal person — you can think of them, remember their looks, their words. Maybe they come from a tabloid or the TV — a screen where pretty faces and enchanting places hundreds of miles away makes you chase after that kind of literal far-fetched, blissful life. Or maybe, if you’re like me, most of them come from inside your own loud, clouded head.

It doesn’t make the accusations stab your heart any less, though. In fact, they bleed the most because you know the victim’s weak valves the best to sever the deepest cut. No matter which way these voices that cripple you find you (for me, it’s all three and I dare say for you, too), somehow certain ones collect at the focal of your being and have a tendency to linger there until they grow to dominate you, sometimes even destroy you.

Some people have an unusual ability to push the voices back and even believe they are not there for a while, walking through life balancing on a cable getting tighter and tighter until the last innocent splash hits the dam and the cable snaps and the floodgates are opened to pour out what was behind the wall the entire time. Others try to swim against the rushing waters, instead being always aware of the voices they are up against but not finding the strength to fight them because they’re gasping for dear life-breath. Others, still, are the ones spewing out the voices themselves, I believe, as a result of a wounded heart that has scarred and hardened to their own voices that have settled their home there much too long.

Do you see? It’s all around us, in each one of us — it saturates our entire being. This longing, this craving for a Voice. This craving to be a voice. We’re all running around chasing after something that at some point a voice told us it was worth the pursuit — maybe for you its climbing the ladder to that position, that place finally where you can prove yourself, or maybe its the white dress you dream of wearing every night while sleeping by yourself or maybe, just maybe–its to simply find enough courage to lift yourself up off the cold ground after you’ve been knocked down by the voices so much that failure yet again cripples you before you even move.

Truth is, you are chasing after voices because you were meant to follow the One Voice, you are stabbed by lies because you were meant to hear the Truth, and you desire to be a voice because you were magnificently designed after the One Who Spoke.

Dear battered and broken, wobbly and weak-kneed — do not miss this — if those voices surrounding you have clamored for your attention to follow only to be deceived, to believe only to be left broken, and you are left knowing at your core they will never, ever reach to relieve that deepest part of you (you can feel it, I know), that core that knows there is more to it than this — if you can feel that, if you have experienced that — then you are right where you need to be.

You are right where you need to be.

Because once your chase has been found to be directionless, your map to be found there’s no place on earth that’s true Home, and you have figured out that what you seek will never satisfy — then you are ready to look up from this pained world to listen and receive the sweet sound of not a shout, but His Whisper. And His Whisper does not accuse, does not trick, does not shame you for the way you have ran and stumbled and fallen to His Feet, begging — no, it picks you up in open arms and gently says “Come to me, child.”

“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest'” — Matthew 11:28

Are you ready to tune out those voices and listen to the One that sings melodies to you? Are you ready to stop chasing and instead be chased after by Him who is jealous for you? If you are like me and find yourself at this place often, where this world and your own self has left you despaired and left as a beggar for hope — then this weakness and this hole-ness is perfect for his holiness and his grace and his lavishing love to crash over you in perfect wave after wave.

Finally you and I will be able to not drown in the waters of voices but be called by His Voice away from the shore to the middle of the ocean of unending grace where you will not ever drown again but be hand-in-hand with the One who walks on waters.

“But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹ “Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

–Matthew 14:27-29

Dear Lord,

I am tired of listening to the noise around me and in me. I am tired of pursuing things that leave me wandering away from You and empty. I am left a beggar at Your feet ready to come home. I crave to know you, and to hear and believe no other voice but Yours. Will you come and speak to my heart? Will you crash your waves of love and grace over me? Thank you for never giving up your pursuit for me. Please help me to trust you to stop listening to the voices that drown, but to walk above them and listen only to Your voice. Thank you for wildly loving me and speaking the Truth I crave to hear, the Truth that will set me free. Amen.