Of Strong Ankles, Fullness of Life, and His Perfect Way

I have been in the midst of the BRAVE journey with Crossroads and many other churches in our city.  This week I spent some time meditating as a part of a group work challenge.  There were two other options that probably would have stretched me in terms of experience a little bit more, but I didn’t have time to do them before the first of my groups met on Tuesday morning.  So I went with a practice that I enjoy and practice more regularly than the other options presented. 

***

The instructions are to pick up to five passages from a list of about ten.  I begin looking at the list and quickly find myself reciting most of the Scriptures based only on their location.  I come to the last one Psalm 18:30-36.  I am not familiar with this passage at all.  I think to myself, “I guess this is the one I’ll use.”  To be honest, I am feeling a bit obstinate and based on the other passages in the mix I have no clue how this Psalm could possibly relate to me and the area of my life God has been inviting me to be BRAVE in. 

I grab my Bible, open it up and began to read.

“As for God, his way is perfect:
    The Lord’s word is flawless;
    he shields all who take refuge in him.

For who is God besides the Lord?
    And who is the Rock except our God?
It is God who arms me with strength
    and keeps my way secure.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
    he causes me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands for battle;
    my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
You make your saving help my shield,
    and your right hand sustains me;
    your help has made me great.
You provide a broad path for my feet,
    so that my ankles do not give way.”

                                                -Psalm18:30-36 (NIV)

It is when I reach this last verse that I stop in wonder: “You provide a broad path for my feet, so that my ankles do not give way.” 

God gently reaches down into my proud and skeptical heart and sets me straight.

In that one line he reminds me of what he has done in my life and what he wants to do as I trust him right now.

Once upon a time, my left ankle gave out again and again.  Three times in six months when I was a sophomore in high school; again in my senior year; and then four years later as I was looking forward to a honeymoon full of hiking.  With several of the sprains, including the last one, nothing happened to jar my ankle. I took a step or shifted my weight and it just gave way.

It was a time when I was so fearful.  After the last sprain, I remember wearing my air cast weeks after the six weeks it was to be worn were over.  I didn’t want to be using crutches on my wedding day.  I worried over the hiking that Jason and I would be doing—would my ankle just roll while were out?  The image of feeling of my ankle collapsing, the icky sound and the pain played over and over again in my mind.  It was awful. 

Now, in this moment God is reminding me of that time in my life. 

He is reminding me of how He met me there and healed me.  Through a time of unexpected prayer for healing He gave me back my ankle. 

I remember how for months afterwards, I had a hard time leaving that image behind me.  I didn’t know what healing looked like.  I kept wondering if it would be the next hike or simply walking down the sidewalk that my ankle would roll.  Even now, if I let myself, I can still hear the sound, picture the rolling, and feel the pain.  The memory is one full of fear.

It has only been trusting God’s healing one day at a time that has brought me to a new place, a better place, a freer place.  I walk with my family and speak praise when my ankle begins to roll and instead of buckling it corrects and holds strong.  Instead of walking in fear, I walk in His power.

In this moment I am wowed.  I reminded of all he has done for me.  I am led to a place of gratitude.  This is really how God wants me to come to Him and His Word--with praise for what He has done in my life and expecting Him to act in my life right now--ready to receive the His good gifts.  I read the passage again.

At first I see more feet.  “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights.”  What agility a deer has!  What beauty can be seen from the heights!  I think of places I have hiked.  The views I have seen.  It is in His perfect way and in His security I stand on those heights.  What new heights might He be leading me to climb?

Then, I notice how He trains me.  “He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”  I imagine what that is like and I feel energized, ready, empowered.

He not only trains, He protects.  “You make your saving help my shield, and your right hand sustains me.”  I feel upheld in the midst of difficulty.

I read, “Your help has made me great.”  David, who wrote this Psalm recognizes that he is not just surviving.  God is doing something bigger than he could do himself.  God's help has made him great.  I tend to think about how it is God who is great and he is.  But it seems God wants to do great things in us too.  I can’t help but wonder if this is all part of his plan to reveal his glory.  That is a new thought.  He wants me to be great with his help and by his power, not apart from it.  I do not think of myself as great.  What might greatness look like in my life?

Then, those words again!  “You provide a broad path for my feet so that my ankles do not give way.”

For whatever reason, I think about the words of Jesus that say “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13-14)  What amazes me is that God’s perfect way, this narrow road that leads to life, is broad enough.  It is a sure path.  It is a good path!  This is not about pain or failure or fear.  This is about healing and wholeness and good in my life! 

I look back to the beginning again.  “As for God, his way is perfect:  The Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.  For who is God besides the Lord?  And who is the Rock except our God?  It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.”

And I wonder what it looks like to take refuge in God in the fullness of life anyway.  I sit and consider this for awhile.  As I do words well up.

I wiggle and squirm

With thoughts of dishes and dinner undone.

It is here you invite me to sit

In Your presence. 

{Held}

It is here you remind me

You are

Refuge.

Rock.

Right here in the fullness of my life

Not apart from it.

You are inviting me

into

Your

perfect

way.

The path is wide

So that my ankles will not give way.

I begin to realize that it is in the midst of my full life God wants to remind me of who he is.  It is in the midst of my full life that God wants to lead me to stand on the heights.  It is in the midst of my full life He trains me so that I am energized, equipped, empowered—ready for all He leads me toward.  In the midst of my full life He protects and upholds me.  In the midst of my full life He leads me towards a greatness that reveals His glory.  In the midst of my full life He is leading me towards wholeness, healing and good.  He is my Rock.  He is my refuge and by His power He keeps my way secure.  

I rest in all of this, thankful.

I feel invited to step out into his perfect way, knowing the path is wide so my ankles will not give way.

***

Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we allow God to meet us right where we are at—in the fullness of our life—and lead us into his perfect way.  May we learn to step with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  The path is wide and our ankles will not give way.

Jessica :)

P.S.  The photo was taken during a trip to Canyonlands National Park during the first year we lived in Utah.

Drink Deep

As I think about how I am to begin practicing the goodlife I figure it might be helpful to pick a focus. 

I choose to consider taste.  In hind sight, I’m not sure why I pick taste other than perhaps it is something to do with the way my Little Love has been putting things into her mouth with such relish lately.

In the living room, she spots a piece of lint on the floor that fell from the laundry basket or was tracked in on a foot and grins big before quickly shoving it into her mouth.  She does all this lightning quick, before I have time to pluck it from her little hand.  That edge of the carpet that has been pulling away from the kitchen threshold?  Yeah…she’s swallowed that up a time or two when I was looking the other way.  I can tell by the way she coughs as I catch her looking guilty with another piece in hand.

At the table, she grabs strawberries and bites big with the pink juice dripping gloriously down her chin, accompanied with a squeeze of each berry that leaves them in mangled bits that cover her hands and booster tray.  She smears it around with an artist’s flourish and concentration that is quite endearing, if sticky.  She takes bites of mama’s food and sometimes dada’s to—the vegetables, the curry, the beans and rice.  She tries it all, and loves most of it. 

Outside, as I pull weeds she sits nearby on the sidewalk grabbing blades of grass.  Knowing that she often tries to put these in her mouth, I tell her she can pluck them, but not eat them.  She listens, but takes it as an invitation to scrape up a bit of dirt to sample instead. 

In the swimming pool, she is ready to try the leaf that is crumpled at the bottom of the shallow pool.  I distract her with something else for a few moments only to find that while I have been surveying the cloudy sky she has grabbed the hose end and placed it in her mouth instead.

In the bathtub, she nimbly folds her head forward into the water and drinks deep of the soapy water.  She must know that Natalie Babbit wrote that it was delicious. 

I can’t help but laugh.  This girl has tasted and seen the Lord is good.

 

In many small moments, I have for a few seconds caught a glimpse of God’s goodness, but I feel like I’m so busy managing all the messy bits that I don’t often just delight in them.  How to move beyond this? 

Jason reads one night: “You’ve had a taste of God.  Now like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.” 1 Peter 2:2-3

Drink of God’s kindness.  Taste it.

I think of what this picture has looked like in my own arms this last year—my baby drinking deeply.  This is the way God wants me to experience him?  He wants me to drink eagerly, letting his kindness pour in as much and more than I can take in.  Somehow this will grow me up mature and whole in Him.   

It’s a beautiful image.  Babies are made to drink deep, but they do learn in those early weeks how to do it.  So how do I learn to drink deep of God’s kindness? 

How do I move away from managing moments to delighting in them?

I think of the Revolution in World Missions book I have been reading this week.  K.P. Yohannan writes of native missionaries and their children going hungry overseas and here I am wondering how to taste the Lord’s kindness.  Something in me is unlocked in reading this. 

I think He must be teaching me how to drink.

I recognize that God has been watching me struggle.  He knows what I have not seen until now.  I have been living the good life all along without really recognizing it or giving thanks.  He opens my eyes to see all this grace right before me.  His kindness has been there all along.

Left-over lentil sloppy joes in the refrigerator.

Fresh clean water to drink straight from the tap. 

The pineapple and melon on my counter top. 

The jars of legumes, grains, and nuts hanging on my wall. 

The English muffin with egg and cheese I share with my little love at breakfast.

And this is just the start of what is sure to be a long list.

I repent as I consider these brothers and sisters.  I wonder how do they drink deep of the Lord’s kindness? 

How myopic I have been. 

If I am honest, I often too easily tire of my own good food.  I like the luxury of eating out.  I ponder whether I make a bad choice when I buy conventional foods.  I think of that potato I threw out earlier this week, somewhere around the world someone would have salvaged it to make dinner.

In so many ways, I have failed to interpret all this abundance in terms of God’s goodness.

It is dangerous to forget the abundance of God.

“Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God, the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions; the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock; the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.

If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.

If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.”  Deuteronomy 8:11-20

With eyes opened I can see how good God is.  I can see that I have a lot to learn about being disciplined and allowing the Holy Spirit to bear the fruit of self-control.  I know my heart will be better for being open to it. 

As I have been thinking about those native missionaries, it comes to me.  They go hungry holding out food that is greater than the stores of my pantry and the contents of my refrigerator—the Bread of Life that transforms a life.

“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying,“Take and eat; this is my body.”  Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”   Matthew 26:26-29

They know what it is to really drink of the pure kindness of God.

Through them, I am learning too.

***

Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we drink deep of God’s pure kindness. May we be overwhelmed by the changes it works in us.  May we find Him gently drawing us into disciplines in our lives in order to allow us to bless our brothers and sisters around the world out of His more than sufficient abundance.

Jessica :)

The Way Everlasting

It is there. 

It is somewhere in the midst of seeking how He is calling me to surrender that I realize His goodness.

It is in the way He is calling me to create time and space for Him this Lent that I realize that He cares for my every need.

The things He calls me to are not burdensome.  They are freeing. 

For it is out of examine, in this space, they come.

He has been with me here—considering heart and mind.

He has watched as I name the ugly—jealousy, selfishness, and fear.

He has seen me recognize the beautiful—joy, love, and hope.

He has been near as I identify exhaustion.

He is calling me towards freedom.

He says to me, “Jessica, surrender the places of fear and walk courageously beside Me.  Trust Me and watch Me work.”

He says to me, “Jessica, see how exhausted you are?  Make time to rest.  Rest in My presence.”

I receive these words with gratitude.

I am overwhelmed by His love for me. 

And I wonder.  How does he know? 

How does he know just how to meet my every need, in every season of this life?

I think of the Psalm I committed to memory long ago. 

It used to hang in colorful letters, behind glitter, shimmering on my bedroom wall.  

He knows me.

I wrote it so I would remember.

I consider the final words of the Psalm:

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  Psalm 139:23-24

It is in this remembering these words I realize that Lent is learning to walk in the way everlasting. 

He has searched and tested. 

Now I will let him lead on—to repentance, to wholeness, to an abundantly good life.

***

Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we follow God’s leading this Lent.  May we discover the way of Christ is toward repentance, walking in a new way.  May we delight in the freedom it brings as we learn to live an abundant life.

Jessica :)

Remember and Walk in Trust

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the car as my sister glides down the exit ramp toward the stoplight.  As we roll to a stop she says, “Do you see that old building, there on the corner?  That is where grandfather went to elementary school.”

I’ve driven past this building many times on my way home since moving to Northside.  I had noticed the building, wondered about it even; but I had no idea that it had a story in any way connected to me.  “Really?” I ask with a bit of doubt, “How do you know?”

“Oh.  Mom would tell me every time we drove by it on our way back from Indianapolis,” she replies informatively.  “She said it so many times that I started to ask her if she knew her father went to school there before she could get the information out.  And then we would both laugh.”

I take it all in.  

The history is interesting; I tuck it away for later. 

The repetition of the story by my mother is very much like her.  It is also very much like me. 

I picture telling my husband again and again about the many landmarks that have meant something to me.  I think of the many times I pull out the photo books or the journals, flipping through them to remember what has happened, memory after memory.  I think of how I’ve told certain stories over and over again, as though they never get old.  And for a long time I have just counted this habit of mine a bit odd. 

I like to remember. 

In this moment, as I think about these things, I’m connecting some dots.  I begin to think that perhaps this is actually a wonderful habit if I can just pause to remember the right things.

A few months ago at a worship service one of our pastors talked about how in this tech-savvy age we don’t really have to remember.  He said we have apps for that.   We have calendars that have programmed reminders for the important events in our lives—birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions, along with the normal every day schedule of events. We have Facebook to post our thoughts and Instagram to upload our memories by way of a jpeg file. 

They remember for us.

Of course we call to mind more than just a word or a picture when we take time to really consider our stored data.  We may have affirming words to share with someone on their birthday.  We may remember a story when we see a particular photo.  However, remembering requires us to pause and reflect. 

Do we want to remember?

I think back to my class on Judaism in college.  My professor was a rabbi at a local reform congregation.  When we talked about the Sabbath he referred to the way the Tanak talked about it.  The writers of the Bible used four words to describe how Israel was to celebrate the Sabbath.  I learned that the first word—zachor—means “to remember.” 

God tells Moses that the Israelites are to set apart this day and remember. 

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8-11 TNIV

Remembering is something that God wants us to do.

He tells us again and again.  Remember.  The Sabbath.  The Passover.  The festivals that He wrote right into the Mosaic Law.  The Lord’s Supper.

Each time we are called to remember, we remember something specific. 

We remember what the Lord has done.

He creates.

He rescues.

He provides.

He loves by giving up His own life.

This is part of the rhythm he invites us to embrace.

For by remembering what He has done we are reminded that we are to walk trusting He will be faithful in all that lies ahead.

If he has been faithful in the past, he will be faithful in our present.  He will be faithful in our future.  So walk in trust.

If the way is uncertain—walk in trust.

If the way is hard—walk in trust.

If the way is beautiful—walk in trust.

He has been faithful.  He will be faithful.  Walk in Trust.

Remember.

So what is it that he has done in your life?  Take some time to remember.

This weekend...

Remember the Sabbath.

Pause.  Consider the ways in which God has been at work around you. 

Look.  Pull out your journal, your calendar, a scrapbook, or wherever you store your memories. 

Remember how God acted in the midst of that time period. 

Give Him thanks. 

Participate in this act which reminds us to rely upon Him that we might begin the new week and our work in it more fully trusting in His goodness.

Let's remember and walk in trust.

 ***

Grace and peace be ours in abundance as we pause to remember the ways that God has worked in our lives.  May these memories lead to greater trust that he walks with us in the midst of whatever the present holds and no matter what the future may contain.  May this trust lead to abide in his presence and respond in obedience.

Jessica :)