I’m on my way to my friend’s house. In my lap, beneath the steering wheel of my car, rests a square cardboard box and a strand of red and cream twine. It’s a twenty minute drive near green-rained-on hills and white and brown cows in pasture, and then the winding roads near the university and the coffeeshops and store-fronts until I make the left turn. At each of the five red stop lights, I grasp a box and quickly wrap around the twine and tie a bow at the top. We are exchanging small gifts, these girlfriends of mine, and I had fully intended to wrap the gifts this morning, not do quick-wrapping-up job on the way to the party.

When the light turns green, and I’ve secured the loop twine around another box, I toss the box in the backseat. I feel some relief–getting this task done when I had abandoned wrapping, with any kind of adornment, as a possibility. These boxes are not the prettiest things you’ve ever seen, but they aren’t awful either. Simply, I pray my friends, who love me despite my scatteredness, feel loved by me.

I wish I had the means to send a funny-wrapped box to each of you. In it I might include the most awesome smelling candle in the whole wide world. But what I would want to share most are actually words–the words from my heart, the love language my Father teaches me to speak. This is the gift I want to give you most.

Reminders of God’s love and hope is something we need from each other a lot more than we think we do.

This truth sinks in ever deeper when Justin and I go with this same dear friend to attend a funeral–a mom who just died from brain cancer. My friend and her husband came around a family when they needed God’s love to shine bright in tangible ways. And they invited Justin and me to pray with them, weeks prior, as they loved this family in the way God whispered to them to love. At the funeral–the room filled with caseworkers who supported the family over the last few years and teachers and principals who have known these three kids who just lost their mom–people stand up to testify to love and perseverance, joy and hope. The body of Christ is gathered around this family, loving them in the way God had taught them how.

It was an hour and a half of words that were more than words. It was holy space. It was speaking truth and love. It was telling each other in story, in testimony, the simple things that are also the most powerful and lasting: I am here, I see you, I know you hurt, you are not alone.

This Father of ours, this God who is love, teaches each of us how to love each other. He teaches us how words are action, are weapons of light against the darkness. Truth cannot damper light.

We, the daughters and sons of God, respond to the whisper of God in our hearts. We recognize Jesus in our midst. We are filled with the Holy Spirit. We live out this truth: heaven is not so far away.

Heaven, the Holy Spirit in us, comes here.

I call my mom that evening, telling her about my day, asking her how she is. A close family member, my aunt, is in hospice; my mom has been visiting her every day. She tells me how she prays with her, how she prays the prayer I have been praying too. And I realize the power of our words on each other. In our stories, our words, our prayers, our encouragement, our speaking even the tough, hard things, in love, the Holy Spirit can be present. Together, we are in holy space.

My friends, you, who gather here in this blog space, who let me share my words, my heart, with you, thank for being here. Thank you for being the sisters who join me in hungering for more of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Father, this day, may we desire you more than anything. May we lean deep into your arms. May we rest there. May we remember you have us, you hold us. May our time in your presence equip us to speak words that are true and good. May we bring light into the space we inhabit. May we bring forth your love with our trusting you, with our loving with our whole heart, with our words echoing the songs of angels, giving you praise by how we love . . . by how we love . . . by how we love.

That’s the present we want, Father. Let us receive your gift, wrapped in the most gorgeous splendor. Yes, let’s unwrap you now and give you to everyone we meet.

*In the wide-open space newsletter (subscribe here to get it when I send it out in a few days) I’ll share a bit more about why things have been so quiet on the blog lately.

Love to you, sisters and friends,

What words have you heard recently that have made God feel close? 

[mk_dropcaps style=”simple-style”]I[/mk_dropcaps]t’s Sunday afternoon, and water fell from the heavens into California for an hour this afternoon. I have a tobacco candle burning on the side table, and the house is quiet. The family room, back near the kitchen (where I am not) is a crazy mess. Yesterday Justin and I started taking canvases off the walls and rearranging furniture, and there’s laundry on the couch from the boys’ Sunday-morning dive to find their favorite shorts to wear to church. I am ignoring the dishes in the kitchen sink. And the room remains in disarray, with a short wooden cabinet housing Justin’s fly supplies – tiny hooks and fuzzy colorful bits of fabric and string – sitting in the strangest of places, cock-eyed right next to the kitchen island. I am choosing to ignore the crazy and sit for a few moments on this Sunday, instead.

So I retreat to the living room, my feet up on our old pine bench, my dog underneath my legs, trying to read a book. Oliver, our middle son, runs over from the mess of the other room, every few minutes, to test out a joke or a brain trick he’s just learned. He laughs. I am answering each joke, each question, the opposite from what he expects, he tells me. I either say the wrong thing, or I move in a crazy way. He cracks me up. I need this quiet, but I need this boy’s smile, too.

Sitting here, with a book now at my side, watching my boy running back and forth, gets me thinking about story – the impact of another person’s life on our own. For stories are more than just words, aren’t they? They are the choices we make and the experiences that shape us.

You don’t have to write down your story to be a storyteller. You don’t need to speak this story of yours aloud – always in words – for the story to shine wide and loud.

This boy of mine, his silly antics, his loving hugs, are shaping me. It makes me think that each of us are taking in each other’s stories just by living our own. With whom we spend our time, our life, is affecting how we perceive the world. Thus, these experiences with other people are shaping the way we live – and live out – our own story.

Sometimes we are learning the stories through books, through words someone typed up. And sometimes we are learning them from what someone told us – her sentence, his explanation – weaving together meaning we tuck in tight and keep.

But for a story to be taken in by another person, it needs to be shared somehow, through the sharing of a life, and not necessarily through words. For a story to be told, we need to be among people. We need to live alongside one another. How you live and what you say with your actions – what you say and don’t say, what you do and don’t do – is the telling of story that shapes the listener too.

Consider what story you write with your life.

We sense the Holy Spirit through our collecting and writing – our living. These are the stories of the body of Christ, the children of God.

The light is golden now outside the window. It filters through the the tall redwood branches of my neighbors’s front yard. It blankets, this light, covering the green and the amber leaves of the flowering plum trees beneath the majestic redwood’s trunk. And it is gone, this light, as quickly as it came. And now there is a leaf falling, like a butterfly fluttering to earth. And an airplane is breaking sound barriers overhead. And I need to get up now and fetch Abby from her playdate.

Justin is about to come in the door, too, with Jackson, who was playing lacrosse. And I sit here a moment longer and am grateful for this story. The story of a daughter among many daughters who craves quiet and community.

I would have no story to write if community wasn’t whispered into my heart.

There it is. There is the story. The story of a girl and her Father and her boy and his father, and the children of God, the church, all collected and watching each other live out these lives of trial and hardship and joy and beauty. All story. All pages of hope and light in this larger story God is telling. I want to keep writing. And noticing. For how we live and we share our story affects the story of everyone around us.

Don’t you think?

Live it out, dear one. Live this story of yours with confidence and glory. You are made to write one uniquely and so, so beautiful.

Live with courage, so your story can be told through your pure living of it – and the other people taking it in.

Let us notice you. Let us read your story.

Let us understand our own story better by walking alongside you and learning how our stories are similar and true and different too.

We need stories that stir us, examples of living that are raw and honest. We need stories that don’t run from truth, that are unafraid to reveal the dark corners, let God’s light illuminate the shadows where we feel no light could shine.

Whose stories shape you? How are you telling yours? Who is reading your story right now?

Remember, it is not just in words through which your life speaks. Go out this day, brave one. Be stunningly you. Notice who is around you, who is influencing your story and how you are influencing theirs. There is a story you get to tell, with the Holy Spirit in you – a story all your own. But you don’t do it alone.

Consider how you are shaping the people around you, and how they are shaping you. Ask God how He wants to help you write your story – how, this day, the choices that make up your story can be products of the Spirit – love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the story – your unique and true story, with the stamp of the Holy Spirit on you. That’s the story we want written. That’s the story the community around us needs to read.

Help us tell a good story this day, God.

And I wrap my gray scarf around my neck, pull on my boots, and go out to pick up my daughter across town.

We got our family photos taken Saturday, the first time in nine years that we’ve smiled for a professional photographer. The kids had some funny idea that a photo session means wearing stiff clothes and going into a hall in the church and sitting in front of a green screen while people you’ve never seen before make you stand super close to your siblings and put your arms in your lap and sit up straight and do your best to smile.

I guess the kids expected some family version of picture day at school.

So, when we were on the dirt and pavement in East Palo Alto, a city with grit, and leaning against an old machine shop across from a food truck and a barking dog chained to a camper, Ollie says under his breath, “I didn’t expect this,” and I ask him later what he meant.

He tells me about the last time we got our family photos taken – for the church directory – and he and Jackson wore matching plaid shirts. We went into a little back room with lots of curtains and screens and smiled stiffly at people we didn’t know. This time around we’re in jeans and boots and invited by our beautiful friend Nicole, the photographer, to be ourselves, a family. Yeah, this photo shoot is a whole different thing.

While it will be a couple of weeks until we see the photos from the shoot, the photos are secondary to the experience we had of being with Nicole in that late afternoon as that golden sun started to think about going down.

When you see someone doing something they love, you know it. You can feel it. What we’ll remember most is the experience of seeing Nicole see.

We won’t remember the bits of gravel on the sidewalk, or the kindness of the food truck drivers as we leaned against their counter. Not the excitement of the dog straining against its chain, or the orange pylons covering the mysterious metal door in the middle of the sidewalk. Not the warm sunlight as it shone on the dirt and the weeds, or the horns honking from the queue for the food truck on a Saturday night.

We’ll remember this: Nicole’s smile. Nicole’s voice. Nicole’s joy in being in the presence of her Father as she created beauty with Him.

As she took photographs, one thing became clear: Nicole was participating in the more that comes in doing what we are made to do with the Creator who made us.

When you glimpse a daughter of God hanging out with her Father, you never forget it.

It will always leave you breathless. It will always make you long for more of what He has. It will always make you think about what it is that you, uniquely, love to do.

What you love to do with God is how you worship, how you experience joy, how you feel God’s presence in you. And it will always remind you one thing for certain: being with God is always good.

“Oh, guys, you don’t even know!” Nicole said when she looked down at the viewfinder on her camera – a smile from ear to ear and brown eyes sparkling. We were captivated. She was seeing something we couldn’t see. But we believed her, and we want to see like that, too.

Witnessing her joy in being with the Father, we did see; we got to see pieces of heaven, too.

Nicole, in flip-flops and denim shorts, brown hair blowing as she stood in the breeze and the warm light of sundown shown on her face, we could imagine what she saw and where she was. She was here and not here.

She was in sacred space, wide-open space, where heaven meets earth, walking on holy ground.

She was with her Father in a garden all their own. What she saw was beauty deeper than what we can see with our eyes, and it was a beauty you can feel and hear and taste. It was a beauty she was in. And she got to do it with her God.

I need this in my life. I need people around me who see God. I need people around me who see Him by choosing to do things with their Father. I need people around me who desire intimacy with Him, want to experience beauty with Him, want to not just hear about the wide-open space that is God but live in it, inhabit it. I need people around me who have tasted heaven and who show me what it looks like to be in the presence of God in the normal, regular, surprising beauty of a Saturday night on a sidewalk as the sun is going down.

We can do this, you know.

We can taste this heaven here, now, in the sons and daughters who choose to say yes to a life doing the thing they are made to do with Him – using their talents to love people in the unique way in which God has made them to love.

We are desperate for heaven. We are desperate to eat of it and drink of it. We are filled up when we are in the presence of people who inhabit that holy ground.

Come, Father, show us, in the regular moment of this ordinary day your miracle of your beauty. Let us be people who see more than what is right in front of us. Let us be people who live knowing there is more to beauty than what we can see with our eyes; true beauty we experience with our hearts. Let us grab your hand and go further in.

Surround us with people who show us your face. Let  your light shine upon us. Let us shine that light right on back, with you.

Who, in your life, helps you taste heaven, helps you be in the presence of God?

Once upon a time, there was a Colorado boy who wrote and sang and created community around the truth that we are whom Christ came to save.

Jonah Werner came to know Christ through Young Life and has spent more than a decade pursuing the heart that his Father gave him, connecting other hearts to God through stories of real life, truth and music.  He writes songs and travels internationally leading worship at Young Life camps because he doesn’t want people — and especially youth — to not know Jesus’ love.

When a heart becomes saved you can’t help but sing.

And how can you not encourage everyone to sing along with you?

When you hear Jonah sing, your heart recognizes more than just sound –  a guitar, a harmonica, a voice bringing laughter, joy, and hope.  You are gathered up in stories of love pursued and love lost – songs of a man seeking a Savior to come and save.  The songs are the invitation, the prayer we each sing:

Rescue me, if you’re out there.

Do you love me, do you need me, do you want me?

I’m so lonely, can’t you see I’m just looking for someone to rescue me?*

We each need to be rescued.

We are each wondering if someone will be there when we really need them to be.

The words carry, and I am that little girl again, the one who longs to be known, to be seen, to feel she is special and desired and adored.

That little girl doesn’t leave; she is always there, asking the same questions.  And I am grateful for these songs that speak to what is most true.

This Savior, who does the rescuing, reminds me I have never needed to save myself.  We all fall and need to be gathered up, to be reassured that our questions matter and are heard.

And that is what Jonah loves to sing about too.

What inspires his heart for song more than anything is the sharing of these questions that pierce the soul.

What if I fall, will you catch me?

What if I call, will you hear me?

What if I trust, will you help me?

What if I’m drowning, will you save me?

Having questions heard offers more than just answers.

These are the questions buried, the questions that prompt the aches, the deepest desires of the heart rising up.  And this is how we hear music, letting ourselves  in this world He has made, through the questions.  This is the meaning we seek.

Our hearts all recognize and heed the same song.

Our family loves Jonah, and I couldn’t help but share his music with you. Want to win a free copy of Run, Jonah’s latest album that just released last week? 

I’m giving away four copies of Jonah’s album, Run. (Your choice – digital or hard copy.)

I will announce the winners next Thursday, October, 15.

You can enter the giveaway right here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

And here is another post I wrote about Jonah’s song, “Rain your Mercy”. It’s on his new album, Run (that you can win!) It’s the song that makes me cry every. single. time I hear it. Oh, and jump up and dance, too. And don’t forget to check out Jonah’s other albums and let me know what you think.

What questions is your heart asking?  How are you longing to be rescued? 

* Lyrics from “What If I Fall?” from Jonah Werner’s album Fight

She looks at the words on the page and waits for them to sink in. It’s not that she doesn’t believe the words could be true. It’s not that she thinks the words she hears from God can’t bring hope, can’t produce good.

But these words she hears – now that she is hurting, now that she is overwhelmed – she questions whether or not they are enough. Before she realizes it, she weighs “I love you” from God against what she wish he would go ahead and say: “I am going to help you and bring an end to this discomfort, this unknown, right now.”

Is that what we want most from God? Do we want fewer “I love you’s” and more “This is the solution to your problem; do this, now”? Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Discomfort feels like our enemy.

If we had a choice, would we tend to avoid uncertainty and discomfort, at the expense of the faith of the heart?

I can so easily forget that the things I am most uncertain about are not the things I need to care about most. Yet, in the midst of depression or cancer, in the midst of experiencing abuse or poor self-image, we can trick ourselves into believing the lie that sneaks in, insidious and slow: “God’s ‘I love you’ isn’t good enough. God’s ‘I am here’ isn’t going to do the job.” We struggle to surrender control of what we can’t, and we make ourselves believe we are powerless, defenseless – pawns in a game we felt we never agreed to play.

I love you. You’re okay. I am here.

He didn’t say when the pain was going to end.

I can be the strong one. You can count on me.

He didn’t say for how long I would feel so awful, so sick, so weak.

You can get through this. I will give you wisdom and remain with you. Trust in me.

He didn’t say if the money is going to come in or if I am going to make the right decision. I may totally fall.

So, what prevents us from believing God’s love is enough for us?

Why is a lie that makes no sense – we should pursue certainty in what we can’t control, rather than have faith in the reality of God’s love – so easily believed?

I wonder if this is part of the problem: we convince ourselves that God’s love is distant from us when we are hurting. Unconsciously, we make God’s love something that doesn’t apply to our lives. Sure, we think, Scripture may bring comfort; God’s words may temporarily assuage fears, offer hope. Yet, we can easily find ourselves doubting that God’s love is more than just words on a page.  What feels most real is this: I am overwhelmed; I am desperate; I can’t imagine how this pain will ever subside. We forget that the reality of God’s love, represented in Scripture and heard, oftentimes, by his whisper in our hearts, in prayer, is the one and only thing we can count on.

God’s I love you is more than a claim. God’s I am here is more than a promise. God’s you are my beloved is more than a hope.

It is truth – truth cemented in the reality of a King who came as Word in flesh. It is his flesh, God’s I love you, that is the one certainty of our lives.

The thing is, while we may oftentimes feels overwhelmed by the pain of this world, it is God’s Word that gives us strength. While we may feel we are too broken, too weary, too incompetent to live a life in faith, it is God’s Word that gives us power. Our weapon used in breaking the lie that God’s love is not certain? It is Jesus, the Word in flesh. This is why words whispered to our hearts from God – and, most accurately, words born of Scripture – are more than words. Words are more than sound heard through the air, more than story read from a screen, more than ink design on a page.

God’s word is a person who fought and died on our behalf, and who fights for us, sword in hand, still.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

If the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, if it can cut through more than the temporal – destroy the lies of the enemy we so easily believe – can’t we believe God’s Word to us is a better promise to believe in than false certainty? The only certainty we have, in fact, is Jesus, God’s love.

God, when we are desperate and overwhelmed, we want to hear you; yet we find ourselves struggling to accept what you don’t say as much as what you do. You say you are with us, but you don’t promise our circumstances will ever change. Help us be okay with that – believe in your words, your whispers to us, your heart for us. Help us trust in what you say, as much as what you don’t say, too.

Words can count for everything or for nothing. When we are desperate for hope, the words God speaks to our heart, his I love you is more than a string of words. God’s I love you is Jesus. Together, let’s cling to God as our sustenance, our strength. This is how words have meaning. His Son come down. His flesh our food. His blood our drink. His words we believe although cannot see.

That’s what certain.

Curious how faith is like a hummingbird some days. Zipping here. Hovering. Then flitting away. I can forget God, so easily. And then remember him again, a few minutes later. What patience he has with me. I wonder if this is faith at all.

Faith is believing in what you can’t see? I can struggle to see God even in the tangible.

We are given a challenge: set our heart on the things above while not ignoring both the struggle and the joy of the present.

Train our eyes, our heart, to see you, God.

I like imagining heaven. I think about how we will see each other, so differently, how true beauty will be made manifest, how we won’t be distracted by the physicality of things, as we are now. Beauty will be radiating in ways we could never before perceive. We will see God with new eyes, too, his magnificence infusing everything. We will no longer be blind to him, in the ways he is here, with us, in all moments, in all things.

I want  faith that stays and does not fly away, distracted by this need, this desire, this dissatisfaction in what I can and cannot see. 

My daughter sends me a message on my phone on Friday night. She is at her grandparent’s house, my mom and dad’s, spending a week in the same house where I grew up, with the almond tree boughs bending heavy for harvest. “I want to see the moon with you.” The blue moon, the second full moon in a month, glowing round over orchards where my kids now run and help my dad with scooping almonds from rows on the ground. The moon that made my girl sad ’cause I wasn’t with her to see it.

“I want to see it with you.”

And I think about these summer days, flying like those dandelions seeds from the power of our own breath, journeying far, where sunlight shines bright and we squint our eyes and can no longer see. Where these days go I surely cannot see.

Our little house this summer has been a haven of all things. Laughter and anger. Friendship and strife. We come together and we go apart and we stay. In all these days it’s the coming together that is consistent, two brothers with wood and glue and drafting plans, building a model house in our backyard, the model house they may live in someday. A brother and sister, a mother and daughter, a father and daughter and sons creating chaos in the kitchen, a tournament of cooking madness, with six dishes being prepared, for a family competition, at once. The days full and loud and long and fast. I hang on tight and try to will myself to remember a moment, and the next, and realize I’m surely, oh yes, going to forget it.

Oh, the days we wish would end until they do and then we wish we could go back and live the moments all again.

I can get afraid of time going by. I struggle with it not being my enemy, a scribbled note on a post-it I’ve forgotten to heed: Notice this day.  Be grateful, right now, for you are here, right now. What more do you want or need?

And that’s what it is, the problem: I forget what I need. I forget what I’m missing. And I can’t find what I’m missing while I’m being afraid of doing the wrong thing and making sorry use of the life I’ve been given. This day. It is only this day.

I ache for time to not matter so much, for heaven’s time, when there are no ticking clocks or Google calendars or beeping phones. I imagine time in heaven all stretched out, a blanket of glory and song and light, a place where the circle wraps me on up and I am singing and not alone and my Father is where I can see him and feel him and smell him. He is all around. How do I make sense of these days in this now, with the rhythm of a day being more than what I can measure, and my measuring apparatus totally wonky still?

When our girl tells us about the moon and how we need to get out of the house and see it, we know we need to pay attention. You can feel it in your bones sometimes, when something amazing is happening and you better get on an’ hurry up so you don’t miss that big ‘ol amazing thing that is making the whole world just pause and ooh and ahh. And then there is the amazing thing we don’t ever see and we didn’t even know we missed.

But this thing, this moon rising–just even because of the name–blue moon–we ran on out the door and craned our necks to try to see some glowing orb in the sky. But nothing. We couldn’t see it.

We thought about getting on the roof to see it. We knew our girl was out there in the orchards with my mom and dad and her cousins, three hours away, and they were walking down rows of trees and picking up and eating still-hot almonds up off the ground in the dark night under the light of the blue moon. And I knew the moon was where they could see it.  But we couldn’t.

We couldn’t see it, not with the houses all pushed up around us in our neighborhood of fences and cement and telephone poles. So we jumped in the car with the dog and we drove to where we could see. And there it was, shining bright just like our girl said. And I took a grainy awful photo with my phone and sent it to her and told her, “Yes, baby, I see it. I am seeing it with you.”

And I just have to believe that some of those moments we chase down and fight for are the moments God has to appreciate a bit, too. Maybe we don’t need to be afraid of what we’re missing. But, all the same, knowing beauty is right here, right in front of us, and not being able to see it, makes fighting for it, worth it. Even if, in heaven, that beauty we are so desperate for right now? It will be all around.

How are you chasing down blue moons?

I will close my eyes and find I am by myself. And I will close my eyes and I will see You.

I tell Justin in our little tent in Yosemite, a few nights ago, two days before our anniversary, how I am in this place–this wild majesty stacked up around me, so unreal and perfectly true, and I don’t feel You close to me. And I tell Justin I am okay with that.

I wonder if I am.

A few years ago I walked these same mountains and I felt You on my skin, your touch on my cheek. I smelled You, ever song I breathe in.

I tell Justin I am okay with not feeling You wild and tender next to me. I tell him I know You are here all the same. It feels weird, unfamiliar, to say it aloud.

Perhaps it is my experience of knowing You, of hearing You, of feeling You in my very bones, in the rhythm of my breathing as I move, that makes me feel still whole, when I am far from You. I am your girl found but wandering, a daughter whose feet walk sure but miss the love song that You ever sing.

Oh, God, ever sing.

It has just turned dark, the moon the slightest sliver, with the brightest star to its right. We watch the lightning strike the cliffs miles away, counting ’til your thunder pounds the dusty land. Come, God. Rain. Rain.

So we put up the rain fly and we can’t see your stars anymore when we lie on our backs in the tent, Jackson, Oliver, and Abby in their tent six inches away. So my eyes fix on the nylon of the ceiling of our tent, and I tell Justin how in all these trips this summer–to the rivers of Utah and then to the waves near California and then to the granite cliffs of Yosemite–I walk into these canvases of You and I know You are near, but I feel I can’t find You, all the same.

But I’m okay. I’m okay.

You are here, despite me. Right?

So I lie in the dark and Justin listens and then we close our eyes and stay in the silence for a while and then You come. You come, and I’m not even praying. You come, and I’m not even talking to You. You come, and I’m not even asking You to help me, to gather me up, to take your daughter and whisper love again.

Again. Again.

You show me in pictures like You do now when I write–the book we write together these days, the one where you ask me to trust myself. You can describe the pictures I show you. I have to trust myself, the daughter that has You in her. I have to trust myself–that I am so loved by You, that You are here, even when I can’t hear You. I have to trust myself–that You are holding me even when I am floundering and I am searching and I am lost ever deep, where I have forgotten there is light.

Show us You again, like the first time. We need reminding, sometimes, we are not alone. Show us You again, as if we’ve never yet seen your face, or heard your voice, or believed we are worthy, so adored, so held.

Grab our hands again, my God. Grab our hands and show us how You are here, despite what we do, despite how we feel. Grab our hands and walk with us. Show us your rhythm, your heartbeat, your eversong dance with You.

Home.

And here in the tent, I can’t help but cry. For You are filling it up, now. You are filling up the tent so there is no other space left, and I don’t deserve You. Oh, God, how You love, how  You sing, how You bend low and show us what you see.

We want to see.

The next morning, the light is bright and sparkling on the mountain. I unzip the tent and crawl out while everyone else still snuggles down in their bags, and I see You. You are on my skin and You are in the air and You are singing. Oh, you are singing.

Oh, God, I’ve missed You.

I have told you it is okay to not feel close to You, but really, I hate it so, so much. I don’t want to be far from You. Let me be willing to fight for being with You.

Here we are, Father. Collect us again. Gather us again. Sing to us again. Surprise us with your love. Show us your eversong, the mountain shouting into the heavens your glory, You painting blue and light and wild love song all over this crazy canvas sky.

How are you this day, friends? Join me in praying for eversong, our Father finding us and pulling us in close?

The sun is hot on my skin but I can’t help but stay. My toes trace the outline of patio brick laid in not-so-straight lines. Soft, green moss and bits of sand harbor in crevices where the bricks stack like family. I sit on one of two short cement steps outside my bedroom doors, the writing studio where I seldom write, an invitation to come in, sit down, believe.

I sit outside, looking in, an impostor looking for confidence to return.

It is quiet there in the studio, with no phone and no music–just light streaming through skylight and the coolness of quiet, wood floor. My desk sits across from Justin’s, old reclaimed planks pressed together, back to back. Steel pipes stretch low across, a rest for feet when a writer is perched in one of the tall black rotating desk chairs from the 60’s, a pair we found in my father-in-law’s garage and that the kids love to roll in smooth glides across the floor.

Above are lines of light bulbs decorating the ceiling like clear glass jewels. Justin flips the switch to keep them on, even when the light streams in bright through the smudged window panes. It is a haven designed for inspiration, creation. He writes with me more often now, his book for men on identity–but for women, too, as I’m convinced you will love it–almost finished. On some days when we sit out here, his laptop open facing mine, he leans in over the desk, stacks of books on all sides, expectant and excited. Oh, when the words come. And then there are the hard days, too, when writing is like sludge we slog through; we hunt for words to find the clear path out.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Some days the writing is sludge we slog through; we try to find the clear path out.” quote=”Some days the writing is sludge we slog through; we try to find the clear path out.“]

It is easy to doubt that the work we do produces good, particularly when the greater outcome is something we can’t yet see.  In our particular work of writing, we search for words and pray they are the right ones. We wrestle them out, listening and experimenting and working to communicate something true, something beautiful.  But no matter what kind of work each of us is called to do, it is bold work to go forward and strive to do it.

It is bold work, when you pursue, the best you can, to do what you believe is for you to do.

The hard part is that boldness never comes easily. Being yourself is the last thing, sometimes, that you feel is okay for you to do. Is this enough? Am I doing enough, God? Are you happy with me? Am I spending this day in the way you want me to spend it? Am I doing the work you’ve made for me to do?

No matter what are work is, we must do it. We have to do it, don’t we? If we do the work God whispers to our heart to do, we will wake up to Him even more. Even if doing that work is scary, or risky, or hard.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Let’s do what we’re made to do. Even if it’s scary, or risky, or hard.” quote=”Let’s do what we’re made to do. Even if it’s scary, or risky, or hard.”]

Perhaps the first big hurdle to get over is this: taking the risk to find out what the work for us to do is. And the even harder part, I think, is choosing to do it.

And then actually doing it.

I wonder if that is how we experience God. I wonder if that is how we figure out a little more of how God sees us. I wonder if there is awakening of self in this partnership with God–in the work we get to do with Him–the partnership we are made to live out and breathe.

This is the Spirit made flesh: we work with our hand clasped with our God; we work, in gratitude and in worship; we work to offer back to the Creator a heart outstretched, “Here, here I am. All just for you. All just for you.”

It can be hard to see work that way, as an offering, as something sacred. And maybe this is largely because of the way we think of work–how it is something we do to achieve something that is only right in front of us. Instead, what if our work is really this: how we labor with God for the joy of creating something we yet may never see?

What if the work we are made to do is the act of laboring, side by side, with the One who loves us most?

I like how Dan Allender talks about work, in his book, Sabbath, particularly in how he turns the concept of work on its head and notes the difference between work and labor:

Work is painting a wall; labor is starting a painting business so that one can choose how a a job will be finished with integrity. Work is taking a literature class; labor is writing a poem to address the death of one’s parent. Working allows us to control the outcome and therefore achieve our manageable dreams. Labor calls us to risk our dreams without much control to create something that goes beyond what we can imagine. It is labor, not work, that we hate. We prefer to kill the hope of what labor may bring forth rather than to risk so much for possibly so little [emphasis added].

To come alive to joy and freedom in Christ we must labor, we must give over ourselves to doing something beautiful with God, the thing we calls us to do with him. That is the work–the labor–that means more than we can readily imagine, on our own.

Do we do this? Do we know what our work is with God? How do we go forward when we doubt our work–our labor–matters, or when we rest uncertain that we even know what we are supposed to do?

Perhaps, one step forward is a start.

And then another.

So I stand. I leave the safety of the steps, the sanctuary outside my bedroom windows. I rise, and I grab my laptop, and I approach the writing studio door.

Three barefoot steps forward and I’m at my desk, the surface smooth and soft, the wood marked with holes and scars. I see beauty. I see sacred. The two by fours a bit slanted where together, they meet. I am learning to see the beauty of scars, the music of sounds, the hope in a face turned toward light, amidst the tripping we do in shadow.

Shall we lean in and expect nothing but what is true–that there is work for us to do, and we have what it takes to do it–voice that will not be quieted, a song that will rise and resound?

Earlier this morning, I ask God why it is that I struggle to believe this work with Him is mine to claim. And He reminds me of the almond tree and the light that falls through branches, even in the darkest of night. How white flowers open wide and petals drift down and green leaves unfurl again and again.

There was a tree on which a King was nailed and here–here–is a place where I will lay myself down.

Palms flat against this desk, wood pressed against the soft flesh of my cheek.

There is a King who laid it down.

And I will pick it up.

What else can we do, sisters and brothers? What else can we do but wield the sword He gives us: a voice that speaks His whisper, a heart that knows and rejects the other path, of shame?

What is your work with God? What is your first step? How do you get to labor with Him, today?

Tell us a story.  Your words can wrap right around our hearts. We’ll gather them up and lean in and love the pictures you say. We want to hear them.

The way you smile when you talk about those kids of yours. You wrestle them into bed at night; they stretch you and mold you and make you love them so deep your heart feels too exposed–paper thin, but strong. Yes, you are vulnerable. Yet through your story we hear God’s whispers come in soft:  Yes, I made you love, like this. So tender-beautiful, like this. And He glows with the excitement and joy of it all.  So we do, too.

Your words speak love. 

Tell us a story.  The time you were sick and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong and you stayed strong, not wanting your family to worry.  Your body ached and you trembled and you grew tired of trying to figure out all the things you couldn’t understand. It’s this story, too that we cling to–water for thirsty hearts. The wisdom gentle and slow: in this life, we may not know what’s coming; but we know we are not alone, and it’s all going to be okay.

Your words remind us we’re okay.

Tell us a story. You make us brave, with your warrior heart stretched wide-open and bold. We crave your surrender. We crave truth and beauty and a sister who points us to God. And then you speak the story–in God’s healing grace, you know you are held, and your words hold us, too: You are loved.  You are seen.  You are not a forgotten one. 

Your words heal. 

Tell us a story. The promise you made to your family: this ministry, this job, this project is not more important than the people you love most. You say yes to what you love by how you spend your time. That’s why you make a few promises; that’s why you know the songs of  loved ones and you heed the music of their hearts.

Your words carry life.

Tell us a story. The nights your tears soaked your shirt as you lay quietly, in the dark, feeling invisible and unvalued, and you let God come in gentle and whisper softly, tender heart, the truth:  You are Mine, a light that shines.  I glow here, illuminating darkness with the spirit I give you.  Dear one, you shine.  My light is in you, and where I rest darkness flees. I see you, princess girl.  You are Mine.

Your words bring hope.

Tell us a story. Sweet friend, tell us a story with this life wonder of joy that is you.  For we forget ourselves then. For we see His face then. We need your word pictures, His dear girl. We soak up your story, and your beauty makes our voices echo back the song that is His. We want to jump in and share in this story–this love language you speak, too.

Please. Come on now. You are so beautiful. Tell us a story.

Do you believe your story could bring hope and help us see God? How has a sister’s story shaped you, given you strength, given you courage and hope to your heart?

I’m collecting songs, music that helps me see heaven. Music that makes my whole heart sing out praise.

I play the songs in the car, on the way to see friends, or before seven 11-year olds pile onto the worn leather seats of my car. I play them at the kitchen sink, scrub brush in hand. I play them through earbuds on my phone when I walk the neighborhood with our dog.

In my last newsletter I talked about music and how it affects my writing: “I listen to music when I write, especially, often, when I am listening for God. I sometimes hear the words the singer is singing—but not often. It can be a jumping off place, the music. But the music is not what I am listening for, if that makes sense.”

The music may be what I’m listening to, but it’s not Who I’m listening for.

In this life—in these scattered moments of beauty and strife and hard and soft places—I need tools, sometimes, to help pull me to the heart of God. He is here, I know, but I can forget that. The problem, of course, is that while it is so easy for me to forget about God,  I seem, somehow, to never forget about me.  And the amazing thing about some music—music about and to God—is that it helps me forget myself. It helps my whole self—heart and soul and mind—recognize it’s ache for God.

The songs themselves aren’t the worship, I think. Not unless we are letting those notes and those words and those voices help us imagine heaven, that place we long to go. We are drawn to heaven, to God. We ache for it, for Him, a beauty of which we get glimpses; yet a beauty we have yet to fully see.

We ache for God, and we can live not even realizing it. It’s not that we tire, aching for Him; rather, we tire of our pride and our very selves getting in the way of seeking Him. We tire, in this harried, self-obsessed life, when we fail to recognize it is God we’re aching for.

For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God-made, not handmade—and we’ll never have to relocate our “tents” again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less (2 Corinthians 5:1-5, MSG).

The most beautiful songs, to me, the ones that make me catch my breath and help me see God, are the ones that remind me of my vulnerability, my fragility, my weakness, and the strength and beauty and awesomeness of the abounding, never-ending love of God.

* * *

And then there are the songs of sisters. The stories God’s daughters’ tell? The ones they share of how they see God, how they experience his presence? Those songs are the sweetest songs of all.

My friend says when she is with God she is on a beach, collecting shells, the ocean roaring in front of her, God walking close to her side. Another friend says with God she is swinging, her legs pumping hard, her arms pulling against the cords of rope holding her up. Jesus is pushing her, His hands firm on her back as she lets her head tilt to heaven and she flies.

Another friend hears God each night, as she tucks herself into bed. She sees herself sitting on a rock, on a mountain top, the view wide and long and stunning. God talks to her there, his words the last things she hears each night as she lays her head to sleep.

I collect these stories, and they become my songs, too. When sisters share how they hear and see and yearn for God, I imagine heaven. I can hear that music playing loud and long, angels leaning close, the melody of daughters saying yes to their King.

If music is a tool to see God, then anything can be a tool to experience God, can’t it?

How do you do it? How do you seek God? How do you love to listen for Him?

He is all around now, isn’t He? He is with you as you surrender fear and approach the unopened bills on the kitchen counter. He is with you as you listen to those dreaded results from the doctor. He is with you as you bear the silence of home when everyone’s gone and you don’t know what to do now. Who am I, God? Help me through this. What is for me now?

Can you hear the songs?

When I hear the songs—the voices lifted high—and I see, in my heart, the sisters and brothers circled, hands raised, singing, unending, with exuberance and joy, I hear the song my heart needs most. It is worshipping God that kills all fear, depletion, anxiety, and loneliness. There is a song heaven sings, and it is a song I am learning to see: We are daughters meant to stand.

We have horses, steeds, on which to ride. Up into mountains and through caverns. Through forest and rivers and paths of rock and brush. We are called to ride and there is beauty all around. There is music playing all around.

There is no crying in heaven. But we hear it here, on earth. We hear it. And He hears it, but He hears rejoicing in Heaven, too.

May we together, here on earth, sing to heaven, the place whose music we need to hear with our whole hearts?

We pause here and are gathered. We pause here, and we see your face. Me pause here, and we stay. We want to stay here, with You.

We, your daughters and your sons. Carry us and help us push on. How You love it when we say your name, in love. How You love it when we tell You we see You. How You love it when we declare how good You are.

Yes, You are good. Yes, You are amazing. Yes, You are complete and your love is blanketing the heavens and the earth and the waters in between.

You are the King who never deserts us. You are the King of a Kingdom coming, the whole earth groaning under the weight of the burden of knowing we are not yet fully ourselves. We want to be fully ourselves, with You.

Wake us up, this day, Father. Wake us up to love and to majesty. Wake us up to glory and the things we can’t yet fully see. Help us to see beyond what is before us. Repair the muscles that ache from effort and with pain, restore the bodies not sleeping well, comfort the minds burdened with worry and fear. Let us see You, God, in the place more real than here.

You are here. You are in this. You are in this place. You are beyond what we can see, but not beyond. You are here. There is more here than we can see, and we want it. We want to taste it. We want to eat your word, devour You.

Raise us up to a new place, our hearts open to change, open to being stretched, our imagination focused on a place where there are no walls.

And in this place, where there are no walls, we lift up the suffering, we lift up the dying, we lift up the trapped, we lift up the daughters and the sons being tortured and enslaved. God, let us see You and put our feet down, sinking deep into this ground, fighting for justice with our lives, these hearts of ours beating not just in theory, for the lost, the daughters and the sons crying in lonely streets.

Restore this world God. We march with You. We take up our swords and our shields and we bear what needs to be borne and we speak the words of hope and truth and let that lead us, our food.

Let us worship You in spirit and in truth. Let our worship take us deeper still.

Deeper still . . .  Let us go deeper into the dark places to shine, so brightly, your light.

Lord, come. We hear Your beating heart against our skin.

There it is. Listen. The song.

I will be that girl, Jesus, who sits at your feet, my tears not pure enough to fall. But they do, Jesus. My heart aching, tears blearing the image of your toes, my hair falling down, trying to hide my face.

And You let me bow low, and You lift up my head, your hand touching my chin, inviting me to meet your gaze.

You look into me, your eyes melting deep. I can’t look at You, my King, yet I can’t turn away.

Oh, Jesus, keep your eyes on me.

Write Me a love song, child. Write Me a love song with your life. Write Me a song for Me to sing with you, from the love I give you, from the heart of gratitude I place within you. I saw all the darkness covering you, and I wiped it all away. I took my hand and wiped it off your shoulders. You kneel at my feet, my daughter, my sister, with light that shines because what I did was enough.

Honor Me with listening close, with trusting Me with these days. How many more do you have? You have enough to do the work I have given for you to do. You have enough days to write a love song to Me with these days, this gift. A love song I will sing through your heart.

Sing it with your life, child.

Let every touch, every look, be a love song back to Me.

You bow at My feet, tears wetting my feet as you read of the woman, my beloved, redeemed woman of my heart, come before Me and give Me all she had.

Give Me all you have, child. Give Me all you have. Look what I make of it.

Trust Me with the things that seem so small. Why is anything small? What is small? What is significant? How are you to decide? Let Me decide. Just go, in steadfast obedience, trusting Me. Just trusting.

Sisters, my heart pours out over the pages of Luke 7. I see the woman there, perfume poured out, her stunning beauty, aching for His touch, with full abandonment of self. And I search my heart — asking Jesus to search me — to see if there is anything that holds me back from being fully present to Him, worshipping, at His feet.

Pour us out for You, Jesus. Let us write that love song with You.

Where are you, sisters — in Luke 7: 36-50, these pages of his heart?

I’m up on the platform, mic in hand. The room we call church is filled with people – many whom I know and love – seated in metal folding chairs in a large semicircle of three sections. In the back are built-in, deep carpeted seats, decorated with tufted pillows and filled with couples and families and kids. The folks back there tuck in close; it’s where the parents go when they know the kids will be too squirrelly to stay seated for long.

This room. It’s home.

We see Charles when we come in. He’s in the separate cafe in the back of the sanctuary, on a high stool. Justin goes to greet him, and I go too. He is love, sitting there, a man who spends his days serving homeless people, running a shelter in San Jose called CityTeam. He knows what it means to be on the streets and have no home. He knows what it means to be rescued, to recognize God chasing him down. 

So he gives out what he is given. Again. And again.

His brown eyes twinkle when he smiles, his whole face lighting up so you feel you are the most special person in the world. I can only hug him, and tell him how good it is to see him, how he makes me smile. Justin and I adore him. Being near him is good for our hearts.

Dave, our pastor, leads with authenticity here. He is gentle and fierce, raw and real – making this space one where we don’t have to pretend, or hide, or feel we need to work harder to be loved by God. Dave asked me, a few days before Mother’s Day, to come and share with the congregation, and pray. I love it.

For me, there are few things better than when a person whom you love and respect asks you to just show up, and pour out a taste of what God, in your life, pours in.

For Dave believes in wide-open space, a Holy Spirit not crowded out by to-do lists. And striving. And yearning to be different, better versions of who we are. Forget rules, he says, if they get in the way of listening for God. Forget routine, he says, if it crowds out space for Him.

Show up. Be present. Strip off everything that gets in the way of you being yourself with God.

So, of course, I say yes. And on Mother’s Day I walk up on the platform next to Dave. What tumbles out are the very simplest things I know: Prayer. Love. Yearning to hear what God sees.

This is what I say:

****

My favorite way to pray is to listen. My favorite way – really, the only true way I’ve found how to pray . . . is to focus on God’s presence. Look at His face. See myself before Him, with Him. I am always surprised by what I see. Often, I am a little girl. Always, I am unencumbered. Always, I am most myself, most free. Sometimes, I am a grown-woman on a steed, with a sword, galloping hard into the mountains. (And that’s the best.) He sees me.

I wonder if you know you are seen? When I pray for women, I ask God to show me what He sees when he looks at them. It is something He delights in – speaking to each one of us, showing his daughters more of their beauty, more of their glory (which is what they are filled with when they are with Him). He wants them to live out what, in them, He sees.

I think we seldom live in this place, this place of desiring to see what God sees.

I want to see more. I want to see.

So, for this morning, knowing I would be here, praying with you, His daughters, I prayed beforehand, asking God what it is, in us, He sees. So I am going to share it with you.

Will you close your eyes with me – and, if you feel comfortable, open up your hands, letting them rest in your lap? Yes, this is for the daughters. Yes, you are seen.

****

One arm up now, darling. And then the other. Let me take off these bindings. They are heavy and not for you, my darling. No, you are not meant to wear this shroud.

You are light and carefree, and you need to give me the bindings now. I lift them off of you. One remnant and then the next—white and invisible . . . holding you so you can scarcely move.

You are made to move with me, my love. I sing to you a song your heart knows, for you are not forgotten. And you are not unseen. You are not undiscovered, your beauty impossible to realize. I see you. I see your beauty. I behold you, and I behold your light, and I remove the shrouds so your light can surely shine.

May I share with you the testimony, the eulogy, I want to write on your heart, a place that is not a grave at all but a light that shines?

This darling one shines brighter than any star I have cast into the heavenly sky. She is more beautiful than a teardrop on a sister’s cheek, more delicate and strong than the stem of a single rose. I have carried her, and she sees my arms around her when her arms are lifted high.

She lifts them high, and her shroud is gone. Her new clothes are white, and light shines through the garments that flow down from her outstretched arms. They sing, this light. Her life is music now, and she keeps hands up, fingers outstretched, for she knows what freedom is, how light dances from her as she walks, each step one of beauty, a painting too beautiful and yet completely true.

For she is awake now. She is alive now. Each step now with her king.

I see this, child. come now. Enter in. What I see is the most true. What I speak is the music your heart needs to hear. Come now. You are free. Shrouds are long gone.

***

And Father, we lift our arms . . one . . . and then the other. We let you lift the bindings off . . . will you help us let You do that now? . . .

And we are free. And we are yours. And we are seen. Help us to keep seeing what You see.

In Jesus name, Amen.

On that Sunday, I am praying for the mothers and the daughters. I am praying for the fathers and the sons. I am praying for the children and the forgotten and the broken and the tired and the sad. I am praying for the ones who are weary and are burdened. I am praying for the children who yearn to be parented, to be held up by a God who never forsakes, who stands fast and holds tight and never, ever leaves.

Now, my friend, I am praying for you. What is on your heart?

How, now, do you most need to hear God’s whisper? How do you yearn to be seen?

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I don’t take a photo of her. I walk by, my eyes riveted. On a tour of the Louvre with my family, I see her form first, and I try to memorize it. She is positioned just on the right, when one enters the first room of statues, off the museum’s entry way.

She leans, Greek or Roman white marble, one arm straight beneath her, hand relaxed on the floor. She props herself up, casually, purposefully. Unclothed. Confident. She is the beauty I remember most. She is the beauty that brought me to tears just upon looking at her for an instant.

The tour guide doesn’t glance at her, ushering us to a larger, more prominently positioned statue in the center of the large hall. And he, this statue, is beautiful, too. But it isn’t her.

I’m not able to go back and take a picture of her. And I never find out her name.

Beauty can do this to us–grab hold of our hearts and our minds, stirring us to behold both the thing of beauty and the more that it truly is.

The beauty of a work of art can forever change us; when we experience beauty, we are responding to more than just the object of beauty, itself.

I love the scenes in the movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty when the photojournalist Scott O’Connell, played by Sean Penn, waits to photograph the elusive snow leopard in the mountains of Afghanistan. He has trekked up into the mountains and hidden, quiet and focused, for weeks until he finally catches sight of it. When he sees it, while looking through his camera’s monstrous zoom, he  pulls away and gazes at it outside the camera. And he hesitates.

Walter Mitty, played by Ben Stiller, sits next to him, watching.

Walter Mitty: When are you going to take it?

Sean O’Connell: Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.

Walter Mitty: Stay in it?

Sean O’Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

I love that–not because it makes me feel better about not taking a photo of the statue–but because it speaks to how we experience beauty.

For how we experience beauty is unique to each one of us. Our experience–who we are in a certain moment–is our individual translation of the beauty we see or hear and feel. Who we are, what our life experience is and has been, is the lens through which we relate to the beauty itself. And Sean O’Connell, by not taking the photo in that moment, is saying that there are things that can detract–and distract us–from our experience of the beauty that could, otherwise, be ours to know.

Some beauty must be worked out, I think. It must be translated by our own hands, with our own minds–through the interpretation of our own hearts.

In graduate school one of my favorite classes was on this topic. The class was called Art and Experience. The tiny, eighty-year old professor who stood upright at the podium each week rocked my world. She taught how we can perceive glimpses of our own hearts, our psyche, through the awareness of one’s perception of art.

While I am reading a piece of art–or beauty–I am also able to read myself. I can understand more of who I am and how I am through my awareness of how I am interpreting beauty, or a work of art. What I might consider beautiful might vary, depending on my life experience. How I view the world, how I view God, how I view myself, all feeds into how art, how beauty is personally experienced by me.

So, each time I experience beauty, or I read a work of art, I perceive it differently because I am different. Beauty, for me, is ever-evolving because I am ever-changing.

I love that.

In another museum in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, Justin has the kids, in each room, consider which two painting are their favorites. I do the same, walking around, pausing, listening to my heart for what each painting is trying to say. I believe each sculpture, each painting, each song, each work of literature, each poem, each play speaks. The key is paying enough attention. What we hear it says will be different for each person.

The reading of art is, really, a reading of ourselves.

Four paintings make me pause more than others. There is Manet’s “Rochefort’s Escape”, where I see a solitary rowboat, filled with people, with a ship far away, in the distance, in the middle of deep-blue sea. And then there is the family on the path in the field filled with flowers, in “Path Leading Through the Long Grass”, by Renoir. In another room, there is Van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist.” Those eyes. Those swirls of blue. Finally, I study the couple in the bottom corner huddled together, in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night over the Rone”. It is black-blue night, with starlight shining down all around them and illuminating the dark water behind.

When we pay for a book in the gift shop, we see prints on the wall of the paintings we had just seen: Van Gogh’s room, Degas’ ballet dancers, the gardens interpreted by Monet. And I am struck by their lack of beauty. There is much missing in these translations, an absence, an interference in the translation of the beauty I had experienced moments before.

Something I love about sculpture and painting is the intimacy in which the art is crafted. The artist’s own hands were what touched these mediums. There was a time and a place where these works were formed, both a part of and separate from the artist. And then, once completed, the works are completely separate and given up for the viewer now, to perceive, for themselves–whatever they are capable, in a certain moment, to experience and see.

In Dan Allender’s book, Sabbath, he points to how God, on the seventh day, separated himself from his creation in order that it can be seen, enjoyed, experienced, by even Him. Like the miracle of a baby just born, out of darkness of the womb and into the light of day, creation comes forth from the releasing of the thing that was once made in secret.

Art becomes something else once it is released, once it is given up, once it is offered as beauty for others to step into and experience, in whatever way they want to or can.

We get to decide what is beautiful. God whispers to us, the Holy Spirit our translator: this, this is beauty I made, this is holy. Our hearts speak it to us, the language of beauty, the language of our hearts, the language of God.

The statue in the Louvre, the paintings in the Musée d’Orsay . . .  each work of art an opportunity for me to experience the holiness of God–not because they were deemed “works of art” by our culture. Anything is a work of art if it speaks to us the language of beauty and of God.

If God wants us to experience the beauty He made, I can only believe that we are each made to experience holiness, too. Might it be possible that we recognize God’s glory and holiness through what He has made us to perceive as beautiful?

Might God use beauty to show who we really are and how we are, indeed, made? Beautiful? Holy? Works of art, too?

I still see her, that statue in the Louvre. No photograph is necessary; she is part of me now.

Because she is beautiful, and beauty is something my heart craves to know.

I think it does know.

And I think your heart knows it too.

*If we struggle to see today, what is beautiful, let us ask God to show us what is beautiful to Him–his daughter, walking around, the girl-woman He holds close and yet lets be separate from Himself, a work of art he wants to experience as we yearn to desire him.

Happy to be linking over at Jennifer’s Lee’s beautiful place, for #TellHisStory and Kristin’s, for Three Word Wednesday.

I get tired of rules and boundaries and even words sometimes. I know our Father is one of words, of language, of beauty and that the beginning of the world was the spoken breath come down. As a girl I often worried about doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. I studied people, their voices, their actions. Approval was paramount. It seldom mattered from where it came.

I wonder what I was worshipping then.

And here, in this blog space, where I entered in, a bit on tiptoe, a bit with my heart blazing, ready to burst, I was nervous and excited and a bit more fearless than I feel I am now. I wasn’t scared then, to share truth like I saw it. I wasn’t hesitant to not hide and unveil this girl He was showing me more of, this person He showed me He loved and wanted me to see more of, too.

And now, I tiptoe a lot, feeling like words are worth nothing if the truth is not painted out straight–yet I struggle, wondering what the point of all of this is. I listen for His words and I trust them, but I don’t trust my own. I write down His breath in me, His songs, and I scrawl them out, loop by loop in ball-point onto lined journals in edges of time, the beginning of me.

I don’t believe my words are worship, or a song is worship, or a moment worship unless I let my heart find Him in these places. In all places where He breathes I find my breath, too.

And I give it up again, Father. I surrender all I am, knowing I have been holding back. So, pull me forward. Let me sink in deeper. Let me throw aside my heart for this world and run right back into You.

How often do you turn your thoughts over to God? How regularly do you choose to live in freedom, surrendering every doubt, every fear–immediately–over to Him?

I am walking in sunlight, our dog, Fulton, eager on his leash. I have made different choices today with my time, letting God’s words to me yesterday sink in: run, write, read. Remember how I made you? Remember what you love to do, with Me? 

I had a mostly not-so-fun day yesterday. Not horrible, but I felt off; misplaced. I worked like crazy on some tasks that were not my favorite, tasks that had labels like SEO and image compression and file names. Yes, they were things I needed to get done–and we all have tasks like that, don’t we? Things we have to do that we may not especially relish, during our days?

But here was the problem:

I let fear take over and be the boss of me yesterday.

I literally stood at the counter in my kitchen–without eating, without drinking, without walking our poor dog, without exercising, without praying or talking to God or even sitting–for five hours. I had convinced myself that I needed to get these things checked off my list of things to do before I was able to the things I love to do, the things I am made to do, the things that help me more readily see and experience God and feel most like myself. More loving. More peace-filled. More beautiful. More me.

Do you ever feel you are making choices in how your spend your time more out of fear than out of the truth of knowing who you are and, especially, who God is? Do you spend much of your days working hard at tasks you know you need to complete but you struggle to find joy in–because of fear? Because of forgetting how you are loved and who, really, is in charge?

We live from a place of fear when we let our minds be focused on tasks of the world rather than the truth of the nature of God.

It is not easy to find joy in every single task we complete every day. On a daily basis, washing dishes and folding laundry and organizing papers are things I struggle to get too excited about. And yesterday I had spent the day doing some less-than-exciting but important tasks for our non-profit that I needed to complete. And there is nothing wrong with working hard. Some things, after all, just need to get done. But we need to surrender our thoughts to God about how we are spending our time, how we are approaching these tasks we are seeking to complete.

We must align our thoughts with God’s good nature and not with what the enemy wants us to focus on: fear.

I feared not being able to complete the whole task in the short amount of time I had, so I worked as fast as I could, without coming up for air. I feared not being valued, so I needed to prove it, through my efforts, through my productivity, through my accomplishing things. I feared falling behind and not being able to surrender what didn’t get done before the kids got home from school, when I want to focus on them. So I worked even harder, my mind racing, responding to fear rather than living in the reality of God’s love.

And I felt spiritually exhausted.

So when the text came in yesterday afternoon, from a friend, asking if I had spent time with God that day, it was a love-letter to me straight from Him. I knew what I needed to do: I stopped what I was doing. I closed the computer. I left the kitchen and checked the clock: 30 minutes until I go to pick up the kids. And I lay down on the floor.

God wants to remind us how we are rescued, how we are His, how we are loved because of who He is, not because of what we do.

When I slowed and turned towards God, thinking of Him, his face, His heart–and listening for his words for me, I realized how much more there is to a day than getting something crossed on a list. No matter how urgent the task feels, it is meaningless if we are completing the task without being centered on Christ.

Remember who you are; remember who I am. Come to Me. Stay with Me. Let Me cleanse you. Let Me energize you. Let Me renew your mind.

First, ask God to cleanse your mind.

Keeping our mind–our heart–centered on what is true about God frees our mind of fear, and we can live from a true place, a place of freedom. Let us do this:

Destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

If you are living this day, reacting to what needs to get done, fearful for what will happen if you don’t do it, surrender your mind to God. If you are feeling anxious, overwhelmed, distracted by not feeling good enough, or saddened by not knowing how you will get through all the tasks that need to get done, surrender your mind to God.

When we are moving through our days without turning, without pausing, without seeing God in the details, in the minutes, in the lists of things to do, we are living a life of fear, rather than a life centered on Christ. Remember this: We are made to live true lives, free and powerful in our identities in Christ. We are not made to cower from ploys made by an enemy who has already been conquered.

Next, ask God to focus you on what is true about Him.

I forget, too often, how Satan has already been defeated. I forget, too often, that God is immovable; always good, always kind, always loving. Because God is steadfast, because He doesn’t change in His love for us, we are conquerors, with Christ. Paul tells the church in Rome how we are more than conquerors; we are daughters and sons of God who get to take our place in a kingdom already won.

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:33-37).

When we succumb to fear, we are forgetting the nature of God, who reveals to us his nature, over and over, in our lives.

I think we just fail to listen. We fail to notice. We fail to heed God’s nature and instead heed fears that Satan–who, we must remember, is already conquered–tries to plant in our heads. And we are vulnerable to Satan planting seeds of doubt and fear into our minds when our thoughts are not surrendered to God.

So I write this to myself today–reminding myself to surrender my mind to God. And although the list of things to get done isn’t any shorter today (because when is it shorter, really?), I have made it a priority to do the things that God has made to do, the things He has made me to love, so I can more easily turn my mind and heart to Him. So today, I have been outside, with the sun on my face. I have written and listened for His voice. Tonight, with my family by my side, I will ask God to help me sit down, and read, and not worry if not all the dishes are put away or the house is perfectly straightened up.

Look to Me. Remember Me. Turn to Me and stay.

Holding my thoughts captive to God means making choices with my time–intentionally doing things that help me experience God’s love for me. And this helps me remember Him. And then, again, I remember how I am free.

What is one practical way you choose to surrender your mind to God?