Finding Home: Part One #1

 

Home. Dorothy clicked her shiny red heels and declared there was no place like it. She was probably right. For better or for worse, whether nostalgic or stressful, thoughts of home evoke strong emotions.

I didn’t realize this the first time I led a writing workshop. When I entered the classroom I shared with the marriage course teacher, I picked up all the boxes of tissues scattered around the room. They may have been tapping nerves in the marriage workshop, but I didn’t suspect we’d be sniffling tears in an intro to life- writing class.

I thought we’d break the ice, get to know each other by doing a simple warm-up about something we were all familiar with—home.  After writing for a few minutes the group shared their thoughts.

The first woman reached deep into the apple pie-grandma moments in our lives. We smiled and nodded our understanding. The second woman wrote of darker things, harsh and disturbing. We straightened in our chairs and shook off our own discomforts. The third woman read three words. She faltered. Started over. Then burst into tears. Not the quiet, slipping-down-your-cheek kind, but the jerking, sobbing, smear-your-mascara ones. She couldn’t continue, but the next woman did. By the time she finished, I had passed around all the boxes of tissues.

Although most described physical scenes from their childhoods, what they were really expressing were their longings for those intangibles like beauty, and safety, and acceptance, and belonging. The things that make a place home, regardless if it is an adobe hut or a Tudor on Main. The things we spend a lifetime searching for.

For some of us finding home manifests in a literal move from one place to another. North Americans are a particularly restless lot, the average person moving about fourteen times in a lifetime. But for others, finding home is a move from an old life to a new. Whether you’re an addict getting clean, or an alcoholic with two weeks’ of meetings under her belt instead of a six pack, the stranger in church on Sunday morning, or the one new in town, although the dynamics are different, one thing is the same: you’ve left a life behind; forward is a hope, hazy with promises to which you cling, but now, here and now, can be one lonely stretch of place.

And you wonder if you will ever find home.

I belong to those restless ones who’ve moved their tent pegs many times, my physical places often mirroring a spiritual search. My mother recognized this early on and advised: “Marcia, what you’re looking for is in your own backyard.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. Maybe it was as Spurgeon says: “He who communes with God is always at home.” I have no doubt this is true, like I how I now know this world is not my home. But before you can commune with God, you first have to meet Him.

Here’s how my search began:  By counting off prayers on little white beads and confessing the week’s sins on Saturday nights to the holy man behind the screen who gave me penances to recite that would discount time spent in purgatory; by sitting in the front row and raising my hand before the others because I studied and memorized to know all the answers; by heeding the advice of the nun who  said to never make out for more than two minutes because then it was a mortal sin instead of a venial one; by being a glory girl, and honor student, and Junior Miss winner, and the first in the family to go to college; by studying the secrets of ancient religions and kneeling before a Hindu shrine with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to receive a mantra that would open doors to cosmic consciousness and maybe bodily levitation; by chewing mushrooms of the non-packaged sort that set my brain to perceiving things that moved and shone where nothing had before; by tracking the stars treks and times in hopes of finding why I was and what I would be; by throwing off the supposed shackles of unliberated woman and sleeping in beds of strangers and discarding lovers as carelessly as yesterday’s laundry; by living in a tepee and cooking by campfire and staring at mountain sunsets, yearning for beauty to sprout in my soul like the seeds I buried in black earth; by crying alone as I packed for yet another journey, “This time God, show me truth;”by moving across the country to be with a man who might yet love me and finding instead the One who did.

Thank you for taking time to stop by. Please join in over the next few weeks as we explore aspects, both physical and spiritual, of finding home and our encounters with the God of My Mistakes.

Marcia

There May Be Seasons of Holes In The Wall And Stubby Stumps Before The Vision Blooms

The hole in a wall

My husband is very sporting about having to manpower my ideas. First, he’s just that kind of guy. Second, he trusts my vision, even when he doesn’t quite see it himself.

 Now that’s not to say I don’t have to initiate things before he gets the picture—like the time he came home from a trip and found a pile of broken sheetrock in the driveway, the remains of a wall I had wanted to remove.                                                   

 Usually the steps to getting things done around the house go something like this:                                

·         First I initiate a negative observation—“Those fat, squatty, overgrown azaleas make this place look like a tired old grandma house.”  I let this idea simmer a few days.                                                                                                                                                                   

·          Then I supply the positive vision—“I can just see some different shaped shrubs, lacey ones, different heights mixed in. Freshen the place up.”  At this point Bob agrees but is not moved to action.                                                                                                                                                                                                         

·         So a  few days later I give him a visual—He comes home to find several of the previously bushy azaleas now reduced to naked little clumps, waving their stumpy stubs from a mound in the ground. Just waiting for Bob to remove them.                                                             

That’s how we work together—I see the possibilities beyond the hole in a wall and Bob sees how to do it. But I know I wouldn’t have the nerve to knock out walls or denude the front yard if I wasn’t sure my husband trusted me and would come alongside and fix my mistakes or supply the muscle when I couldn’t. If I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t berate or blame me if I screwed up.

Sometimes I’ve wondered what the Lord thought about some of my decisions, not that He would berate or blame, but would He really work “all things together for good?” Would He shelve me and leave me to my own devices? Or would He find a way to show me He was still The God of My Mistakes?

So many times along the way, I have received encouragement from the life of King David to trust the Lord with the outcome of a situation, whether deserved, mistaken, or unjust.  One example that comes to mind is when David was fleeing his son Absalom.

Shimei, a man from Saul’s family, takes advantage of David’s weakened condition, runs alongside the entourage and hurls stones and epithets at David. Can you imagine the wrath of the Secret Service if someone did that to the President? Some of David’s men wanted to take Shimei out, but David restrained them saying, “Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me, and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today” (2 Samuel 16: 11,12).

Oh that we would live with such confidence in God and His vision for us.

During the next few weeks I am going to talk about some of the mistakes I worried would cost me big time with God, and what He showed me.

There may be seasons of holes in the wall and stubby stumps before the vision blooms, but nothing trumps a contrite heart. 

The vision for the hole in the wall

This I call to mind and therefore I have hope—“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”(Lamentations 3:20-23).

I invite you also to share any stories from your own life that testify to the God of My Mistakes.m And thank you for coming by.

Marcia

 (PS Sorry for format problems--still can't post using Firefox, only with IE)

Chasing After God With Jennie Allen



Jennie Allen

 In the past few posts I've mentioned, Chase, a new Bible study I received for review from Thomas Nelson. As soon as I opened the box and examined the beautiful, uncluttered workbook, the stack of cards containing reflective questions, and the DVD composed of short segments from the heart of the author, I knew I had to grab a couple of friends to try out one of the lessons with.

It's just that kind of study. One that invites you into fellowship with each other and with the Lord. Jennie's direct, down to earth passion for God comes through both in the DVD segments and in the lessons (As soon as we started the first segment, one of my friends said, "I like her already.")

This is not a mark-up-your Bibles, deep study for intellectual nuggets as much as it is an interactive challenge to examine your relationship with God. I was concerned that the reflective questions might lead to lots of navel gazing but Allen counters this possibility by providing pivotal Scripture verses against which every question and answer is weighed. My friends and I appreciated the "less" approach: a few verses for reflection and possession rather than a pageful forgotten.

The topics: identity, courage, obedience, belief, repentance, surrender, chase and chased down, pull you into the heart of relationship with God.

A beautiful study both in presentation and content for women's groups large or small.

Now let's hear what Jennie has to say about it.

Why is the story of David in Chase one that you feel women today need to hear?

jennie: David is the wild, passionate, warrior king, but something about the way he related to God has wrecked me. His view of God was so big. David actually believed God and he lived like it. I think as a generation of women, we are longing for the same lives. We want to believe God is real and to live like it.

This is not a study for people wanting to play it safe... This study messes with you because we all are chasing things other than God, and when you look into the life of someone chasing God himself... God alone, you start craving that. I want a life like David’s, brave and dependent and full of worship. He had a relationship with God unlike any other in Scripture; honestly, unlike any other I’ve ever seen. I want to know God like he did and trust God like he did.

How can small group leaders, groups of friends and others use your studies, like Chase, to dig deeper into God’s Word?

jennie: Every study begins with Scripture, and the entire time you are going back to God’s Word together, but this is a lot more than an intellectual examination of Scripture. My prayer is that this would be a place where truth and experience come together. I designed these studies to take women from the point of understanding the truth all the way to the point of living that truth.

From the personal questions to the projects that make you face your doubts about God.... it feels a little scary but I love that these studies push us to places of faith. There aren’t easy answers, and it makes us wrestle with God - not just check boxes and fill in blanks.

What do you hope that women discover most about themselves and about God after experiencing Chase?

jennie: I think a lot of us are tired and we would like to please God, but it feels like it would take a lot of effort to do that. Chase seems to be an experiment in what it is God wants from us. The more I understand what God has done, the more I quit striving and rest in Him. David rested in the work of God - in God’s favor - in the plans God had written for him. Whether you are running from God or working your tail off to please Him, this man’s journey will challenge your view of God.

You can visit Jennie at  http://www.jennieallen.com/

Blessings friends all over the world. I so appreciate that take time to stop by. May you have a weekend anchored in hope in the Living Lord.

 Marcia

Sharing Your Toothbrush—The Ultimate in Letting Go

After several years of comfortable independence, we have become an intergenerational household. Our adult daughter lives upstairs and recently, my father-in-law moved in downstairs. I wander around somewhere in the middle and try to convince my brain it can still function amidst other people’s comings and goings.

We gave Pa (how a man who never lived a day in the country acquired that title, I don’t know) our bedroom because it was downstairs and had an attached bath. The problem is, once he is up and about, he can never find his way back to his bedroom—or bathroom.

He always misses the doorway until we say, “Take a left, Pa, take a left,” and then he laughs and says, “Oh yeah.”

Every day after breakfast, Pa announces, “Well, I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

As he heads off, I call out, “Take a left,” and he disappears down the hall. After about the fourth morning of this routine, I noticed Pa coming out of the little half-bath where I stash my toothbrush. 

 Alarm bells rang in my head. He didn’t!

 When my husband came home, I told him to ask his father to show him where he brushed his teeth.  With all due certainty, Pa marched straight to our bathroom and pointed to the toothbrush—my toothbrush!

 Now, I don’t begrudge him my bedroom, or time, or attention. I am willing to bring him along everywhere we go, and I am willing to let the Lord work out servant hood in me, but share my toothbrush?!

 Funny thing is, as gross as the thought, it really didn’t send me into a mouthwash gargling frenzy (although I did promptly hide a new brush). 

 Perhaps all those months of living in Guatemala without a refrigerator toughened me up, or maybe, just maybe, the Lord is showing me what I so long to live—grace received, grace extended.

 And someday, when I wander into a little bathroom and brush what’s left of my pearly whites with someone else's brush, I pray that grace be passed on to me.

                                                   *********

 Because of Blogger problems (unable to post this week in Firefox because of a BX error) I have postponed until Friday my review of Chase, a Bible study for women who desire the heart of God.

Author Jennie Allen also will be here in interview.

Blessings, friends near and far, 

Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.--Romans 12:10-11 

Photo credit

Who Am I?

 Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and I go so far back I remember when they were just a bag of body parts and my parents had to supply the potato. It was much better when the Potato Heads came with their plastic bodies though. 

I still remember cupping that smooth, hard, globular form as I pondered which lips, which hat, and shoes would transform a spud into a teacher, shopper, mother or beauty (well, maybe not that).

With each different accessory, my potato people would take on new identities. Until I stripped them back to what they were: bare naked spuds.

At so many stages of my own life, I have mistaken the accessories of my particular roles for identifiers of who I was. 

From the time I carried my metal lunchbox across the threshold of the first-grade classroom until decades later when I submitted my life to Christ, I responded to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” thinking that whatever answer I came up with would the one golden egg that defined who I was and supplied my source of self esteem.

Even as a Christian, I have confused my missionary hat, teacher hat, pastor’s wife hat, mother hat and good-girl-now hat with who I am. I know, of course, all the facts of my new identity: child-of-God, royal priesthood, chosen people. I’ve recited over and over, “It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me.”  But it has been an unfolding process to grasp the tangible reality of these truths through the everyday down and dirty and high and lofty moments of life.

Graciously, the Lord has led me through times of stripping, so that I could see more clearly who He is, and in that light, who I am.

Like sunlight passing over beach sand at different times of day, glinting off now a shell, later a crystal grain of sand, the Holy Spirit shows us things in the afternoon light we couldn’t see in morning’s.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.-1 John 3:2

I love how author, Jennie Allen, opens her Bible study, Chase: Chasing after the heart of God, with this examination of Identity. She takes us right to the stripping place: “As long as I am looking into myself for my identity, I will either be self-righteous about how great I am, which would be inaccurate, or distraught by the reality of the wreck I actually am.”

“The gospel steals all self esteem: “For I know nothing good dwells in me. . .—Romans 7:18

And then Jennie leads us to the precious understanding that as imperfect as our jars of clay are, we are each “uniquely shaped to hold the Spirit of God for different purposes, each with unique marks and cracks and broken places.”

And I love this: “And through those spaces God shines out.”

Ha! Not the “perfect places. Not the all-decked out Mrs. Potato Head Sunday dress places.

The God places in us, given by Him.

Sometimes, often, really, I overwhelm myself with words, information, or Scripture verses, erroneously thinking that more is better. One of the things I appreciate about Chase is the simplicity. Each question for reflection is weighed in light of a biblical truth –one-by-one, side-by-side. It causes me to pause and absorb the weight of truth instead of skimming over the surface of a page full of verses. Although Chase is interactive and reflective, it stands no chance of navel gazing because each idea is examined in light of God’s perspective.

Later,I will have more to say about this study, which I received from Thomas Nelson for review, but for now, this week, as we look to the Person and Moment that gives us our identity, I’m enjoying the light glinting off the biblical truths about who I am because of Christ.   

                                        

 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!—1 John 3:1

 Thank you for taking time to come by. It is my heart and prayer each time I write that someone stopping here would be encouraged about the Lord's unfailing love and perfect purpose in your life.

Blessings,

Marcia

And the broom stood on end with the egg

 I am sure there are some meaningful lessons that can be drawn on this day of “balance” between light and darkness, (certainly no such thing spiritually), but I don’t want to go there right now. 

No, what I want to do is go to the kitchen and see if one of my farmland’s best eggs will live up to its mythological potential and stand on its end in celebration of the spring equinox.

At first I didn’t seem to have a balanced egg in the bunch that would cooperate, but after several attempts, I found the secret to success over at Bad Astronomy .

 Of course, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I succumbed to the temptation to stand the broom, even though it’s angled, mind you, on end also. There they stood in a kind of “and the dish ran away with the spoon,” sort of moment. I left them there, side by side, for my skeptical husband to find when he came in. 

Although this March day here in South Carolina isn’t particularly bursting with springiness, it is a far cry from the many dreary March days I spent in the Northeast. In fact, I take a moment to send encouragement to my friends there—friends still shoveling snow and gasping for sunshine. Today! All is equal—light and dark, and better news yet, tomorrow light gains its edge.

But all this talk of light and dark is stirring up ideas that I don’t want to explore right now, so I am simply going to suggest you hop on over to NOAA  and see a great satellite shot of this beautiful Earth at equinox.  And then go stand an egg!

Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.

Bless the LORD, friends.

Marcia