Category Archives: peace

if you need a break: a kindling post

Posted on by June 13, 2023

I had a dream once where I was speaking to an adoptive mom. I asked about her story and how she was doing, and she tried a few times to speak but finally she just cried.

And I looked at her and said, “You probably need a break.”

if you need a break: a kindling post

It is a word for so many of us. You’ve been going and going, pushing through pain and discouragement and impossible situations, and you are so weary you don’t even have words for it.

You probably need a break, too.

And you might be like, Duh, of course I need a break. If I knew how to take a break I would do it. But do you know my life? There’s no break, no slowing down. No reprieve, no respite, no money, no vacation time.

I get it. Believe me. The need to take a break can feel like one more burden, one more impossible task that you’re failing at and unable to accomplish.

So, here’s the word: The break we need isn’t ours to achieve or figure out. It’s His to do for us.

I am learning that our role in the break — our breaking — is the surrender of the belief that we can and should be able to do everything. I have ran into the wall so many times, feeling like a failure over things I was never supposed to do or control or be responsible for in the first place.

Other people’s choices. The sale of our books. Our kids’ behavior. How people see me. So many things.

Here’s what He’s telling me over and over:

Obedience is doing what He’s told me to do. Surrender is trusting Him with what only He can do.

And it is a breaking of my pride and sense of accomplishment. It’s a good breaking, though.

So maybe you need that kind of a break. Some respite or a vacation would be a good break, too — but that is also His job, and we can surrender to it.

I’ve told you this before: The yarn does nothing on its own. It has to yield to the hands of a maker.

But I’ve been wrestling and relearning and going deeper with this lately: We abide, but He does the work. We seek the Kingdom, but He does the work. We obey in what He calls us to, but He does the work.

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

— Matthew 6:33

It’s all Him — but also, it’s us…but it’s Him!…but it’s also us.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

— John 15:4-5

We connect with Him, and we bear fruit, but only because of the Vine. All glory and honor go to Him, but He lets us not only “seek for glory and honor and immortality” but He also lets us have them when we carry the light yoke and yield to His work in and through us.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

— Revelation 4:11

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.

— Romans 2:6-10

It’s us but Him but us, with Him.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

— John 17:10-11

Jesus, free us from fear and anxiety as we walk in the tension of doing and trusting, seeking and surrendering. Protect us from worries, feelings of not-enough, rejection, trauma, insecurities, compulsions or tics, shame, regret, unforgiveness of ourselves or anyone else. All those things go now, in Jesus’ name, and do not come back.

Help us do the work to keep those things gone. You do the work, but help us maintain it by keeping our “temple” clean and inhospitable to the enemy’s attacks. We choose forgiveness. We renew our mind and read the Word. We examine our thoughts and reject those that don’t line up with truth, instead of letting anything and everything that flies into our mind take root.

We pray for Your peace and freedom tonight in waves, for more encouragement than we thought we could experience in areas we’ve been struggling in. We pray for that peace and encouragement and hope in a way that feels solid, steady, growing, something we can grasp onto and not let go of.

Give us all the holy stubbornness we need to be steadfast in the mission You’ve called us to.

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

— Hebrews 13:20-21

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hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

Posted on by May 26, 2023

I’m trying to read my notes for you here but there’s melted chocolate on them and I don’t really regret it.

May has been filled with milestones and the month isn’t over yet. We have a boy who left for the summer to go commercial fishing and we won’t see him until September, and we have a girl who is moving out next week. Our home is shrinking, but not really – more like deflating, while my mama heart heaves and contracts in a season that feels blurry with movement and change.

hatch: thoughts from an emptying nest

All these milestones for each kid are major accomplishments in motherhood: The birth, the adoption, breastfeeding, potty training. Learning to read, learning to drive, learning a million things in between.

The nest is emptying, but still pretty full here; even after eight kids, five is no small thing. I threatened to pull over and spank boys who were misbehaving in the back of the Stagecoach last week, so my Mom Bingo Card is filling out nicely for the month and in no danger of being revoked due to inactivity.

Iree plays Nuvole Bianche on the piano and it has been the soundtrack of this season, the background music of these days until she moves out. I love this song; there’s a part in it that sounds like horses running that makes my heart pound even as I put away dishes and wipe the counters for the eighth time, pouring grief into the motions of the dishcloth.

“You’re sure you’ll get along, Mother?”

“Why, of course I’ll get along.” Abbie was outwardly calm and confident, while all the time there was that queer sensation of a wind rushing by – a wind she could not stop – Time going by which she could not stay. Oh, stop the clock hands!

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

Before Afton left for fish camp, we hatched quail. It was our third round of quail chicks but our second go at incubating, and as we waited for them to hatch I thought of all the things I might’ve done wrong: the temperature might’ve been off because the cheap thermometers were inconsistent, the heat wasn’t steady the first night, and I didn’t mist the eggs on day 15 like I was supposed to.

What if none of them hatch? I thought. What if it was a waste of time, and resources, and worse – what if I’m just not good at this? It works for some people, sure, but what if I’m just bad at it?

It’s like waiting for breakthrough in anything else. Hold on, let me overthink this for a while, I can come up with a million possibilities of how I could’ve screwed this up and why I might not deserve the success I was hoping for. Stand by. I’ll justify it, it’s okay – I mean, it’s not okay, but I want my heart to be okay with it not being okay because I don’t know what else to do with so much disappointment and I don’t have any other answers for why this isn’t working out.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and all day we waited for those chicks to hatch, but they didn’t.

But I was a day early. The night we got the incubator going, the temperature wasn’t high enough until after midnight – and I forgot to adjust the hatch date to reflect it. So really, I was looking for breakthrough a day ahead of schedule and frustrating myself needlessly.

They finally did start hatching and the incubator rapidly filled with broken bits of eggshell, confetti everywhere. After two days we had nineteen tiny chicks. They walk on folded toes at first from being curled up so long and it looks alarming, but as they walk it out, their toes straighten. Enthusiastic little buddies, fast and fluffy after just hours of seniority, climb all over the panting newcomers, forcing them to roll and stand up to protect themselves. And the conflict is good for them; their bones need the exercise and it sets their skeletal alignment correctly.

We waited a little over 24 hours after the last chicks hatched before turning off the incubator and giving up on the remaining eggs. One chick had died, which is super common and has happened all three times we’ve had quail chicks, and we were down to eighteen. It wasn’t a great hatch rate but we suspected a lot of the eggs were infertile because one of our roosters got injured shortly before we started collecting eggs. So Afton went to clean out the incubator and, lo and behold – there was one more tiny chick, just hatched, still damp, a little piece of eggshell confetti still stuck to its back.

I scooped him up and he was so cold. How he was alive, two days after all the others hatched? How did he have the strength to break out of his hard shell when he was so cold, so late, and the incubator had no humidity left?

But there he was, damp and wriggling in my hand. I immediately held him under the heat lamp to warm him up while Cham found a little box for him.

I wish I had taken pictures for you as he laid there in it, breathing and lolling, trying to get his feet under him. I wanted to but I was afraid; I didn’t think he would make it and I didn’t want another reminder of grief.

Alone in the box he warmed up but he had nothing to climb on to strengthen his neck and get the upright posture he needed. His head bobbled back and forth and his legs skidded on the paper towel, trying to get a grip but rapidly splaying out sideways. Their bones are still malleable, so the longer they do this, the more they set badly and that means the death of a chick because if they cannot walk, they cannot eat or drink. They need conflict and pressure to get strong. They need to develop the right posture so they can stand and walk.

So since he didn’t have it, we created the pressure for him and wrapped him in a paper towel in a tiny cup. We had to do this with a chick from our previous hatch, too, and it works – it keeps their legs under them instead of going out at right angles, and since they want to see out of the cup, they use those tinytinytiny muscles to stand and push themselves up. Their toes start to straighten from the effort, and their necks strain forward to see.

(Why am I going on and on about quail? Because I don’t want to think about our last few days with Afton; I don’t want to think about how he ran out of time to clean out the incubator, or how Mother’s Day was awkward and filled with grief, or how empty his room looks with everything packed up and him not in it, or how Iree’s room will look in a week. So, quail…quail are safe.)

After a few hours in his own box, with the right posture, Afton reported that the little guy was trying to jump out to be with the others. And that’s another thing about quail, they don’t like being alone – as much as they pick at and aggravate each other, they want to be with their buddies. So we let him out and he ran around with the others, several sizes smaller than all the rest, but perfectly flappy and happy.

A couple days later was Mother’s Day, and Afton flew to Kodiak the next day. I wish I had taken pictures of Mother’s Day, or of him before I left. But I was crying and didn’t want that reminder of grief, either.

When we let go of control, surrendering our normal ways of doing things and letting Him nudge us (or bodyslam us, as the case may be) into doing something different, things start to feel a little loosey goosey. We are agreeing to a fast, of sorts, as we relinquish the way life used to be, and we gain the perspective that comes with fasting because we start to figure out new ways of doing things.

Our kids will find new ways of doing things. And we will, too.

Kavanagh is looking at sea glass and shells, asking where some of them came from and if you can hear the ocean in others. The glass is like us; sharp and broken until we’re worn soft from the tide moving in and out, billowing over us, crushing us against each other. We rub the sharp edges of ourselves against each other, and we no longer fit perfectly together all the time. We need the mortar of time and space between.

We have two hens, Molly and Toughie, sitting on nests of eggs that will hatch soon – Molly’s are due this weekend – and life is plenty full with the activity of new endeavors and milestones.

And Iree is playing that song again, and I stare at the keyboard, letters blurring.

“Good-by, dear!” Oh, stop the clock hands!….Stop Time for a while – until she could think –!

“Oh, Mother, do you think I ought to go?”

“Of course you ought to go.” Head up, Abbie was smiling….

Abbie waved and smiled – waved and smiled – as long as they were in sight. Then she turned and ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door. And, whether she has driven away in a lumber-wagon or a limousine, the mother whose daughter has left her for the first time, will understand why Abbie Deal ran blindly into her bedroom and shut the door.

– Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand

A friend of mine in this same season, texted me the other day and said, “Our family feels so small. And our house feels so big.” She’s right, both are true. We have bedrooms to rearrange, and kids vying for empty spaces. And when Iree moves in a week, I’ll try to take photos… but then again, I might not.

courage for those in dread & resignation [part 2]: a kindling post

Posted on by May 19, 2023

This post is not for everyone. And friend, I hope it’s not for you, but if it is, hold on and press forward: There’s light and freedom at the end of it. If I were with you I would hold your hand as we step forward and tell you it’s going to be okay. It is. But even better; He is with you – at your elbow, within your blood, breathing life into your lungs. So here we go.

courage for those in dread and resignation [part 2]

This is about those situations and circumstances we’ve written off as hopeless, the ones we’ve pushed away to the farthest corner possible because they’re filled with blackness and despair. Those ones where we’re convinced that nothing good is coming of it; the enemy has stopped our ears and imaginations to all truth and covered our thoughts in that area with bleak resignation.

Part of the problem is that we protect ourselves by willful blindness. We turn off our vision in those areas – we can’t avert our eyes exactly, the trauma or pain is too close – but we can numb ourselves to seeing it. It’s too much to deal with right now. I don’t know what to do anyway. The voices are too loud and the disappointments are so crushing, it’s too much to face so we refuse to do so.

We don’t even tell ourselves it won’t get better, we just accept this as our new less-than reality. We wanted more than this, sure, but well, it wasn’t to be. “More than” was not for us. “More than” is for a select few – the rich maybe, or the immensely talented, or the highly favored, or those who were brought up in perfect families with all the right opportunities.

We think maybe it’s temporary and that we’ll come back to it later when things are easier or safer or clearer, but they never are because we never dealt with them to make them so. And when life started to ease up in the slightest we were so elated by the reprieve we could not imagine losing it by going back to deal with the dark place.

We wouldn’t really have lost the reprieve, of course; that was fear talking. And us listening.

So we live in blackness – not everywhere, of course, but in this one area we’ve given up on. Other things are mostly okay, and because of the contrast between darkness and light we don’t realize the amount of grey that bleeds into our areas of bright color, like so much ash blown by the slightest breath of wind.

The areas near our resignation are soot-smudged and tainted, shadowed by mediocrity we accept by default because of their proximity to the blackness: A hard relationship with a child that bleeds onto all our parenting. A leadership wound that taints our desire to serve. An old trauma that kindles fear into any new experience.

And we get used to this, and stop thinking about it. We have accepted it like the smells in our house and the hum of the refrigerator.

With enough time, the blackness is so integrated that, should someone question it, we eventually argue on its behalf. We make excuses, defending what the enemy has done in this part of our lives with our own justification, rationalizing away all the insecurities it bubbles up in us. Because, hey, this is our normal. And if our normal isn’t okay, we must not be okay.

And we have to be okay, because we know the blackness doesn’t get any better – and if we admitted it was supposed to be better, than we’d have to admit we were wrong to accept it in the first place.

Accepting it has been easier. We kicked against that dark shell for a while but it was exhausting, and when we gave up, it covered us like a blanket soaked in chloroform.

It’s okay, the enemy hissed. You just rest here.

And we did.

You’re thinking, I hope, of a situation in your life that has been covered in this kind of darkness. Maybe you’re thinking of a multitude of them.

You need to know that the enemy will do anything to distract you from acknowledging it, and then admitting that the blackness is not okay.

He will fight you every step of the way. And yes, fighting back is exhausting. But if you think about it and just peel back the thinnest layers of his lies to you, you’ll realize that the blackness has been sucking the energy and strength you’ve wanted to give to so many other areas of your life that have been tainted by the shadows of the other issue.

It takes a brave person to hack away at the darkness, to admit the emperor has no clothes, to acknowledge that our acceptance of despair has been an agreement with the one who hates us rather than an agreement with the God who loves us.

It takes one brave thought. One honest admission. One strong moment of clarity to start kicking at the hardened blackness.

We start to think truth.

We think, Hey – it wasn’t meant to be this way.

And a flake of crust loosens from the darkness.

We think, I’m not going to make excuses anymore about this. This is wrong.

We start to agree with God.

I’m not destined to live like this. God didn’t die for me to be “less than” in my life.

You realize you are the rich, the immensely talented, the highly favored, the one with the perfect Father who gives you all the right opportunities.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

– Ephesians 1:3-10

But then it gets sticky, and all of our paths diverge in their own directions. Relationship issues have their lies to be confronted and healed, lifestyle choices have another set of lies that have to be confronted and healed. Past trauma has its own set of lies that need untangled. And the overlap from one area to another can seem overwhelming and complicated.

This is when we ask Him for the One Thing.

Just one, and He is a gentle, precise teacher. He will give you the most important thing to tackle that you are ready for. He doesn’t waste any time on peripherals, but He will also only confront the strongest lie that you are ready to handle.

It’s likely the enemy will immediately compound his efforts and lie to you about this because he’s terrified you will realize you’ve been locked in a prison with the key in your possession the entire time. He will tell you it’s too much, you can’t handle it, it’s too painful, you’re just not ready. He knows that appealing to our laziness and exhaustion with excuses and rationale works. And he will keep trying it until he realizes it doesn’t work on us anymore.

So we have to not allow it to work.

We have to ask God, What is the One Thing? And He tells us.

Maybe the One Thing is a habit we’ve held onto that has hurt us or our family. We may suddenly realize (or already know) there are a whole host of related habits that are also bringing decay into our lives. But, no matter – He has given us the One Thing, so we acknowledge it.

Yes, I did/believed/accepted that. Yes, it was wrong. Yes, You made me for more.

Big, deep breath. You did it. Now what?

It depends. Some of us might be tempted to run back to despair and excuses here because the issue at hand really is more about someone else’s choices than ours, and we know we can’t change them.

If this is the case, there is good news. Ready? You don’t have to change them. What you’ve already acknowledged has moved mountains – not only in your life, but in this other person’s life as well. You have moved a barrier out of the way. You’ve peeled a layer of darkness away and light is emanating beyond – the grey areas nearby are cleaner and brighter already.

As the darkness begins to lift, the Lord allows us to see strength that was won in the hard place.

O you who love the Lord, hate evil!

He preserves the lives of his saints;

he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

Light is sown for the righteous,

and joy for the upright in heart.

– Psalm 97:10-11

Jesus, I’m praying tonight for the one who is running out of hope and needing to hear Your words. We command the enemy to be silent, the lies to be crushed, the attacks and accusations to dissolve into nothing.

We release peace and wisdom and the ability to hear You again, louder and stronger than before. I pray that we will walk and think and speak in ways that agree with You and Your word, instead of capitulating to the enemy and his lies.

Show us how strong we are, how we are more than overcomers. Help us to not pave the way for the enemy’s plans with foolish, hopeless words. We are shutting off that path and building the road that takes us forward by reading Your word, and agreeing with it.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

– 2 Corinthians 4:6

Here’s the printable version of this post:

courage-part-2Download

Did you miss part 1? Here you go.

Looking for more posts like this? Kindling is a series of prophetic devotionals and encouragement to relight your fire in the places it’s gone out. They’re all right here. You can also subscribe here to get new posts straight to your inbox.