Fragrance? Free!

Has someone you passionately love ever treated you like an enemy? Ever sat across a courtroom facing someone you longed to give your life for, who was set on destroying yours for the sake of his or her own perceived happiness? My heart has cried out, “God, do you have any idea how much this hurts? Do you have any idea how I feel?” And then I remember in a certainty that stills my cries that yes, he does, because in answer to my first questions, he both was, still is, and did.

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past three years, it’s how broken God’s heart is precisely because he ferociously loves us, we who are bent on doing things our way for our own ends and would be quite happy if he’d look the other way, or better yet, go away, and let us. As much as I love Jesus, more often that I’d like to admit I ask him (without realizing I’m doing it) to vacate his throne as Lord of Life and let me call the shots.

That’s why Jesus had to come, why there is this event called Christmas, and why it is inextricably tied to the crucifixion and the resurrection and Jesus as our King and high priest of a new covenant. In short, yes he knows exactly how I feel because he felt it.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4: 14-16.

I need to remember that truth. One year after Christmas I asked my husband to split a piece of the trunk of the aromatic fir tree we’d admired for weeks and turn that log into a cross-shaped candle holder for us to use on our table at both Christmas and Easter, looking forward and looking backward to see both as one astonishingly loving whole, offered by a heart of wholeness who wants that wholeness for each of us.

Can a heart be both broken and whole? When it’s God’s, yes, and here is my disclaimer: in no way do I measure or explain God by my experience. Rather, I understand or at least try to make sense of my experience through who he is.

Thirty-nine years of loving someone who would turn against and reject me makes no sense. Yes, interject the concepts of co dependence and misunderstanding motives and differing love languages, and the destruction can be explained, but it still makes no sense. There is no victory, no glorifying God, no ”happily ever after” that ends any truly satisfying story – and we all want out stories to end well. I will not dishonor anyone by verbally patting you on the head and tritely mouthing, “Well, if you learned something, it was worth it.”

“Better luck next time” still sounds like second place or a limp consolation prize, and all of us want desperately to be winners. The only thing that makes this make any sense for me is if I’ve somehow come to know and experience more deeply the immeasurable love of the Heart who was rejected so I truly and eternally never would be. A friend recently told me – and yes, I did know this, though I wish I didn’t first-hand - that a rose gives off its greatest aroma when it’s crushed. From my vantage point stuck here in this time, honestly, that stinks.

This only makes sense and I only bear it if what comes from my crushing is the pure fragrance of Jesus’ love that can somehow linger as the scent of truth and validation in other people’s lives. For that I’ll taste the tears; for that I’ll be “hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed and hang on to the promise that “God, who said,’ Let light shine out of darkness,’ WILL MAKE his light shine in (my) heart to give (me) the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  2 Corinthians 4:7-9, 6

Did God do this? Did he destroy our marriage? No, all that junk that people write so many self-help books about did. Selfishness did. Thinking of a lover like an enemy did. Can God make anything good come from it? I still fervently hope for much better than I can ask or imagine, but for starters I gladly take this essence and oil and fragrance of how relentlessly God loves me and desires relationship with me. He did, still does, and always will. Now that’s validation and deep reward, a “happily ever after” that does come true for me and for you if you let Jesus take his throne and welcome you to sit in arms that felt what you feel for the sake of  forever with you.   That's the ending I long for: to be a winner just by letting Jesus love give me deep wholeness! 

With a smile I hear him say,"You want a piece of me?" and I shout ,"Yes!"

Your  "...BUT ..." to move: Jesus, this _______________________ really stinks. You know it; you felt it yourself, BUT you felt it so that I can know _____________________________________________. Truly, make my life a Designer fragrance, and you can call it ________________________________________________________!

Take to Make my Dad Glad

Overcome with the holiness of God so powerfully that I almost had to pull off the freeway! It’s funny how God sneaks up on you and takes your breath away. The only analogy I have is the science experiment I’ve seen at several science centers where sucking the air out of a chamber causes a floating feather to fall to the bottom as though made of lead, but that analogy completely fails in this instance. I suddenly felt I wanted none of me, but all of him filling me. His presence so spilled over that I had to find someone or someplace to share it.

The trail that led me to this moment began last week in a Christian singles course. The topic this month was the differing brains of men and women and how that shapes our differences and understandings of each other. The guys shared what men valued about being male, and the women shared what they valued about being female. Men truly enjoy being leaders, action a, results, and success oriented, taking the point position, carefully calculating risk versus outcome when it comes to the people and things they hold in their care. It was an “Oh my gosh, it’s who they are, what they need, and how they’re validated” eureka moment for us women. Then one man raised a question about Jesus: he was a man here on earth, so did that mean his male brain bound his thinking and relating with others? A quick and passionate debate erupted about both male and female qualities emanating from the totality of God, ending in our admission that all we can see from the Gospels is that Jesus was a man of action and purpose who was totally relational, leading yet nurturing, analytical and yet completely integrated between the hemispheres of his human brain – the answer beyond our knowing.

But it set my mind musing two days later as the reality hit me: for a man to take on the responsibility of providing for a wife and family is a huge act of courage and commitment, all our cultural expectations aside, and at its purest core completely selfless. ”That’s God!” I realized, and extrapolating from the light bulb moment in the singles group when the truth hit us all that we actually value the differences in each other, it dawned on me that the part of God from which masculinity was birthed actually delights in courageously, faithfully and selflessly providing for his children.

“You mean you LIKE to be Jehovah Jireh, my provider, my healer, my strength, my wisdom, my life-giver? It rocks your socks, God, to be my source, all I need, more than I expect or can ask for?”

That’s when his holiness hit me: a pure love that doesn’t need anything from me or anybody else to be completely whole, YET who chooses to give to me just because of who he is. And I had to look for the nearest off ramp - encounters with cosmic reality distract my driving – and like a child bouncing eagerly and trustingly for another ride on her Daddy’s shoulders ask for more, more, more of who “I AM” is and wants to be in my life to give him the greatest pleasure possible.

“Fill me so there’s none of me and all of You!” I cried, responding in my usual over-the-top passion when I realize anything new about God. 

I am not being sexist: when I read “son” in the Bible, I recognize it means “child,” I know many women provide for their families, many men are nurturing. And yes, I know men can flake out and abandon and abuse their families, and yes I know women can grasp and cling and nag, but that’s the twisting power of that archaic-sounding word called sin that perverts in us the best we were created to be out of a heart so whole, so vastly secure, so deeply loving that He wants us to be the best and all we long to be, an accurate, powerful reflection of who our Father is. The Prodigal (meaning lavishly bountiful) Father painfully permitted the Prodigal (meaning extravagantly wasteful) Son to run out the full extent of the consequences of his folly, but the Father’s heart was always set, bent, intent on and committed to welcoming his son back to the fullness of his identity in the family. And how the Father rejoiced when his child returned! Now he could bless again!

“’My son,’ the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Luke 15:31-32

I'm re-reading Cindy Jacobs' book on intercessory prayer Possessing the Gates of the Enemy. Zephaniah 3:17 leaped out to me in the chapter on the power of praise: "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy (the Hebrew word gwul, meaning to spin around under the influence of violent emotion) over thee with singing." Cindy writes that as she thought about why God commands us to praise him, "Right in the middle of my thoughts came the words, Am I selfish? I  sensed this question was from the Lord. I replied immediately,'No, Lord, You are never selfish. It is impossible for you to be selfish.'  Then why do you think that I desire to be praised?  I considered this for a while. Before I gave my answer He went on, Cindy, I want you to praise me because when you do, I become what you have praised me for . . . I come into your situation and meet your needs." (Jacobs, Cindy, Possessing the Gates of the Enemy, Chosen Books 1994, 189-190)

I want to drink more from a deeper well till I’m filled and washed, inside and out, with Living Water. I want to find and be filled with the best of me, and I know somehow that comes only from the fullness of God in me, so I'm going to ask big time. I hope that counter-cultural need and desire in me gives my Father pure happiness to meet!

A ". . . but . . . " to move:  Father God, my life doesn't look like you want to bless me right now. I see a big circumstantial disconnect between the reality I'm living in and what I believe your Word says you want for me, especially in ___________________________________,  and frankly I've sarcastically said,"Oh, really?" to you more than once. I'm diving down the freeway at 75 mph trying to make good things happen out of my own sense of responsibility for the outcome,  BUT I will believe you're more ready to give good things to me than I am to receive them, so I dare to ask you now to ____________________________________________________________________________________ to make my life a victorious, glorious reflection of who you are!

Stand on his feet . . .

No clear path, everything that seemed promising turned into a short walk to a false hope, every interview turned into a discouraging  “You were our second choice,” too much unsettled and my life hinging on what I can’t make happen for myself. I want to follow God’s will, and the last thing I want to do is start whacking in panic through the underbrush of the tangle that is my life right now with an “I guess I’ll have to do it myself” mental machete. It seems I’ve done that and only wandered my way further off the trail, deeper into disappointments that feel every bit like a detour from God’s intention for my life. At least I HOPE he intended good for me, but when the lyrics of the old song “God will make a way where there seems to be no way” sound more like a taunt than encouragement, what is a person of faith to do?

In incredible opposition to our western culture of self-reliance and self-determination, I think some of the sweetest words to God’s ears must surely be “Father, I CAN’T!” As I threw my hands heavenward in complete frustration and defeat today, what floated down was one of my earliest delights as a small child: reaching up to put my hands in my Dad’s, planting my feet on his big shoes, and going for a ride on my father’s feet. It’s vaguer than a memory, nothing but a wisp of simple knowing, but I know felt treasured and safe then before the harsh realities of the world threw me off balance. My Daddy wouldn’t walk me off a cliff or into oncoming traffic; he knew where he was going, and he was having fun taking me for a ride. I sensed his pleasure in this act of trusting bonding. A decal on the rear window of a car in front of me this morning reinforced the message: “Semper Fi – always faithful.”

I witnessed the same kind of trusting bonding with our first dog Amy, decades ago. A tiny puppy, the black speck of fur that she was all but disappeared into knee-deep Michigan snow with every bound as she ploughed ahead of us, trying to break trail.  Her strength gave out in just a few hundred yards, and what she did next both completely surprised me and convinced me she possessed uncanny intelligence: Amy turned and leaped directly onto my husband’s snowshoes, landing and looking up with trusting puppy eyes as if knowing where greater strength, direction and security lay. “I tried it my way in my strength. That didn’t work at all the way I planned. Now take me where you want to go.” I still have those snowshoes in the garage here in the desert, a reminder to me that I have a place to rest when my “woof” is worn out.

How often I wish I had the simple trust of a dog or a three-year-old! Because I wish I did, I decided to do something radical today after yet another job interview: I reached my arms up again and curved my fingers around two unseen and unfelt hands that once were stained with rivers of blood, picked up my right foot, then my left, and in my choosing planted my feet on the two that walked on water.

For me, I sense that my struggle of the past three years is largely about HIM and who I believe he is. Maybe I’m your test case and this blog merely records some experimental data. This is your journey, Jesus. I’m pretty sure the only way I can keep my feel from straying off the trail away from what God wants for me is to “stand on his feet” and let him do some walking for me. It would be totally crazy if I didn’t recognize – or in this season, against all the earthly evidence to the contrary just decide to believe – that God is my loving Father, he knows where he’s going, and it isn’t off a cliff. If I can’t trust the economy, if I can’t trust my resume or online job search engines (which all too frequently post jobs that have already been filled), I guess I’m going to have to trust my Heavenly Father.

How odd will it be if this is what he’s been waiting for: to delight in taking me for a ride and bonding us so closely that I’ll take this memory of his pleasure into eternity when I REALLY SEE his smile.

“They will come with weeping, they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s (and MY) father . . . .” (Jeremiah 31:9)

“He will not let your foot slip –“ (Psalm 212:3)

“If the LORD delights in a (wo)man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.” (Psalm 37:23)

A “ . . . but . . . “ to move:  God, this may be the craziest thing I’ve ever done. It certainly seems senseless, abut I have to admit that I can’t make any change or dent or progress in ______________________________ ,BUT here goes: I’m going to reach up for your hands, plant my feet on your big shoes, and trust you to take me _______________________________________________________. I’d love to hear your chuckle as you lead me to ____________________________________________________________________________________________.

Mr "Good Wrench" and "Good Advice"

Sorry all that this is just a quick glimpse into what the Spirit said to me Tuesday, August 15. Driving to work I heard Lysa Terkeurst and Amanda Carroll on KLOVE radio, Lisa talking about her new book Unglued and about ratcheting our anger when we're repeatedly offended. 

Oh, Eureka! Exactly what my beloved did over 34 years and more of our life together: put his arm to the wrench and ratchet down on the nuts of anger, bitterness, contempt, offense, unforgiveness, wounding, and self-preserving seeking on the tires of his life, so tightly that he can't let go of his wounded emotions and cultural-norm "look out for yourself" choices. No wonder he's stuck!

A very able engineer, he always warned me and our sons not to let a tire dealer use the pneumatic wrench to snug down the bolts on the nuts of our wheels too tightly, or we'd never be able to break them loose if we had to change a flat on the road. Ah, but beloved, you did just that, and I almost did until I saw the lies I was believing about your motivation in the things you said and did, and started believing that you DID love me in the ways you could. 

Oh, the PNEUMA of the Holy Spirit to break free the lock-down on our "lug nuts" and fix our flats, give us re-treads or just plain new tires to keep us moving in God's direction and purposes! This may be a copyrighted phrase, BUT I praise " Mr. Good Wrench" Jesus and the Holy Spirit to do the releasing for us what we can't do ourselves if we let him!

And the "good advice"? Disclaimer: I am no one's Savior, I'm heartily glad Jesus took that role upon himself, and I surrender that right and role to him. I was wondering, though,  how Jesus would have responded in the Garden of Gethsemane to, and how our lives now and forever would play out if Jesus took the advice of, some solid psychologists and counselors who ought to have been there in his agony instead of the snoozing Peter, James and John. Can you hear their advice to him, like the advice given to me?

"It's time to look out for yourself."
"Do what's best for you."
"Take care of yourself."
"You can't change them. They have their own free will."
"You need to establish healthy boundaries for yourself."

And the best one, the one I hear caregivers say at the preschool every day : "Just walk away."

How would YOU have counseled Jesus to respond in his situation?   What if he had? Aren't you glad he didn't?

I AM!

So flying in the face of what sounds "right" is our fully functional, not dysfunctional, Lord and lover of our souls Jesus.


Here's the world's best ". . . But . . ." to pray:  I was lost in my selfishness and self-seeking frantic attempts to validate myself and find love, and I've wounded other people in the search, BUT JESUS YOU DIDN'T WALK AWAY! You thought of me and gave yourself, and in YOUR GIFT I have validation and amazing love now and foreverJesus, Mr. Good Wrench, put the arm of your love on the lug nuts of my anger and bitterness over ____________________________ and break me free, change my heart, fill me with the penuma - air- breath - of the Holy Spirit so my heart is free to love ________________________________.

Ask only if you mean it . ..

Only if you want to carry the love . . . 

Oh, the relentless heart of God! Four years ago I asked Jesus to give me his heart for my beloved when I felt my feelings for him slipping. I knew it was wrong to let my heart's flame burn low, and I knew it was my responsibility to "guard  your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" (Proverbs 4:23). My charge alone to guard my heart and thoughts. Yes, that process began in me before the deepest betrayal of my life, and I'm grateful it did. Two things I've learned: 1) no one can kill your heart, but you can and do when you poison it with resentment, unforgiveness, selfishness, believing your own misperceptions, bitterness and contempt, and 2) don't asksJesus for his heart for someone unless you want implanted in you a relentless love that lays down your own wounds to look deeply into the inmost heart of another life and value that person with a love and with forgiveness that WILL NOT be quenched, period. 

It is that blazing passion for us that bared the back and stretched out the hands of Jesus to take the scourge and the nails and say, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing."  Love like that, in those circumstances, at the hands of betrayers and despisers?   "YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME" is what "rational" people who look out for themselves say. Look out for yourself, do what feels good and move on and cut your losses when it doesn't. That's what most rational people claim and advise to be mental and emotional health. But a note to us in the self-preserving, personally validating culture that is rapidly consuming the world: some choices are not good, period. 

Look out for yourself? That's not what I hear Jesus say, and this is where it gets hard and in your paradigm: "You have heard that it was said,'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' BUT I tell you:Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons (and daughters) or your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:43-45)


Do what feels good for you. I remember the two older boys who held me under in the deep end of the pool when I was nine years old. I'm guessing it felt good to them to exercise their power and watch me flail. I frankly thought I was going to die. That's what we do to each other, sometimes on purpose, more often unintentionally (that would be me in some dumb mistakes): we hold on to hurts, lash out and lacerate, exercise our rights and power, want our way and our ends by any means necessary to preserve what we think feels good for us. We see the leak in the boat and decide to take the one life vest and slide overboard instead of helping plug the hole; we look at the one - okay, even two - engine(s) out in a four-engine plane, put on a parachute and bail, rather than putting our body weight to the rudder with the pilot and landing the thing safely. 

But the heart of Jesus is relentless, and he comes up loving even after being held under by our "I'm perfectly capable of and justified in and frankly enjoy doing life my way,thank you very much." He was betrayed and despised, and we still do it to him, BUT HE DID WHAT WAS FAITHFULLY LOVING ANYWAY and came up gloriously victorious, forgiving and giving and breaking down the walls that kept us from the longing to receive us arms of God. Love doesn't always feel good. TOTALLY IRRATIONAL!

Yes, God's love IS IRRATIONAL - why on earth would HE give himself for the messes that are us -  which makes up a huge chunk of what makes God Holy, and wholly Righteous  and Good and Pure, wholly matchless, wholly unfathomable and wholly breathtaking. 

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

IRRATIONAL? Absolutely! He plugged the hole, put his weight to the rudder, all for relationship with us.

Oh, yes, I'm co-dependent: dependent on this Love Incarnate for my next heartbeat and breath, holding his hand for dear life as I go into the future single with no hope of ever being able to earn enough to support myself, and glad to wrap the tassels of my prayer shawl - his "wings," his promises - around my hands clasped by HIS as the hand of bride and bridegroom join together in the wedding ceremony. God binds himself to you by his promises and his Son; is that a thought to set your head and heart and rationality reeling? The Creator who spoke infernos of stars and dark matter and gravity and neutrinos and optic nerves and DNA and embryos into existence binds himself to you when you come to him through Jesus. God binds himself to YOU! Then he has the audacity to call you Hephzibah (delighted in) and Beulah (chosen) and rejoices over you! (Isaiah 62: 3-5)

So go ahead and ask for that heart, but be prepared to receive a passionate, unquenchable love for those who've done you the most wrong. It will hurt. If that prospect offends you, don't even ask Jesus for his heart for another. But if you dare to, what he gives you  in return is a heart free from bitterness, contempt, pride, anger, unforgiveness, and all the wounds that chained you to the pain of offenses. 

Did it get me my husband back? No - dare I risk the wrath of my friends who want good for me in saying not yet. And I admit maybe not ever, my marriage and hopes laid on the altar, but if Jesus asks me to be Hosea, I will be and will rejoice. Go figure when you dare to ask Jesus for his heart . . . . If Jesus doesn't, then I rejoice that my heart is bound by the promise of my Kinsman Redeemer Boaz himself and his gift to me of a piece of his precious - a word far too small for his indescribable- love.  

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God,because God is love.  . . This is love: not that we loved God BUT that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, BUT if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."  (1 John 4: 7-8, 10-12)

Beloved, as John the Beloved would say, that's a risk worth taking and a love worth bearing.