four-minute friday: wonderbread

Go. I need to be honest. After being in Seattle for a couple weeks, I'm finding it a little more challenging to be back in Wonderbread, Ohio. (No offense to any of my midwesterly readers!) There are lots of reasons it's hard to be here right now: I miss the city. I crave diversity. It's lonely.

Having friends nearby all day every day for two weeks straight was just what I needed. And now I'm back to being far from those my heart holds close. Hmph.

I'm driving to Cleveland today, though, and I'm already smiling just thinking of how fill-upping it will be. And not just because there's potential for some slightly-more-urbanesque experiences than I get in my corner of the state. But because I'll have a weekend with my heart's friend. Which means there's bound to be lots of laughter, long talks, stretches of comfortable silence, late nights, and (of course) some Flight of the Conchords.

And I get to crank up the jams on my road trip there and back. Awwwwww yeah...

Done.

Go ahead and four-minute about your weekend plans. Or, well, anything really.

spiritual visine

"We let people dictate the framework through which we know God rather than God being the framework through which we know ourselves and others."

My friend Tracee wrote that to me in an email, surreptitiously tucked away in the middle of a paragraph. I tried to keep reading, but I couldn't. I had to linger there a while before I could move on. Because she's right. I've allowed people and the experiences of my life to shape my view of God, rather than the other way around.

Since people are fallible and hurts are inevitable, seeing God through the lens of my past makes Him appear far too small. Far too human. Far too unloving. I imagine Him responding like so many others have; I picture Him treating me the way I treat myself.

I see God with clouded vision. And I want to see Him clearly.

I've spent a lot of time in the past several months identifying my lenses. Naming them. Considering what triggers them. Pondering how things look without them. And asking God to remove them.

Because my lenses stem from wounds, fears, and insecurities deep inside me, this process has challenged me to be more vulnerable than ever before. That's been hard. And scary. But my vulnerability has been met with an intimacy I've never known.

God is so very good to me.

I desire to live with Him as my lens. I want Him to be the filter through which I see and experience life. That would change everything about how I think, feel, respond, act. So I'm trying to renew my mind, take captive every thought, and soak myself in His truth. I want to saturate myself with His character, His heart. The more I know Him, the more I will see through His lens rather than my own.

While I still fail miserably most of the time---old habits, they die hard---I am changing. Slowly but surely my lenses are wearing thinner. And He is coming more into focus.

My intention today, and every day, is to know Him more deeply and intimately. Because ultimately I don't want to be a better version of me. I want to be more like Christ.

i'll never be good enough

I often find myself more easily believing lies than the truth. I'm realizing, though, that sometimes what I consider lies are really just distorted truths. And they're equally deadly. I will never be good enough to please God. That's true. But it gets twisted into something negative, when it was really intended to set me free.

The fact that I'll never be good enough to earn His love and grace isn't bad news. It speaks of my value, not of my lack of value. Even though I'm not good enough, He still chooses me, loves me, pursues me, uses me. There is freedom, not condemnation, in that. It speaks of how overwhelmingly unconditional His love for me is.

But the very truth that was intended to set me free gets used by the enemy---and people---to beat me down. It gets distorted and manipulated into something that tells me I need to strive for His love. It makes me feel like I have to work harder, be better, do more.

But the fact remains: I can never be good enough. That means I need to trust Him alone. It takes the pressure off me completely.

It frees me to live not for His approval but from His approval.

And that changes everything.

crawling back onto the altar

"To live a life of prayer, of sacrifice, of surrender to God."

Twelve years ago I penned those words as my life mission statement. I wanted to be intentional about making my life count for something greater than me. I wanted to be deliberate about leveraging my life for His glory. And everything I could see myself doing boiled down to that simple statement.

I said simple, not easy. 'Cause it's been anything but easy.

Those words have been ringing in my ears this past week. Prayer, sacrifice, surrender to God. Do I still mean it?

I want to say I'm willing, even when I don't know what He's asking me to do. I want to follow Him even when I don't know which way He wants me to go. I want to serve Him even when it means giving up my own notions of how I can best do that. I want to honor and glorify Him with every breath, every word, every step.

The only problem with being a living sacrifice is my tendency to crawl off the altar. When I can't see what's next, when the flames of uncertainty seem too much for me to bear, sometimes I climb off. I choose to follow fear instead of faith. I long for the certainties of Egypt over the uncertainties of freedom.

But I'm done. Today I'm climbing back on the altar.

The Lord Himself goes before me and will be with me. Among all the unknowns and uncertainty, He is already there. He knows. He is certain. So if I remain in Him, I can have confidence and peace even when facing more uncertainties than ever before in my life.

As I've ruminated on it and wrestled through it, I know this much is true: I still want each moment of my life to be one of prayer, of sacrifice, of surrender to God.

Use me however You want, God. However You want.

pageantry

I bet you didn't know I've been in a pageant. But not the kind you're probably thinking of. I've never strut around in a bikini and heels, or shown off some obscure talent, or publicly declared my desire for world peace.  No, I've never been in that kind of pageant.

My life has been a pageant of a different kind. One in which I've been crowned all sorts of things other than Miss America. I've worn banners draped across my chest that read:

Or how about:

I've walked around wearing those banners for far too long. They've shaped how others see me and, more importantly, how I see myself.

It's time to take them off and replace them with truth.

His banner over me is love.