My pastor gave a great message today on this verse. It couldn’t have come at a more timely time. I am beginning to experience God’s faithfulness raining down on me in ways that I have prayed about for years. It isn’t what I initially hoped for. It isn’t the end of the story that I wrote. It doesn’t undo the hurt or even mask it. It exists independent of all of that. It is amazing to see such a different ending than I thought come to pass and yet still experience it as faithfulness. God can be trusted. I have witnessed that His faithfulness miraculously does not have to be circumstantial. It rises above our circumstances and is grounded steadfastly in the goodness and omnipotence of God.

I was reminded today about gentleness…something the Lord has been working on in both Katie and I in the last three years. Even in the midst of trial and suffering. When we are in prison like Paul, we are admonished to let our gentleness be evident to all. We can relax about our futures no matter how badly we have been wounded. We don’t have to vindicate ourselves. We have a loving God who asks us to come to Him with our needs. He promises to guard our hearts and minds. He promises to give us peace. We don’t have to figure things out. That’s His job. We have to let our gentleness be evident to all. Not despite our circumstances but especially in our circumstances. This brings God glory and subsequently revolutionizes the world. Here’s your sign: Gentleness.

Grace and Peace,
Miriam

“Long periods of well-being and comfort are in general dangerous to all.
After such prolonged periods, weak souls become incapable of weathering any
kind of trial. They are afraid of it. Yet it is a fact that difficult trials and
sufferings can facilitate the growth of the soul. I know there is a
widespread feeling that if we highly value suffering this is masochism. On the
contrary, it is a significant bravery when we respect suffering and understand what
burdens it places on our soul.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Where there is reason for gratitude, there can always be found a reason for bitterness. It is here that we are faced with the freedom to make a decision. We can decide to be grateful or to be bitter. We can decide to recognize our chosenness in the moment or we can decide to focus on the shadow side. When we persist in looking at the shadow side, we will eventually end up in the dark.

“…The men and women with mental disabilities, have many reasons to be bitter…Still they choose mostly not to be bitter, but grateful for the many small gifts of their lives…most of all, for their daily life in community with people who offer friendship and support. They choose gratitude over bitterness and they become a great source of hope and inspiration for all their assistants who, although not mentally disabled, also have to make that same choice. When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.

“…When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others. That is the great joy of being chosen: the discovery that others are chosen as well. In the house of God there are many mansions. There is a place for everyone – a unique, special place. Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.”

There was no ceremony for the death of my marriage. There was no casket in which to place the dreams and ideals I had held so close for so long. There were no mourners to shed tears with me as I said goodbye to the last of my hope. There was no ritual way of asking for forgiveness, for experiencing forgiveness, for being released from my vows. Nor was there much attention paid to the process of divorce, and all of the pain and anger and humiliation it added to the weight of my soul. There was no ceremony when my marriage was buried.
There was only pain and loss and anger and grief. It wasn’t my intent to be divorced. Almost no one gets married expecting they will get divorced. No matter what the circumstances, divorce tears through layers of trust, community and security in ways that can reshape the very core of our faith and of our sense of who we are.
In this day and age no one is immune to the impact of divorce. 50% of marriages now end in divorce. 61% of second marriages have the same end. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children and our friends form relationships that end in divorce. We grieve the loss of people in our lives, the loss of relationships we had come to rely on. Sometimes we even blame ourselves for the breakdown and our failure to make it all better for the ones we love. Other times we struggle with feelings of disconnection and betrayal that people and relationships aren’t what we thought they were. We mourn and grieve that the reality we knew has shattered.
And God grieves with us. Divorce is never God’s intent for our marriages. Our God calls us into relationship with God, with each other and with all of creation. Whenever any of those relationships are broken it is due to our flawed humanity and not according to God’s divine will. Marriages do break, and when they are broken, divorce is the legal and public recognition of that already broken relationship. As people who worship a God of relationship, we do not enter into divorce lightly. We realize the seriousness and the anguish of such a decision. We count the costs for ourselves and for others who will also be affected by our choices.
And after careful consideration, when the effects of continuing a marriage are found to be more destructive to our welfare than ending it, we choose divorce, the lesser of the evils in a fallen and imperfect world. We mourn and grieve that things cannot be the way God would have them be, but we also know in making that choice that we can rely upon God’s unfailing grace.
It is that grace that sustains us in our grief and it is the promise of the resurrection story that gives us hope that we too will live anew. For our God is an amazing healer and an intimate lover who does not abandon us in our need.
The losses will always be a part of us, but we are people of the good news. And that good news is that we need not grieve as those without hope. When we can claim God’s grace and forgiveness and when we can move to a place of being graceful and forgiving, then we find a healing and a wholeness we never knew before.
I have shared some of my high school poetry before and you may recall that it stunk. There is another poem I wrote in high school that I think is pretty good. I wrote it upon the breaking of a relationship, not a divorce but about the equivalent in the mind of a teenage. I wrote it but I don’t think I really lived it until years later. It goes like this:
Alone, but that’s okay

What better time and what better way

To discover myself

And the needs I possess

And here in myself

Find the faith to confess

That at times I am weak

Though I always survive

Alone but alive

And I’m totally free

Which allows me the chance

To be totally me

And in self awareness

I’m sure I will find

That half of my heartaches

Were all in my mind

And the things I have lost

Have just been misplaced

So the time I spend now

Is far from a waste

You see I’ll get to know me

And like myself too

And when that finally happens

Then I can love you.
Sometimes it is only in our loneliness that we are able to find ourselves. It is in our pain that we can heal. It is in our mourning that we find joy. In doubt that we find faith. In sickness that we are restored to health. And it is in death that we are reborn.
There are times when it all seems too much to bear. Our world falls apart. There are times when it might seem easier to surrender to the worry and the pain and the loneliness. In the death of a marriage, we experience our own dying. But the good news is that our grief is never the last word to be spoken in the stories of our lives. Our grief is never the last word to be spoken in the stories of our lives. Our grief is never the last word to be spoken in the stories of our lives. In the end, there is always a new beginning. The darkness of the tomb becomes the comfort of the womb as God continues to love and to care for us. Eventually we can dare to begin to hope and to dream once more. The gift is that after the storm there is a peace and it is a deeper and more intense peace than we have known before.
Freed from what has been, we can begin to move toward what is yet to be. Freed from our sense of brokenness we can reach out in love, compassion and hope toward others who are broken.
In John we are told that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. When we embrace God, he keeps our pilot light burning until the day when our joy can blaze again.

In Me lyrics
By: Casting Crowns

If you ask me to leap
Out of my boat on the crashing waves
If You ask me to go
Preach to the lost world that Jesus saves

I’ll go, but I cannot go alone
Cause I know I’m nothing on my own
But the power of Christ in me makes me strong
Makes me strong

Cause when I’m weak, You make me strong
When I’m blind, You shine Your light on me
Cause I’ll never get by living on my own ability
How refreshing to know You don’t need me
How amazing to find that you want me
So I’ll stand on Your truth, and I’ll fight with Your strength
Until You bring the victory, by the power of Christ in me

If You ask me to run
And carry Your light into foreign land
If You ask me to fight
Deliver Your people from Satan’s hand

To reach out with Your hands
To learn through Your eyes
To love with the love of a savior
To feel with Your heart
And to think with Your mind
I’d give my last breath for Your glory

“God is indeed active in history. But his action is hidden within what seems to be its opposite—suffering and tribulation for his people. The secret has been entrusted to those whom God chose. They are to be witnesses of it to all the nations.”

Leslie Newbigin, The Open Secret

We love these two quotes on suffering….......We have been talking a lot about what it means to suffer well….and why we suffer…(We know Deep stuff for moms with preschoolers) We have been trying to break down what God uses our trials for…...Miriam paraphrased it like this…....

“God allows some to suffer so that they may open the eyes of others to suffering.” -Miriam

We keep walking and bring attention to the other that suffer and don’t have a voice.

“I pour out my complaint before Him; before Him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way.”

Sometimes I know God in the very core of who I am. It is not related to my circumstances. It isn’t shrouded in comfort. It is what it is. Just knowing. I’ve had this experience recently. It’s hard to put into words and most of the time I don’t even try, but today I am going to. I see myself in the middle of this big, finite, messy, human circle. In the circumference of the circle lies every ideology, every hope, every hurt, every theory of who God is and how life works. My view on relationships, people, missions, parenting, beauty, politics, success, failure, hope, hopelessness are housed somewhere along this circle. My living and breathing relationships are here in this circle. My past is there. The events of my present and future lie somewhere along that continuum. And I am sitting on the inside of that circle. Sometimes I feel like a little kid, skipping in this circle like “Ring around the Rosy” visiting the different things that live in this perimeter. Sometimes it is a luxury to do this, like picking up fine jewelry and studying it closely before putting it back on the shelf. Sometimes it is a chore. I pick up the figurine for the millionth time and dust it off wondering why I keep it anyways.

But these days, I am most at home sitting in the middle of the circle because this is where I know God most. I don’t know how He is going to work in the details that lie along the edge of the circle. I’m am mostly unsure of how He intersects with the temporal areas of my life…the things that are different tomorrow than they are today and will only continue to change. But the beauty of sitting in the middle of that circle is that I don’t have to know these things. Because in the center, all that matters is that God is who He says He is, whether I can make sense of it or not. In the center, Jesus is with me always, even to the end of the age. It is in the center of this circle, when I stop dusting the seemingly harmless idols of my life, that I find peace. Not a circumstantial peace, but exactly the opposite. A peace that comes from knowing that I am no longer a slave to the circumstances. I love this place. Not in the warm, fuzzy way that I love people, or Christmas, or good food. I love it in the way someone who has just finished running a marathon loves walking, or someone who has just broken a fast loves a banana. It is the contrast that I appreciate so much because the contrast exposes for me its true value.

Sitting in the center of our circles matters because this is where we meet God. This is where the chaos of our lives meets the deafening silence of a stilled and quiet heart before the Lord. This is where God, in all His bigness and unfathomableness, holds us to His breast like a mother. And whether or not the details on our circle change, which indubitably they will, it doesn’t matter so much anymore. Because we are no longer swept up in the vortex of our circumstances, but instead, are sitting in the presence of an unchanging, loving Savior. Be still and know.

When my FH first left us, I was praying with a woman that God had given her a word for me…......Perseverance. Yikes….that sounded long and hard to me. I HAD NO IDEA!

James 1: 3 & 4 says “because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Again…that did not sound fun to me. I have always been a sprinter…...I hate long runs or ANYTHING that takes a long time. I feel like I keep trying to find ways around the pain and grief, only to find myself back a square one. I know that God is calling me to walk right through the fire of this pain. I know He is with me and I don’t do it alone, but some nights…..I want a short cut.

I love this song by Alanis Morissette It reminds me…The only way out is through!!!!! Here is a section from it.

The only way out is through
The faster we’re in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we’ll feel better
The only way out is through ultimately

Every time I’m confused
I think there must be easier ways
Every time our horns are locked on towel throwing
Every time we’re at a loss, we’ve bolted from difficulty
Anytime we’re still made of final bowing

My tendency to want to hide away feels easier and
The immediacy is picturing another place comforting to go

So I dare you….walk through the pain, let God use it for good in your life. Let it refine you. Persevere my friends

Stay Empty
By: Aaron Niequist

My life is cracked in ways that I don’t understand,
And there are holes inside I never planned.
But this roller-coaster,
Is how You pull me closer.
And I trust that You are who You made me for –

And I will
stay empty,
I will keep waiting;
I will stay empty,
Until You fill me up and I
I will stay empty,
I will keep waiting,
Until You fill me up with You.

Send Your floods to
help me clean out
my heart’s space,
Please come quickly,
it’s so hard to wait.
This world is temporary,
I cry for sanctuary!
And throw myself into the strongest arms of Hope –

It may come soon,
And maybe it won’t.
I want to run,
But I know You don’t.
I give You my heart,
And trust You in faith.
And cling to the blessings
I anticipate!

“Don’t be upset because of the evil people. Don’t be jealous of those who do wrong, because like the grass, they will soon dry up. Like green plants they will soon die away. Trust the Lord and do good. Live in the land and feed on truth. Enjoy serving the Lord and He will give you what you want. Depend on the Lord; trust him, and He will take care of you. “

That’s right…..I am so hard core. I got a Tat! Yup, Inked. I have been praying about it for awhile. I had many who weighed in on it…shocker…My fave is when they quote that the bible says we should not mark up our bodies…… I can only respond with “My name is written in HIS wrist…why can’t His be on mine?” ZAP! I mean that in all humility and seriousness, but it does tend to shut the haters up!!!

I went with El Roi.

It is from the story of Hagar in Genesis 16. Sarai tried to get in the way…or as we women see it…Help God out. God had promised Sarai and Abram a baby…..God was not quick enough for Sarai….so she made the slave girl step in. Hagar gets pregnant and she and Sarai are not getting along, infact it says that Hagar treated Sari badly and then Sarai in turn was hard on Hagar and Hagar runs away. So we have this pregnant slave girl that ran away, she had been used and mistreated. She is sitting by this well and an angel of the Lord speaks to her. Tells her to go back to the abuse and obey and the Lord will bless her. He has some bad news about her kid….but that is another topic! She calls him the “God who sees her” or El Roi.

I get this on so many levels. But the thing that sticks out to me is that she is so touched by the fact that God is so personal…..she does not say …”he is the God who sees people…..” He is the who sees ME. As I have walked through this trial in my life I have been reminded of that so many times. He sees. He knows. He cares.

I love this site I found:
Preceptaustin.org
“God sees and He knows if what has occurred in our lives involves injustices against us. Yes, God is sovereign and in total control and there is nothing that comes into our life that God has not allowed but at the same time He is one who sees all that we have had to deal with. He knows all that we have had to go through in our lives. He knows the times we have been mistreated in our lives. He knows those situations that have involved physical or verbal abuse. He knows that even in all of these afflictions there is the potential to bring Him glory. Remember that because God is sovereign, if what occurred in our lives (or is occurring right now) did not have the potential to conform us to the image of His Son, then He would not have allowed it to occur but He would have intervened. This should give you great peace in the midst of the storm, an inner peace that comes from the fact that He is the God Who sees and that He has not missed

as has been repeatedly emphasized in this study of El Roi, one of the most messages that this name conveys is that there is nowhere we can flee from His presence – He is there. There is a peace that comes from knowing He is there. There is a peace that comes by knowing that He has seen the sins others may have committed against us. It is His responsibility to vindicate us – it is not our responsibility. A genuine understanding of El Roi has the potential of giving you the grace of forgiveness if you are harboring ill will toward someone because of past events.”

Amen and Amen.

I thank God for all the times I’ve prayed for silver and he’s said no-and made me wait so he could give me gold instead.”

-Ben Patterson

“Second only to suffering, waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer in godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us will ever encounter.”

-Richard Hendrix

“Can you Stand the Rain”

On a perfect day
I know that I can count on you
When that’s not possible
Tell me can you weather the storm
‘Cause I need somebody who will stand by me
Through the good times and bad times
She will always, always be right there

Chorus:
Sunny days
Everybody loves them
Tell me
Can you stand the rain
Storms will come
This we know for sure
Can you stand the rain