The wrestle

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voscamp

It is so good.  It speaks to the depths of how I feel, struggle and wrestle with my own humanity and the things of God.  

"You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemis-though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God and yet God's beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.   Blasphemer!  What compels me to name these moments upheavals and annoyances instead of grace and gift?  Why deprive myself of joy's oxygen?  The swiftness and starkness of the answer startle.  Because you believe in the power of the pit. Really? (I love wickedness) Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?  That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? Why else get angry?  Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want?  When I choose -and it is a choice- to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness?  Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective- more expedient- than giving thanks?    This daily joy struggle, above all, it is a Jacob-wrestle to see God in the faces we face."  

I was the biggest blasphemer in the room last night.  Although I thought it was them.  Anger poured out of me over injustice to another and all the while I was doing the very thing to them that they had done to the youngest one.  She had a need, to be cared for when hurt, they mocked and showed no concern.   They had a need also, to deny self and have love, and I mocked and showed no concern.  Only that they do what I think is best.  Only that they "see" from the great angry outburst.  They cannot see apart from the grace to see.  Love makes us see, wrath is not what we get from God so that we can see, it was love.  Love.  

Hagar called God the God who sees me.  Then she forgot.   I know He is the God who sees me but I forget too.  It is the giving of thanks that causes me to remember.  

Father, thank you for the cross grace for yesterday and for today and for tomorrow.  Thank you for the struggle that causes me to wrestle with truth and find you there always.  Help me to see today, Grace is what I want, joy and thanksgiving, give me strength to choose Joy above the way of the fall.  Help me to see you..in the midst of this desert, to see the well that is right before my eyes and to drink of the water rather than thirst and die.  In Christ's name I pray, Amen.   

Prayer thoughts

Behold, he is praying.  Acts 9:11

This is the account of Saul praying and Ananias going to him because the Lord told him to.

Faith asks no signal from the skies

To show that prayers accepted rise.

Our Priest is in His holy place,

And answers from the throne of grace.

Morning and Evening

Do I believe in a God who rouses Himself just now and then to spill a bit of benevolence on hemorrhaging humanity?  A God who breaks through the  carapace of this orb only now and then, surprises us with a spared hand, a reprieve, from sickness, a good job and a nice house in the burbs and then finds Himself again too impotent to deal with all I see as suffering and evil?  A God of sporadic, random, splattering of goodness than now and then splatters across a gratitude journal?  Somebody tell me.........what are all the other moments?

And now this-that faith is not a once-in-the-past action, but faith is always a way of seeing, a seeking for God in everything.  And if the eyes gaze long enough to see God lifted in a thing, how can the lips not offer thanks. The truly saved have eyes of faith and lips of thanks.  Faith is in the gaze of a soul.  

The world I live in is loud and blurring and toilets plug and I get speeding tickets and the dog gets sick all over the back step and I forget everything and these six kids lean hard into me all day to teach and raise and lead and I fail hard and there are real souls that are at stake and how long do I really have to figure out how to live full of grace, full of joy,  before these six beautiful children fly the coop and my mothering days fold up quiet?  How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral? 

Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing.  

This is from One Thousand Gifts

These are the contemplations of my soul.  I know God is sovereign, good, loving, involved in all the details, fully capable to pull off His great and glorious plan but often I don't live as if I believe it.  My friend told me this week that her husband confronted her and said "you live like an armenian" Well my doctrinal mind says "NO!!!!!!"  and yet often I find myself there as well.  I wonder about this praying with eyes wide open, is there a connection to my living like I don't believe and my times of prayer?

Father, I want to pray like I know you.  Pray like I believe that nothing happens apart from you.  Pray with trust that you are not impotent in any manner, but that the plan of life, salvation, the plan for the ultimate glory of your Son to the plan of my simple life will be carried out just as you deem it to be.  I want to walk in a confidence that you are who you say you are, although I believe, help my unbelief in areas, remove the blinders of my sin, forgive me of my sin, lift me from the pit to see your glory.  Let me pray without ceasing.  Help me to cast my cares upon you for I am impotent to fix my world but you are not.  Amen 

Remembering my mom

My mom struggled really hard with prescription drug abuse after a knee injury. The last years of her life were pretty hard on us. She got a diagnosis of lung cancer and had her first surgery and all went well. After the second surgery, she came home feeling wonderful but several days later, she died. I guess the final thought was that she must have thrown a clot. She died at her home in bed. She was in Missouri at the time although she had lived in Florida with me for many years. Before the knee injury she was a wonderful grandma. It was and is hard to let go and live without a mama. I miss her terribly. Such a sad ending. She was only 56. She lived with so many regrets but she taught me much in those regrets and it has been a source of encouragement when I have faced hard things. I am thankful for that.