My Father's Sweater

I’m not sure how old I was when I claimed for my own and started wearing my Dad’s old brown cardigan sweater. I think I was around eleven, but I do know I continued to wrap myself in it till I was fifteen. I think I must have felt like I took on something of my father’s nature when I wore his sweater. It was soft with wide, flat ribs and moth holes in the sleeves – definitely not a “Mr. Rogers” sweater, but perfect to wear on chilly nights out in the garage.

That’s where you could find my Dad almost every night: at his workbench repairing something one of us had broken or building something amazing. I thought my Dad was the smartest man on the planet. None of my friends’ fathers sent Morse code messages on a radio or made science-fiction movie sound effects with a home-built Theremin. None of my friends got to watch miniature lightning shows in their garages from a Van Der Graaf Generator!

Somehow I felt secure in that sweater (and in on some great secrets) standing beside my father at his workbench, even when I had to stand on tiptoe to see what he was doing. I still associate the smell of hot solder and freshly sawed wood with Dad and can hear the sound of his table saw ripping through boards on their way to becoming furniture. He built a split-level ranch-style dollhouse for me, complete with a fireplace with hand-carved “bricks," a chandelier that worked, and real tiny shingles on the roof. Dad went through several very 1960’s phases, too, most of which involved the overpowering (and probably brain chemistry altering) fumes of melting plastic that became bunches of grapes and the clacking, conservation of momentum and energy-demonstrating plastic spheres of a “Newton’s Cradle.”

My father let me help him plane wood, drive nails into odd bits of scrap wood, and sweep up sawdust, all while wearing his old brown sweater. I got to help hold the ends of boards as he cut 2x4's and hold up walls as he framed and built a cabin for our family. When I was a sophomore in high school, Dad helped me draw out, saw, sand apply sealer to, and wrap with copper wire a walnut hardwood bangle that looked, very much before its time, very much like the Nike “swoop,”  onto a chain as a necklace. I felt so proud that my father was a builder and creator who guided me to create as I stood beside him, wrapped in his sweater, at his workbench.

Maybe those hours spent in Dad’s sweater standing at his side account for some of my freedom and desire for intimacy with God, my Heavenly Father. Oh, if I could, I’d love to stand beside my Father God at HIS workbench and see what HE is creating!

Do you know what’s cool? My Father God lets me help with his projects. In fact, he WANTS me to get involved! Those amazingly validating times when I get to speak some word of affirmation to another person or meet someone’s need absolutely delight me, because I sense that I’m standing at my Father’s side and can almost see him smile. What amazes me, though, is what God my Father gives me to wear while I’m at his bench: not an old brown sweater, but the righteousness of Jesus! 

“God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” Romans 3:21-22

“I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.” Isaiah 61:10

It takes my breath away sometimes when other people see my Father through me! Oh, God, let me stand beside you at your workbench as you create beauty, goodness, honor, kindness, integrity, compassion, truth, love, and living faith in the lives in this world so precious to you. Guide my hands and heart and words and prayers to help you. And wow, thank you that through faith in Jesus I get to wear a garment that looks like YOUR nature! You ARE the smartest Father in existence, and I want to be more like you. Thanks that you invite me to spend time by your side!

A “. . . But . . .” to pray: Oh, ABBA, Daddy, Father, you are incredible! You make "the music of the spheres,"  and real lightning .  You created vine, flower and grapes, the laws of motion and conservation of energy! Jesus, you told us you are creating not just a cabin, but many mansions in Heaven for us. You repair and rebuild what your children break. All creation, all wisdom, all power, all authority, all goodness, all truth, all justice, all righteousness, all life comes from your hands that are still building, repairing, creating. I may feel small, untalented, inarticulate, incapable, BUT standing by your side wearing YOUR righteousness, I know you’re calling me to ______________________ beside you and I know you’ll teach me how as I put my hands and heart to your work of  _____________________________. I hope others see YOU in me!

WHOSE Blood Bought Me?

How I treasure those brief flashes of deep, gut insight that hit me much less frequently than I long for.  Do you know what I mean: times when you feel for a Nano-second that you’ve touched a deep truth about God, and you wish with everything in you that it would engulf you so you could immerse yourself in its power? Frustratingly, those moments never linger long enough.

The latest one that grazed my consciousness on Palm Sunday, March 24^th, entered the orbit of my subconscious during the week before as I searched YouTube for some exciting video and information about relative sizes of objects in space for the third grade class I assist in. Some facts about VY Canis Majoris absolutely astounded me: a red hypergiant, it’s one of the largest stars we know of, with a diameter of 1,227,000,000 miles (that’s billion, if you don’t want to count the place value yourself), or 1,975,000,000 kilometers. 

To give you a better sense of that immensity, if VY Canis Majoris was at the center of our solar system, its surface would extend at least beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and perhaps as far as the orbit of Saturn. What grabbed my attention in the video was the comment that if you could fly in a jet at 900 miles per hour, it would take you over 1,000 years to fly around the star! It’s so distant that the light of VY Canis Majoris takes 3,9000 years to reach us.

I sat in bed at 5 a.m. that Sunday and tried to cold-start praise to the King of Kings as Holy Week began.  A realization rose slightly above the horizon of my consciousness: WHOSE blood bought me? WHOSE blood?  Yes, Jesus’ blood - that rolls of my tongue almost tritely sometimes - but WHAT blood is his?

“And God said, ’Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night,’ . . . And it was so. God made two great lights . . . .  He also made the stars. . . . “  Genesis 1:14-16

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? . . . On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”  Job 38:4, 7

“He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” Psalm 147:4

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God . . .. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John1: 1, 3

 “I, Jesus, . . . am the Root, and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” Revelation 22:16

The “gestalt” of VY Canis Major fused with these Bible verses and blazed into a whole much bigger than the sum of its parts. The Blood that bled for every speck of sin in my life coursed through the veins of the One whose voice spoke the inferno of VY Canis Majoris into existence. THAT blood! The most precious fluid and outrageous gift in the universe because it was the Blood of the one who imagined, then spoke blood into being and who bound the vastness of himself within the confines of a completely human body to spill HIS blood instead of requiring mine.

And he willingly gave it for me.

Oh, I wanted to grasp the enormity of that love in every cell of my body and neuron of my understanding!  Like a meteorite, infinite love tore through the atmosphere of my finite comprehension. Why in the world do I think I’m not loved? Why do we think we have to, or ever could, earn that love? And engulfed by that love, why in the universe am I ever afraid?

 “His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns . . . and his name is the Word of God…. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS!” Revelation 19:12,13,16

Even now I feel like I’m writing a plasma breath of truth with hands and understanding of concrete, but O God, let me burn with that reality one day! Brand my heart with it now: I AM YOURS

A ". . . BUT ..." to pray:  Jesus, it's so hard so often to grab hold of the feeling that you truly love me,that I'm worth loving, BUT I know the truth of who you are and what you did is exactly that: truth. Jesus, help me believe and know that _____________________________________________.

No Long-distance Relationship

I simply can't sit on my hands to worship or want an at-a-distance relationship with God.I have no criticism or judgment of people who feel comfortable in very traditional liturgical churches - and I do in fact come from a "Call to Worship, Responsive Reading, first-third-and-fifth verses of traditional hymns" faith background, but my deepening intimacy with Jesus puts such a passionate desire to connect with Him into my worship that I can't sit down to sing or fold my hands in my lap. Out of town at a conference this morning, I attended a congregation of the denomination I grew up in. As familiar as it all was, and as wonderful as the people are, I couldn't ignore the tugging in my heart to really receive from God in a powerfully personal way.

I cannot keep God at a distance, and I hope God isn't comfortable with that kind of relationship with me, either. It hit me at a second service I attended today in a Full Gospel church, cut loose to get real and a bit wild with Jesus: I WANT a God who "gets in my face" and "messes with my business." How else can I be changed, challenged to grow, transformed into the ME God created me to be and the ME I desperately want to be if He doesn't get intimately involved in my life? Intimacy is messy and boundary-crossing and comfort-zone rattling. Frankly, I pray that the Lover of my soul loves me enough to not WANT me to remain less than the best and greatest I'm meant and created to be. I've touched the relentless longing and heard the passionate beat of God's heart for me. Oh, to be loved by a jealous God who desires a vibrant relationship with me!

"Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear. Forget your people and your father's house. The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord."  Psalm 45:10-11

"Oh LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when i rise;you perceive my thoughts from afar . . . you are familiar with all my ways. . . You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" Psalm 139; 1-5

And why would I want to? This is the God who spilled his own blood in agony to secure my relationship with Him forever!  Early last Sunday morning I was sitting wrapped in a comforter in a chair in the loft of my older son's house, leaning into the dim light to read the Bible in my morning quiet time. Suddenly my six-year-old granddaughter crept up, crawled under the comforter with me, took my small travel Bible in her hands and began reading from Psalm 27: "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple, for in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his ta . .. ." She stumbled with the word, and I guessed "Tabernacle?"

"Yes,"Elsa replied. "Tabernacle."

"Do you know what a tabernacle is?" I mused.

She did. "It's the place where God lived."

"The tent where the people worshipped Him in the desert," I added.

"And," she went on, not missing a beat, "I learned in chapel that it's like God's wings. God's wings are soft and strong." Those beautiful blue eyes looked up into mine and she snuggled closer.

"Hey Elsa, do you remember the shawl that you and Evan and I hid under the last time I was here?" I asked.  And what she said next so sincerely, innocently, frankly, took my breath away, the Word of God out of the mouth of a child: "Yes, and those knots on your shawl are so tight that nobody could untie them."

The knots, representing every promise God made to His people, extended to us: so tightly promised that no way will God ever "untie" them!

"Hey, Elsa, you're right, God is tight with us! You and I are 'tight.' " I drew her closer in a fun wiggling hug. "Do you know what it means to be 'tight' with someone?" She shook her head, and I whispered,"It means nothing can ever come between our love."

Why on earth would I want to keep a "respectful" emotional and liturgical distance from the God who wants to be so "tight" with me that His promises will NEVER fail: he'll NEVER untie them!

So this morning I figuratively leaped into the lap of the King of Kings, held His hands and danced a little Salsa with him (Wasn't that exactly what we were singing?) and invited Him - heck, implored Him -  to be"tight" with me, get in my face and mess with my business as much as He wants to and needs to, even when it's uncomfortable like the ways He's causing me to recognize and face my fear and impatience and submission issues, to grow me into everything He wants in me, for me, and through me.

So fair warning: even if I'm holding a hymnal and standing still next to you to respect the traditions in your worship . . . I'll be dancing on the inside. A little Salsa on Sunday is a very good thing, so mess with me, Holy Spirit!

A ". . . BUT . . ." to move:   Oh, God, really I'd like to hide my issues of ____________________________ from You, BUT deeper still I don't want to be held back and crippled by ______________________, made less than the best You want for me. So I give you permission to get in my face and mess with my ____________________________________.

One Thing I Know

This is just a quick post, but so important for all of us. 

Two weeks ago God woke me in the morning with the words "You are worth fighting for!" immediately in my mind and heart. So true, not just for me as a woman in terms of relationships, but for all of us as the chosen and won by Jesus. God fought for us with the greatest,most powerful weapon in His arsenal: His love for us incarnate in Jesus!

Those words were on my lips when a friend called not two minutes later - literally just after I turned my cell pone on -to cry out to me with a desperate need that had her ready to take her life.  Thank you, Jesus, that you made the connection between us and gave me resources to help! Yes, when we call to Him, He will answer! And we,set free, are his answer to another's cry for help to know they matter to God.

Isaiah 62:4-5 tells us: No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah (My delight is in her) and your land Beulah (chosen, married); for the LORD will take delight in you . .. as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

To say I am worth fighting for would sound arrogant except for this truth from God's own mouth! He backed up this word with his own blood, Y'shua, Jesus!

Knowing my value, I can give value extravagantly even to those whose actions toward me don't put them in the "deserve it" category. Because I am fought for and won, I can fight for the value and validation of others. In terms of marriage, this is what gives a wife the power to love with unquenchable fire.The way to the depths of a woman's heart is not through gifts and dinners, but through valuing and honoring her as someone worth winning and protecting. Men,this gives you a woman whose heart will never fail to support, encourage,and fight for you as the warrior heart in her rises. 

It amazes me how God fashioned us for each other - yet it's only out of knowing how GOD values us that we are truly set free to be what He means us to be to and for each other. I embrace this truth as my identity, an identity no one's actions or words or attitude toward me can take away. How that sets other people free from the requirement to be my validation! 

We give each other a priceless gift when we take our identity from God.Not arrogance,but bought and set free receiving!

My ". . .BUT . . . " to move: Other people have failed me, cut me down, and rejected me when they placed their demands on me to be their source of value. I've done the same thing to others, BUT GOD you tell me I am worth fighting for, and because I embrace your truth, I am set free to _____________________________________________________

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!