28 Days of Joy - Days into Weeks

Oh dear - deepest apologies to all my blog-reading friends, as I seem to have left you out of the second half of my 28 days of joy. On the bright side, this is partially because so many good things were happening, I didn't have time to write. Of course, it is also because I spent a little time sick, a little time overwhelmed, a little time angry, and a little time figuring out all the deep stuff God's been doing - just to be honest.

For instance, on:

Day 13-19 - I spent all my free hours hanging out with my neice and nephew and their grandmother (except for one day I did take to write...but I chucked it for Chick-Fill-A at dinnertime). These children are endlessly amusing, and extremely high energy, and in the absense of their parents it was my job to relieve their grandmother as much as possible. Yep...not much writing got done that week, and no blogging, but I have lots of writing material out of it. Such as the new knowledge, supplied by Judah, that butzes and burps sound the same. (That was his reponse to my instruction that butzes should not be heard at the table. Apparently, if it sounds the same as a burp, he thinks it's legal. When did burps at the table become legal?) We took the kids to a harvest party at a local church; one was a pirate, one was a princess, and one a ballerina. No, I'm not the pirate. He's not pictured.

Day 19 - I was given an out-of-the-blue, two-part word at Shabbat dinner... 1. I'm a worshipper/musician (God keeps trying to remind me of this), and 2.) He actually, really, fully, deeply loves me. Yum. (Yum on the challah bread, too. I want to make some soon.)

Day 23 - my third nephew, John-Peter Wilberforce was born. (As his mother says, he's so cute he's kinda hard to take! though he looks a little concerned in this photos.)
Day 22-25 - I spent these days playing single-mom to my niece, Glorie, while her parents were busy about the business of birthing a son. We went to the hospital a few times, to get some holds in :) You can imagine the joy involved in all that! Odd, how joy often comes accompanied by sleeplessness, pull-ups, and an unending need for discipling children. But, as I put in my facebook status, none of that seems to matter when a little girl's hand slips gently into yours during the middle of closed eyes and a whispered Lord's Prayer. I almost died of love.


Day 22 - I got the longest love letter I will ever receive in my life (seriously, I have no doubt on this front) from a man who had never met me, only read my stuff. It was ridiculous, engendered many laughs, took me at least a half-hour to read, was full of overly romantic sentiments, and came my way from a far continent. However, it did pose a problem - how is one to respond to such a thing without breaking the heart involved? The easiest way would be no response at all, but my roomate admonished me that one must be careful "not to wound a man" - and no answer would be a harsh blow to someone who has handed me their heart on a platter. No response was sent that evening, however. It was just too much.

Day 23 - A little bit of affirmation made my heart glad :) Ah, the simplest things!

Day 25 - Got some prayer at the IHOP renewal (it's still going on, by the way) about a pretty deep issue. Spent a bunch of time during the service trying to remember which Psalm had the verse the Lord whispered to me (I don't tend to memorize the numbers, just the words, which can pose problems later on :) but finally gave up, only to have my friend turn to me to pray over me, pull out that very Psalm, and read it over me. Ahhh...beautiful.

Day 26-27 - Sick AND working. Bit of a bummer, that. But the work itself...God was there!

Day 27 - News from a beautiful friend that she will soon be engaged!

Wait, you say, you've left out all the bad days. That's because most of them turned out to be good!

Oh, ok.

On Day 22 I apologized to someone and was forgiven - see? Good.
On Day 24 I was mad and frustrated that I was mad, and tried to keep from getting bitter.
On Day 25 I confronted someone and knew I'd done the right thing.
On Day 26 that someone agreed that I'd done the right thing. See, again?
On Day 27 I watched the most time-wasting of a movie because I was so tired and sick. Yuck.

And on Day 28 I stayed home from church sick (ah, you think this is starting off in the bad-day list, don't you?!) and then bam! one-two-three God lined up row of stuff for me that took me from repentance, to encounter, to faith. And it all wrapped up at small group, falling in love again with the people Jesus loves.

Well now, there is a concise and very incomplete summation of the events (though not the substance) of the missing Days of Joy. Perhaps I'll have to just keep having more Days, as these ones have been pretty eventful. Even when they weren't "happy", they were good, because my great God was all intertwined in them with me.

That is by no means the last word on the 28 days...but it's the last word for tonight, as I'm tired!

Love to all,
Amy

28 Days of Joy -- Day 15

I know that suffering for Jesus is super-hard, but I read Acts 5:41 this evening and was immediately sobered.

"And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name."

Dear, dear, dear. My little life has so many comforts, even in the midst of the great spiritual battles. Hard they are, yes, but no one is beating me, no one is arresting me, no one is throwing me into disease-ridden cells.

Am I not counted worthy?

I am not being facetious here, or hyperbolic; and I'm not trying to make a point. When will the church in America encounter physical opposition? When we do, I'm going to take it as a good sign. Not that dedication and persecution are causally linked (I can't remember the technical term, but you know what I mean). But power and persecution often are, I think! Once we get dangerous to the enemy's bottom line, the enemy ups his attentions. I don't want his attentions, but I do want to be counted worthy to suffer shame. (I guess that shame doesn't always have to be physical.)

The Lord did comfort me a bit with the reminder that time is a wider and less algebraic thing than I usually calculate. Perhaps I am worthy; that doesn't necessarily mean the "beatings" will happen today. Just eventually...

You've probably already guessed that I was reading my new VOM tonight. The back cover, with the photos of Marzieh and Maryam made me weep. I want to be counted worthy, but I also want every Christian to be rescued and spared the persecution they're under. Especially His women. Lord, make me worthy! But Lord, rescue your daughters!

28 Days of Joy -- Day 13

I want to write.

But...

I hate isolation. I want a heart to be right in the middle of things.

So I end up sitting alone on a "writing night" and wondering if I'm doing the right thing...conflicted and torn. This is what I told Sally yesterday on the phone. Um, says she, this might be a novel idea, but what about just asking the Lord what He wants you to do with these chunks of time? Ah, yes, duh. Then if He says to write, I won't feel like I'm being isolationist in shutting the world out. And if He says to play (or relate) I won't feel guilty over time "wasted". I'll do it.

So I lay down by the fire last night, being pressed on by a multitude of very powerful, fruitless thoughts. And find myself interceding for a family I've not seen for a year. Each of them, each of them so important to the Lord - each of them, each of them with no knowledge of this fact. And at the end, when I get up to cook the beet harvest, I suddenly know: that's what He wanted me to do tonight.

That was Your agenda!

Neither writing nor playing. Praying. And every lying voice of worthlessness and waste had been silenced.

Yes, but only silenced about that hour, that night. For in my bed, late, instead of sleep came hopeless thoughts of a bleak future. One night can be led and redeemed - but can a whole lifetime, especially if that lifetime includes none of the comforts I've always craved?

Suddenly - strengthened by Sally, by a spirit activated through the earlier hour, by the intercession Jesus is making for me - I will not stand for this! And straight up I shot, yelling in my covers, waking the neighbors. I couldn't stay in bed. Pajama-clad and alone in the house, I went to war.

It's like using a machete in thistles without muscles trained to swing. It stings to confess, repent and rebuke strange entities you've never wanted to even acknowledge. Fear of being diminished, fear of having to do it alone, fear that the movement of God depends on how faithful I've been... All this that I've been operating under - all these things violently pressed upon me - required a violence of opposition, and boy did I give it. All the while knowing that 1.) my neighbors might brand me as the crazy girl who yells at night, and 2.) my emotions were not keeping up.

But, I thought to myself, Isn't that best? This is a spiritual transaction. The emotions are secondary. How odd it seemed, even to me in the middle of it, to see myself in a physical state of war and thundering, and for the source to not be in my soul. I was not yelling because I was riled up, but because my spirit would not stand for any more.

And then, ending, confronting the biggest and most hurtful poison of all, where I thought the most violence would be needed, came the Lord's wise and knowing change of tactic. While I renounced, He drew out the thorn gently like my Dad used to draw out my splinters. Splinters were always my father's job - and he loved pulling out his little tweezers, reassuring me, urging bravery, holding my hand still, and ridding me of the source of pain and infection. He would not stand for a splinter to stay, any more than he would stand for spider bites at night. I remember mornings when we found a bite on our legs - his determined tone, his serious eyebrows, the mattresses on their ends with the sheets ripped off. No spider is going to bite "my little girl".

Pull it out, I agreed with him breathlessly, hoarse. Gentle Father, original defender of my soul and my body, wise in the healing, able willing and knowledgeable to remove thorns and draw infection to the surface... Pull it out.

And I slept to dream of looking for food for my fat white childhood cat, determined to feed her tuna if I couldn't find anything else, aware of how devastating it would be to ever be parted from her. And I woke to remember that she had been dead many years, and that her absence was not at all painful. Not at all.

We may feel soul-tied to the lies that cradled us since our birth into this fallen world, but freedom from those lies will be, truly, freedom... I will not regret them, nor long for past chains. And neither will you.

28 Days of Joy -- Day 11

Day 10 didn't have a blog because I (and my roommate - I had a partner in this scandal) stayed up past day 10 (let's just put it that way) to watch one of the Lord of the Ring movies. Do you know what my very first impression was, upon popping it in?

"Wendy, what bothers me about Frodo, the whole time, is that he has no joy!"

Seriously, by the middle of the 1st movie, aren't you starting to get sort of annoyed? And don't you kind of cringe inside every time the scenes return to the Frodo pov? It's like 2 1/2 movies of torture when it comes to Frodo. Sorrow, fear, disintegration, loss, damage...leading him to disunity with Samwise, an ear to believe lies, etc. Gee Whiz!

Frodo is NOT a type of Christians - let me just make that clear. At least, not of how the Lord Jesus designed. He came to give us life abundant, not life suffering under the great weight of the evil we have to fight.

Yes, we have to fight evil, but we can do it like a warrior glad to strap on his sword, or like Legolas happy to expend days upon days in running pursuit of saving his little friends...but not like a staggering hobbit full of constant mourning and defeat, and not like Eowyn fighting out of fear and frustration and her own personal strength.

In other great news,

I didn't burn the house down when I accidentally left the candles on all night,

and

I did just get to talk on the phone to my brother in Thailand, where he pulled into port! He was on his way to ride an elephant. Or an Oliphant, whichever you prefer :-)

28 Days of Joy -- Day 9

Somehow, a bunch of days passed me by on this blog. Sorry about that. Sum them up? Well, a few were beautiful, one involved a burst of tears that was soon conquered by a choice for joy (hooray!), and another was a complete disaster (I won't tell you about it). Here are a few photos of a trip to a pumpkin patch with my family...

Oops, that's the corn part. Actually, I think the adults had as much fun in the corn maze as the kids did.

Which brings us up to date. Today, varied as it was, has ended oddly. I received a nasty email in response to something I'd written about marriage and the church and the enemy, in which I was accused of being out of touch, selfish, full of myself, and full of pride. The writer suggested I work on myself intensely for 3 months, but warned I may never get married.

Wow. Perhaps my response would have been different if a friend had said these things; when it is a stranger it seems much easier to be gracious and circumspect. I checked through the Proverbs first to remind myself of the Lord's advice about getting into arguments, remembered Mike's principle of blessing your enemies, and wrote this person back something short and sweet. Really: sweet. I hope it knocks their bitter socks off and opens a whole new door to the love of the Lord - but I don't really expect it. (Is that jaded of me?)

I don't expect it because it became obvious by the end of the email (partly due to the irrational nature of this person's anger and bitterness) that some major demonic strongholds are involved. It's going to take more than one kind response to bring those down...that takes power, repentance, submission to and reception of truth. But perhaps the kind word can kick-start the process...?

All-told, the incident mostly seems to me to be a direct assault - a cursing - on the joy and freedom the Lord is leading me into this month. In that light, I'm very glad to report that nothing inside is rattled - especially not my belief in God's goodness, His love for me, or His plans to give me fullness of joy and abundance of life.

And may He bless the writer of that email with the same things! Amen :)

28 Days of Joy -- Day 5

For the last few days I have been in awe every time I've driven outside my neighborhood. I don't know exactly how He did it, but God has been intensely coloring the leaves around here until they are in a state beyond what is reasonable for fallen human beings to be seeing.

I screamed - half cry / half yell - on my way home from the store today, turned around in a stranger's driveway, and went back to the tree of FIRE I'd driven past along the side of Red Bridge Road. I know it wasn't my tree, but I had to stand under it, had to pick a few of its leaves.

Actually, I do know how He did it. I just don't know why. I think it might be for me.

Two weeks of unusually cold weather for October is "how". Sudden cold, instead of a slow cooling, means not just the sugar maples are crystallizing into fire-ridden oranges and yellow and reds. But oh-my-goodness, if that's what the other trees are doing, just try to get your mind around the sugar maples! I've never seen anything like it. Whether the light is diffused through miles of drizzly gray clouds, or is brilliantly shooting clean rays through their forms, the leaves are vibrant life.

It's been good, these days of intentional joy, to have the added help of a riotous, rejoicing earth. You know how the "heavens declare the glory of the Lord," ... well sometimes in a crisp fall, the heavens descend and hover near the grass, pulsating this declaration until all the life above ground either drops its leaves and dies, or having become saturated with His glory, begins radiating that glory itself.

The second-coldest October on record. Is that what it takes for the full potential of beauty to burst out, actuated? These trees all have the genes to turn such colors, but very rarely does their environment facilitate it. I have the spiritual genes for great things; should I be so surprised that the environment He provides to activate those genes is stronger than feels comfortable? Instead of mild and slow, prayers for real power and truth seem often answered by circumstances strong and pressing, sudden and inclement, dangerous precipitous and wrenching.

My heart was wrenched today for people close to me, and I felt sick in body over it. I had to be yesterday in a place where I was unsure of my safety, and I became a compulsive door-locker. But isn't God, who is greater than our hearts, also greater than physical circumstances? Indeed, He is. I have a little window into it already - I have already discovered how He keeps me safe, how He answers before I even know I need help: "before they call, I will answer". But I am convinced that my joy will not increase through knowledge of the specifics of His interventions. Those interventions open to me the discovery of His character, His person. And His person, Himself, is what will begin and supply and sustain my joy. And that is why it is a joy that cannot be taken away from me.

28 Days of Joy -- Day 3 -- Steady

Ever notice how constantly counterfeited real joy is? My imagination can conjure up a form of "joy", but the real thing is way harder to get a hold of.

That feeling of excitement and anticipation - whether before a big event or a little moment - masquerades as it, until that moment is gone and a sort of blank feeling comes over you. I think we've all felt that - the movie is over and the girls' night is done; Sunday evening is gone and tomorrow is work; the ice-cream in the bowl is finished; Christmas Day is past and all the family have left. Our souls grasp, repeatedly, for the elation of happiness, and are repeatedly at a loss when what had been providing it is suddenly absent - and along with it, our joy.

Or, what we thought was joy.

The thing is, if it leaves like that, it probably wasn't real to begin with. Or it was very, very weak. That's not what I want. I want an abiding joy that extends way past the day all the family leaves town, or the moment the big event is over, or the last chord of Sunday-morning worship has reverberated and faded and we all sit down. No, joy is the steady. Happiness is the intermittent, the fading-and-returning.

I'm choosing steady.