I was up early with a toddler who needed to go back to sleep. And I was soooo tired.
It had been over an hour already — he woke me up at 4:30 — and I knew I’d get back to bed soon, but apparently not quite yet because he was still rolling all over the place and making new, weird boy noises with his mouth while listlessly kicking the wall, petting the cat, and hitting his mattress. Sigh.
Why do we fight rest? We start early, like this. But some of us keep doing it far into adulthood. Maybe all our lives. It’s something I have always struggled with.
Maybe, partly, it’s because we’re made to do stuff. We are made in the image of the Creator, so we’re made to create. We have ideas and energy, and we doers and dreamers need to move on them before they wither or dissipate.
But the Creator rested, too — and I’m pretty sure He didn’t have to, so I wonder if He did it just to be an example to us. Have you ever tried to get a toddler to go to sleep by shutting your eyes and setting the example, pretending to sleep? We need to see what our Father is doing, and be in the habit of doing it, too.
Jesus, help us to rest well. Help us to steward our days and do what we can, and trust You with the rest, so we can rest.
The Lord knows the things you dream about, but He still wants you to tell Him about them.
He also knows the longings you have that you don’t have words for yet, or that you don’t yet realize you’re carrying.
Have you noticed His grace lately, or do you still feel like you need to earn things like His favor, love, provision, and protection?
Kids don’t earn those things. They’re just favored and loved and provided for and protected because that’s what parents do.
Even if your parents didn’t do that, God does. He is the best, first, and final parent. He loves you and there’s nothing you can do to make Him love you more. Or less.
He loves you because that’s who He is. So His grace and gifts are right there for the taking. Be honest with Him about the things you dream about, and what you’ve been longing for, and what you’ve always wondered about. See what He has to say about them. He likely had something to do with putting those dreams in your heart in the first place.
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.
— Ephesians 1:3
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 1:7-10
Someone is hoping you’ll be brave enough to speak up about and do the thing that’s been on your heart. The conviction you’ve been feeling about it isn’t just for you; it’s also for those whose lives will be changed by it, and for those who will see your obedience and be emboldened to do hard things, too.
Moving past your fears and resistance will equip you to obey God more and more. It will make you stronger. It will expand your comfort zone, making the hard things become easier things.
But not obeying will do the reverse. There’s no neutral in this – either you grow forward, more like Him, or you shrink back, and become less than you’re meant to be.
There’s joy on the other side of obedience, and it’s bigger than the insecurities you feel or the excuses you want to make. You are bigger than that. You’re made to do the exploits the Lord is calling you to.
Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.
For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
— Hebrews 10:35-39
We can rest in the One who carries us.
We can look ahead and know that nothing threatens us.
We can look back and know we did the best we could when we were abiding. And we can repent for when we didn’t abide, and still move forward.
We can face the work in front of us and know that we can do hard things: They don’t necessarily have to be fun, but they don’t have to be as miserable as we suspect they might be, either. And we will come out stronger and smarter, regardless.
We win no matter what. We refuse to partner with dread or agree with fear. We choose to walk in peace, one powerful step at a time, and move to the other side of this assignment. We may not like it, but the Lord has plans to use us mightily if we’ll surrender to Him in the midst of it.
The Kingdom will expand. The enemy’s stronghold will contract. Light will shine into dark places, and truth and justice will pour out.
Bedtime. I rolled over and tried to pull the pillow into place, and felt something tweak in my shoulder.
“Great,” I muttered, “tomorrow people will ask why I’m gimping around and I’ll have to tell them, ‘I’m 46, and I hurt my shoulder while wrestling with my pillow.’”
“Just tell them you did it in bed,” Vin said. “Let them use their imagination.”
And that did sound like a better idea.
Sometimes though, we can’t let people use their imagination. Sometimes their imaginations are less than gracious. And sometimes they believe the thing that seems most convenient but furthest from reality. Some things have to be clarified. And often the more important those things are, the harder they are to communicate.
For example, all week long I had a difficult conversation coming up. I had prayed and asked others to pray. But still, I was dreading it; I wondered if I should just not pursue it. Maybe I could get out of it.
So like every mature Christian, I tried that tactic in prayer:
I don’t want to do this, I told the Lord. I don’t know if I can do this.
You need to, though, He said. You know how to do it.
I don’t trust myself to do it right, though.
Do you trust Me? He asked.
Yes…but I don’t trust them. I don’t know how they’ll respond.
Do you trust Me? He repeated.
Of course I do. So I gave my feelings to Him (over and over, you know how this goes sometimes) and initiated the conversation. And the Lord gave me not only the wisdom and firmness I needed, but also the calm demeanor, composure, and discernment to say everything that needed to be said as I stood my ground. I did not waver; there was nothing on my list that was left unsaid.
God showed me again that He is faithful to work through us even when we feel unable and uncertain.
And that situation has been really good to look back on because a few months ago we learned about a whole new part of the special needs adoption process that we didn’t realize we signed up for almost eleven years ago. It’s called guardianship.
Maybe some of you are familiar with this. Maybe you’ve dealt with it and it seemed like no big deal. But for our family it feels like a Really Big Deal and we didn’t see it coming, and in some ways I feel stupid because it seems like we should have known about it or at least been given a heads up somewhere in the hours upon hours we spent in trainings and adoption paperwork.
For the equally uninitiated, it’s this: With their special needs and delays, our adopted kids will not be able to take care of themselves upon turning 18, when they magically become adults in the state of Alaska. This part wasn’t a surprise; we knew when we met Reagan that we were taking on a much bigger task than we originally thought and that she would always live with us. We did expect Andrey to be able to care for himself someday, though not as soon as he hits that magic number. What we did not realize is that continuing to care for them requires the legal activation of guardianship, and it is a fairly lengthy, somewhat invasive, legal process of courts, reports, and paperwork akin to the adoption process itself, except that it continues for the rest of our lives until we die.
Even after going through the original process and caring for them for over ten years, we must prove ourselves all over again to the government that we are able and willing to continue doing for our children what we’ve been doing all along. We cannot leave it to their imagination; it must be communicated. Again.
And that feels wrong to me. Oh, I know the reasons for it; you don’t need to lecture me. There have been exceptional cases of terrible people who take advantage of the system and do neglectful and sometimes horrific things to children. That is part of why we chose to adopt in the first place. The bigger problem is that more often than not, the terrible people out there doing terrible things to children are part of the system and work for the government.
So to treat all parents as guilty until proven innocent – over and over again – is unjust, inefficient, and a lousy use of resources. Putting the onus on parents who have already been through the fire and devoted years of their lives to caring for these children seems to be a “look here, not there” strategy.
But what can you do? There’s no other option. As it’s been explained to me, the reason it’s necessary is because Reagan cannot care for or make choices for herself, and without guardianship, if she were injured and needed to go to the hospital after she’s 18, we would not be able to make choices for her or authorize her care, either.
And yet if that situation arose, what then? Someone (a police officer, hospital staff, or some government worker) would arbitrarily end up making those decisions on her behalf, even though they would have no history with her, know absolutely nothing about her, and, ironically, would not have completed the process of guardianship, either. But we, her parents, must jump through the bureaucratic hoops in order to continue doing for her what we’ve been doing all along.
So we cannot leave things to the government’s imagination, and we will prove ourselves again by filling out more paperwork and going through more trainings and meetings so the government can check off their boxes, which is more important to them than actually spending all those hours with our children or nurturing our family, which is what good parents actually do.
I know, I’m a little bent outta shape about this.
The pressure wells and I am aware of every breath because I am inhaling deeply and deliberately, willing the oxygen to go in and the stress to go out. And then I eat a caffeinated energy bar because augmenting anxiety with the jitters seems like a capital idea.
I go downstairs to water the plants, and as I look at these tiny seedlings, I persist in telling myself the truth. The feelings want to be louder, but the truth is what needs to win the day:
The Lord knows this whole process.
He is protecting our family.
He has prepared us and is continuing to prepare us.
What surprises us does not surprise Him.
This won’t be wasted time; this will be found time.
This will be for our good, because He causes all things for our good. This will expand the Kingdom as we surrender to Him in it, and faithfully walk through it.
Nothing can threaten us.
That’s the thing that really gets me: It feels threatening and invasive. It feels like it’s sending us back to the beginning, and the beginning was so hard.
But wait, no, we’re focusing on truth and not feelings, so I keep going back to the truth. I plant those seeds deep, deep down so they will take root and grow. And it’s all well and good while I’m watering my lettuces and garlic, but as soon as I’m back upstairs on the couch researching the process, anxiety steamrolls through, scattering resolve and making me take deep, shaky breaths all over again. And I’m right back to telling Him, I don’t want to do this.
You need to, though, He tells me again. Do you trust Me?
I do trust Him. I don’t trust a lot of people, though. We’ve been burned so many times when they’ve used their imaginations, appointed themselves as authorities, or assumed something that wasn’t true. I’ve learned that outsiders can be dangerous and painful to special needs families and kids.
For years Reagan had a tiny, tiny bed. We tried giving her a twin-sized bed and she hated it; she slept on the outermost top corner of it because…well, use your imagination. She had a tiny bed at six years old when we met her, about half the size of a toddler mattress. I don’t know what her experience with bigger beds was, and she didn’t like the one we gave her. So Vin made her a small one that she did like, and it saved space in a bedroom that was shared by three girls at the time. But if you came to our house and saw her tiny, tiny bed, you would wonder. And I wouldn’t blame you for wondering. But I would blame you if you judged us for it without knowing the reason behind it.
A couple years ago we went on a short hike with someone we’d only met once before. A few days later I learned that this person had noticed Reagan walked awkwardly (because she does) and kept stepping out of her shoes (because she does). They assumed it was because her shoes didn’t fit her, so they generously offered to buy her some.
Do you see how that’s not really generous, though? They assumed we weren’t providing for her, that we hadn’t bothered to purchase shoes that fit her. They didn’t ask us, didn’t know anything about her, had never spent any time with her. They just assumed that the way she walked and acted was because of neglect and lack of finances on our part.
(Side note: Our generosity should never puff ourselves up or put someone else down. It should never be to exalt ourselves over someone else. Our generosity isn’t from us anyway, it is from God and we are merely the conduit and clerk He is going through.)
Why, when people have the opportunity to use their imagination, do they use it so badly?
But here I am, doing the same thing, because I’m imagining that the people on the other end of this guardianship process will be as ignorant and unhelpful as many that we’ve dealt with before.
You’re all safe, the Lord says. I’m right here with you. Nothing can threaten and harm you.
As a friend and pastor reminded me a few days ago as he prayed for us, the government is on His shoulders. The Lord’s not asking us to surrender anything to the government; we’re just surrendering to Him.
It’s a process that must be completed and endured. Knowing we are sheltered, safe from threat or invasion, and assigned to walk powerfully through it keeps us peaceful in the process.
So He’s teaching us to trust Him in new ways with the unexpected. We can trust Him even when we don’t trust ourselves or others. We can trust Him in our vulnerability, with surrendering to a process we would not have chosen but can expect Him to bring good out of, because He is our guardian: our keeper, protector, caregiver, champion, preserver, sentinel, and shepherd. And He’s showing us how to be more like Him.
Praying for you,
Shannon
P.S. If you need some deeper content on being burned, dealing with forgiveness and resentment, and/or you want to stop feeling threatened by those who have burned you, this is what we’re addressing in the February newsletter for premium subscribers, coming out in a few days. Upgrade for that here – there’s a free trial and also a reduced group rate. And if you need this content but it’s not in your budget right now (have you even SEEN the cost of groceries lately?!) just let me know and I’d love to comp your subscription for free, gratis.
Also! I made a little announcement recently and shared the first excerpt of my new book last week. That’s available to premium subscribers, too.
P.P.S. Links for you!
Incredible sermon from Pastor Craig Cooney: Four Words for 2023. Give yourself a minute to acclimate to is accent; the Irish do wild tings with vowels. ;)
Why is sudden cardiac arrest suddenly becoming normal, and why are those who should be talking about it refusing to do so? Great post here from Mr. Guerra.
Why do we abide and obey? Right here, in less than a minute.
We talk a lot about being in His presence because it’s pivotal to everything, but here’s something to consider: He loves your presence, too.
He likes being around you and hearing your voice. He wants to hang out with you so you can carry His peace and know His voice.
You can expect to hear God for yourself. You don’t have to rely on anyone else; He has words for you and He wants to talk to you.
It’s okay if it takes a while to get used to it, and to start recognizing His voice. It’s okay to wonder, “Is that the Lord, or just my own thoughts?” He loves your heart that wants to get it right, that doesn’t just want to hear what it wants, that wants to hear the truth and be set free.
Be willing to be surprised, though. His thoughts are not our thoughts because He is better and more loving than we imagine.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
— Isaiah 55:8-9
He knows that the more you hang out together, the more you will reflect Him — and that’s not a narcissistic desire of His; the more you reflect Him, the happier and stronger you will be.
He gave up Himself so you could have all of Him. He’s not petty and insecure. He wants every bit of you to reflect every bit of Him, so nothing is left that is less than it should be.
And maybe here’s the most surprising thing: He’s not impatient with you or angry with the timing of your progress. He’s not frustrated by your need to grow. He knows you need to grow; He knows it’s a process. He is building character, purity, and strength in you step by step, every time you abide with Him.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
— John 15:13-15
If you are feeling a nudge (or a slam) of correction in your life, don’t let pride or stubbornness or immaturity get in the way of it. Don’t let the enemy strip blessing from you by convincing you to ignore it. Choose to grow.
Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
to give him rest from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
For the Lord will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.
— Psalm 94:12-15
It’s okay to just sit with Him and not have words to say. Waiting in silence and acknowledging His presence are ways we learn to distinguish between God’s thoughts and our own thoughts.
We don’t have to fill in the gaps.
We welcome the Holy Spirit into our space and our silence.
We can rest and refill for a minute, and trust that He is moving the very synapses of our brains to help us receive His words and wisdom for our day.
…assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
— Ephesians 4:21-24
The Lord is still talking to you. If it seems different, it’s because you’ve changed. He doesn’t change, but we do.
It’s not necessarily wrong.
We grow and our routines have to grow, too. Sometimes we grow faster than those habits and routines can keep up, and it takes a while for them to catch up with the change we’re experiencing.
Here’s something to remember: God is not offended by the normal activity of your life. But He is easily pushed out by our indulgence in the comfort zone. A little break here, a little slacking there, and eventually our disciplines are out the window and the fault is squarely on us.
What to do? Repent fast, immediately, as soon as you realize. Do it now. He is near, and shame must not be allowed to separate you further.
Jesus, we’re sorry for straying. Keep our eyes on You. Remind us of Your nearness, Your love for us, Your goodness to us.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
— 1 John 1:5
He knows who you really are.
Who you’re becoming. Who you’ve been. Who you’re struggling to overcome and who you’re meant to be.
You don’t have to hide from Him. Your progress forward accelerates with honesty and integrity, so be honest with Him about your struggles and desires. Get it out in the open. Lay it all before Him and surrender. He knows anyway, so ditch the pride and let Him love you into wholeness. You will love the you who He wants to make you into.
He is pouring love onto you every morning, giving you a new day to abide and know Him more as you partner with Him.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
