The Best of Both Worlds

For a long time I've wrestled with guilt over a "small" thing. It started when I met Jeremiah and increased when I bore my first daughter. You see, until I had these precious people in my life I was content with whatever life brought my way. I had no fears or qualms with an uncertain future. Sickness? Bring it on; I'd die praising Jesus. (Not that I wanted it but I wasn't afraid.) Martyr??? Even better; let me deny myself unto death. A life of celibacy in some foreign jungle spreading the good news??? Yes!!! Please!!! Jesus and my heavenly home was enough. Life was short and I'd push through until I was in my real home.

I was very internally dramatic in my imaginings of the life I might lead. It's easy to have a "risk it all" attitude with you have nothing but yourself to risk.

This all changed when I met Jeremiah. I love him so dearly that I wish I had two lifetimes with him.
And then I had my children and instead of embracing a metaphorically short life I wish for the reality of a llllooonnnggg life on this earth so I can soak in every minute of the heaven I have here.

And then I was stuck. Because I'm not supposed to love this life on earth this much. (Am I?) I've felt guilty that I no longer wish to rush into the arms of my Saviour with such haste. I hope I'm explaining myself well. I know this isn't my home and that heaven will be a billion times better. And the older I get the more I look forward to heaven. Not just because I get to be with God forever, but because I will never be sad there, or see myself as less than beautiful, or look down on someone and miss their beauty. I will never be angered there or  hurt or tired. And everyone I've lost on this journey--I'll have unending days to catch up with them as well. It's all wonderful and I'm tearing up just thinking of it.

BUT, that's when I get stuck. Because for so long I've felt guilty that I love what I have right now as much as what I'll have then. I've felt guilty because in me burns the revelation that I don't want to go to heaven yet, I want this life now for as long as I can and then I want eternal heaven. Maybe God will reveal to me that in some fashion I've created an idol of what I have now. But to not say it is far worser to me. I've got to be honest with myself and with God.

I LOVE THIS LIFE HE HAS GIVEN ME. I want a hundred years and more with my husband and my children and my (one day) grandchildren. I want to make love a thousand more times and fall in love over and over and over. I want to take vacations and make memories and travel and know what it means to die old and bursting at the seams. I want to spend as long as I can loving people and pointing them to Jesus. Reveling in every miracle: big and small. I want to laugh and cry and embrace the essence of my humanity. I know the heaven that comes when this body perishes will be outstanding. But the heaven I live in now is outstanding as well. That's part of the good news of the Gospel. We DON'T have to wait to die to experience heaven. We start now. Jesus brought the Kingdom Heaven to earth.

This is what's burning in my heart this week. The best of both worlds. I have it!!!!

Give it all.

A few weeks ago during our corporate worship time we were singing the song "Scandal of Grace" by Hillsong United. (An amazing song oozing with deep truths!) There is a line that says "oh to be like you, give all I have just to know you". For those of you who don't know, one of the main ways I minister to the body of Christ is by leading worship at our church. So, trust me, I know (if anyone does) how easy it is to sing truth but not really get what I'm saying. I'd love to say that every song I've ever sang was uttered in the purest of heart. But I'm human. Sometimes they are just words.

The words to "Scandal of Grace" are powerful...But they also remind of another "song" I used to be silly and sing. "Oh be careful little lips what you pray, oh be careful little lips what you pray." Sometimes I've prayed things and I didn't realize what I was asking God to do in my life. Can you relate? For example in high school I felt that I didn't really understand the spiritual realm in terms of battle of good and evil. So I asked God to open my eyes to see what was going on. Boy did He. But it wasn't an easy answered prayer. Even as I write I wonder if my strong spiritual gift of discernment stems from this prayer. I love the gift of discernment but it carries a weight to it. I can read between the lines when people say how they are doing. I can sense something is going on and it burdens me. I carry people's burdens like their my own. I feel the battle. Anyhow, all that to say is that we pray things and sing things and say things and sometimes, despite our best efforts not to be ignorant...We say things in ignorance.

So I was singing that song in church, blissfully telling God I will give ALL I have just to know Him more and GUESS what??? He clearly showed me an area in which I'd been fighting Him and clinging to a safe zone. I had dug my heels in. Now if I told you the situation you'd insist that I have every right to feel the way I do and to fight it. And in a way you'd be right. We have every right to feel the things we do. And we can be totally honest with God about it. But when we sign up to make Jesus our LORD, we also consequentially sign up to resign all our personal rights. We live for someone else. Things in life happen. Sometimes they are glorious, but also sometimes they suck. We feel helpless and out of control. (Really, we are...that's not a feeling.)

When I sang those words a few weeks ago I heard His voice. He said "You CAN gladly give it all in this situation, because you will gain more of ME."

I had lost perspective. It's easy to do when the crap hits the fan. You see the crap everywhere, instead of what is really there. The crap is life and God is the room.

The words He spoke to me DO NOT make it easy for me to give my all, but they give me a hope in doing it. I can save my energy and stop fighting. I can rest easier and wait to see how much more of Himself I find in having to go through the fire. He is worth it. He is our reward. Everything and everyone in life can fail us and fall away...but He never will.

So, I give you the challenge He gave me. You are not going through what I am, but you are going through something. The enemy wants you to gain more of yourself and become inward focused. But God wants to replace yourself with Himself and become Kingdom focused.

Give it all my friends. Give it all.

2 years ago...

This is a blog I wrote 3 weeks after I had a miscarriage in September of 2012.


Three weeks ago I was me. But I was a different me.

I was a me with a handsome husband, 3 children and we were getting by. Life was hard but I had nothing to complain about. Three weeks ago I struggled with guilt because I know so many people who want children so badly. I know people whose desire for children have starved their marriage of desire for each other. I know people who have tried everything and still have no kids. I know people who have miscarried many times. I was not one of them. I get pregnant easily. At the blink of an eye easy.

Today I am me with a handsome husband, 3 children and one miscarriage under my belt. Life is still life but I don't see it the same way. Some will say what I carried inside me for 3 weeks was not really a child. Some will say they understand but they don't. I said it too, but I didn't. All I can say is there was a filling that occurred in my soul when I knew I was pregnant with my fourth child. And this morning when I found out for certain I wasn't anymore, there is an emptiness. I look around my house and see what might have been. I see my 3 beautiful girls and know that there should have been one more.

Three weeks ago I thought I knew what loss and sorrow and grief and confusion felt like. Surely I thought I did. I'd lost my grandfather. I'd been engaged and lost that love.

Today I know loss and sorrow and grief and confusion and we are no longer just acquaintances. We are like old friends. There's a knocking on my heart..."Oh, hello, it's you again. Did you come to stay or just to visit this hour?".

This loss has changed me, as I know all loss does. What you may surprised at is to know that it changed me for the better. I am not angry at God. I don't blame Him. I know He is good and I know He is all about life. I also know that He doesn't make babies die in the womb, but He does know about everything we go through before it happens. I know that if He has allowed me this suffering He has something to show me, to teach me, to tell me. So, I've been listening.


When I first started spotting and bleeding, this is a Psalm I read...
You are my hiding place.
You protect me from trouble.
And sing over me with songs of deliverance.

I made it into a song and I sing it over myself and over this life.

An open letter to my child in heaven...

Its been some time since I blogged but yesterday words began to pour like the great flood and I have found them healing me as the came. So, I'm gonna write as it comes and I hope that you can find some healing in this too..For whatever ails you in this short life. 

Yesterday I wrote some hard honest letters to people that I have lost along this road. My last letter was to the child I miscarried in September 2012. I wrote that child one letter when I first found I was pregnant, and one more when the bleeding started. I begged them to stay within me...But we know that was pointless. The aimless cries of a mother in agony. So I wrote a final letter (because I'm not going to be one of those people who goes kuku by writing letters to deceased people all the time). 

I share it with you because we have all lost something and have all grieved deeply for someone or something. As I did in my first post, I recommit to being as real as I can. My love to you all!

Dear Child of Mine,

I’d like to believe you were a boy but odds are you weren’t. But I’m naming you Zeal (hopefully your dad will agree…He did!). I think it’s a perfect name either way and hopefully all your heavenly friends will think it’s pretty sharp. You rocked my world and changed me in weeks the way waters carve lines in the rocks over hundreds of years. You were radical and I needed (need) that change. I would never have chosen it but I needed it. 

My grief has been like a seed. It falls in the soil of your heart without your permission. When the bad thing happens a flower in the field of your heart dies and it drops its seeds. Some blow away with the winds of time. But some take root. Your silent tears water them and before you know it, you have an underground system of roots belonging to grief. In most respects I am very in touch with myself. But no one wants to be angry or sad so I had rejected them. I had said, “Go away from me!” and dusted them from my shoulders like an old cobweb. It was silliness and futile but I tried. Did I mention grief is like a nasty stain??? You can’t merely dust it off. You must wash it repeatedly and possibly use some oxy-clean. Unfortunately there is no spiritual oxy-clean so there you have it. Life goes on and with each situation you find that over time the grief stain lessens. That is if you dealt with it. But remember I didn’t.

So, here I am with a grief tree growing in my heart. You can call an apple tree a pear tree or an orange tree. But really, it is still an apple tree. So it is with a grief tree. You can call it whatever you like or nothing at all. It doesn’t matter. It’s there.

Sweet child, you were the beginning of my grief tree. And just because of that I think it’s lovely because it grew from you. Grief is not a bad thing. Well at least not to me. Depression is the evil twin of grief…but grief itself is normal and natural. So I tell myself.  (I shall call it my Zeal Tree). And the reason I think grief to be good and not bad for me is that it has drawn me closer to our Maker. To the one who breathes life into all my leaves and waters me when I’m thirsty so that I grow and thrive.

And I do grow and thrive even in the midst of this time. His words say that better is the unborn baby. And in the past months I will say that you haven’t missed out on too much when it comes to what others undergone. For that reason only am I thankful you are there and not here.

Now, onto something completely unrelated. The idea that I would have no Abaleen if you hadn’t gone. I can’t conceive that because she is all I know in the flesh. I can’t think “I’m glad I have her and not you”. Or  “I wish I had you and never her”. That’s absurdity. So, I cherish every moment with her because that is a moment I have with her that I never had with you. And I thank God that He gave me her even though I lost you. I thank him that this life is a breath and even now in His mind we are all together in an eternity of something I can’t comprehend…But I know you’ll be there and I’ll be there and our Maker.

One day I’ll “hold” you… and I will be able to love you in that moment without any grief because thankfully there is an end to this madness. And passing from life to LIFE uproots all the trees in my heart and lays down a new forest of only Goodness and Joy and Peace. I don’t know what your Home is like. Can you see me? Do you watch us? Do you laugh when I’m silly? Do you watch me worship and know that it’s only the tip of the iceberg? You know so many mysteries I can’t fathom.

It’s not fair that a mother should nurture a child even for a day that she would never be able to hold and nuzzle and smell and kiss. It’s not fair that I didn’t receive your first smile or glean from you your first giggle. It’s torture that I don’t know if you were my one true son. It’s crazy that I must wait to know if you were the one who took after your Daddy. (Who, by the way, is the most amazing man I know).

In my last letter to you I begged you not to go. But in this letter, I leave you in better spirits Zeal. You are in way better hands than mine. (After four children I realize children living past age 5 is a sheer miracle in and of itself.) I give myself fully to the shade of this grief tree. In it I find the comfort of my Maker in ways I would have never known otherwise. Your life was not a waste. It has been used for my good over and over and over… And therefore the good my children and my husband and our church and my grandchildren and so on. Your tiny formless body has had a great impact. The fruit of your life grows with in mine.

Zeal, you have all my love. 

Things I gotta say...

There have been many times when I have felt guilty over the fact that my fertility resembles that of a rabbit. I know so many precious couples who long for a child and here we are popping them out like gumballs from a machine. I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I do. I've often pondered between me and God: why did you choose us for this easy path and others for a hard one? I have even envied the perspective that people who have had to wait have gained from their experiences. I'll be honest. I've not always had the best attitude upon first finding out about a child growing with in me. Don't get me wrong, I love (LOVE) our girls. But there were days when I know I don't fully appreciate what I have, because the stress of life pushes away perspective. And I have to fight for it sometimes. I guess we are all guilty of that, but it still bothers me about myself.

When I got pregnant with Irie, Jeremiah and I had been married 2 weeks. I was shell shocked. Yes, we knew where babies came from, but didn't expect that we'd accomplish it so quickly. With Scarlet, I was happy. With Clara, I was in denial. With sweet baby #4, I was at peace. But that child didn't thrive and was gone in the proverbial "blink of an eye". I grieved and experienced a sadness I would never wish on anyone. And, if I hadn't gotten pregnant again immediately then I know I'd still be swimming in a pool of despair on some level.

So, here I am, carrying our precious baby #5 (which for obvious purposes will always be referred to as our 4th child). I would love to lie and say that after a miscarriage I've had a wonderful positive attitude about everything I've experienced in this first trimester. I try not to lie so I'll just say that I still struggle for perspective. The past 3 months have been incredibly trying and emotional and just plain crazy sometimes. I know that a miscarriage is not from God. However, I know God and I know He promises to use everything for my good...Even the horrible things that Satan would use to destroy me. And that is just what God has done. He met me in my sadness and I felt Him near to me. He changed my heart and made me more like Him. He gave me another child (and there was a part of my heart that feared I wouldn't have another). He has given me grace after grace after grace to live and not just merely be alive. I am thankful that God doesn't just have healing for us, but also has Himself for us.

I am 11 weeks and 3 days pregnant with this baby. We would like a boy :) 

Grey Hairs and Wheel Chairs...

So, for awhile now I've been wanting to start branching out in my personal ministries. Which can be rather hard considering the mommy demand in my home is at an all time high. But, I don't believe children are meant to be an excuse so I have finally gone forward with something God has put on my heart for many years...And this is done with many thanks to my husband, who, in addition to starting 3 new jobs at one time, is taking Tuesday mornings off to watch our girls so I can live out the Gospel in a new way that God has put on my heart. (I love my Jeremiah.)

Today was my first day as a volunteer at a local nursing home, Ross Memorial Heath Care Center! My basic duties are to help wheel the residents from their rooms to the activity room, sit with them while the take part, or visit other residents in their rooms, and then help wheel them out. Originally I was supposed to do Friday mornings until I realized I had double booked myself. Praise God that He loves to show up in the details...Guess what the activity is every Tuesday when I'm there?? It's called "Sounds of Praise". A pianist comes in and plays and sings old hymns and an elderly man brings some God centered stories and devotions. As you all should know, singing old hymns to a piano is right up my southern Baptist-raised alley :) I got to sing, and loudly at that (hehe). The sweet woman, Annie, next to me was my own personal fan club and whenever a break presented itself she exclaimed "my, aren't you good...can you come home with me and sing to my Mommy and Daddy?". Though, she is obviously suffering from dementia, she was sincere all the same.

So, this is what I get to do every Tuesday morning. I get to serve these sweet people, and smile at them. Hold their hands and listen to them. Sing for them. It really is amazing how cool our God is! I knew I'd enjoy, but now I'm going to love it. And eventually I'll probably get to lead a devotion and do a musical "special" :) And as a side note, usually I am nervous about starting something new just because it is foreign...But I wasn't this morning. It was real nice. And as an additional side note, this is something I can bring Irie (my 3.5 year old) along with me to. She will love showing off her dance skills for them.

What has God been putting on your heart that you've been putting off for a million different reasons??? Perhaps, its just not time yet. But...maybe it is! Hey, if I can fit it in, maybe you can too :)

Dreams are a wish our hearts make...

I've been thinking about dreams. Not the kind you have when you sleep (though I've plenty enough strange ones to devote a whole blog to). I've been thinking about dreams, as in the things we desire most in life, the things we aspire to do and become, the things we dare to think of though we know it may never happen. The reason that this is noteworthy is because by nature, I am not much of a dreamer. I tend to err on the side of being a realist, and a realist isn't one for dreaming much. However. since I've been married to a magnificent dreamer for four years now, I think he's having an effect on me. I know this to be true because I've been dreaming some magnificent dreams myself. When I'm lying in bed at night, my mind wanders far from me...And when I wake up in the morning to nurse Clara I have trouble falling back asleep thinking on such dreams. I don't know why I've never been a dreamer, because despite the lack of sleep its causing me, it's quite the thrill! I suppose it has seemed so easy to see dreams may never come to be, than to take the time to imagine if they did. I was on the way to church this morning and heard this line in a song "I've heard of dreams that move the mountains"...And then I was thinking on our beloved Martin Luther King, Jr., who, as we all know, had a dream. I've been pondering that if more people were dreamers, then maybe we'd have a greater impact on the world. Because, as for me, the more I think about my dreams the more I start to realize they aren't so far fetched...Especially since I serve such a mighty God!

So, this may not come as much of a surprise, but there is really only one thing I spend most of my time dreaming of (though I do dream of other things as well).... I dream of moving to Jamaica and planting a church. Oh my, every time I think I'm going to get it out of my system, I don't. Lately, I can close my eyes and picture Jeremiah and I ministering together. I can picture myself walking with the girls down the road to visit people. I can see the sunrises and sunsets and I can smell the freedom and excitement in the air as people start walking with God. It makes my heart beat faster and my eyes tear up. I dream of it so intensely. Usually I dream and then the realist within starts talking to me...It reminds me that my husband is not quite on board with all that, and that you need money, and that though life is simpler there, you are not afforded many of the conveniences you are here. And of the dangers to my children and that I'd leave my family behind. But lately, I've listened to the realist with wisdom and acknowledge these obstacles. I realize that my dream may never happen. God may call someone else's family to go there and they may plant a church. God may only use my prayers instead of my body. If that's the case then I'll just have to wonder why I was given this passion from afar, but I'll be okay. But, what if it is me and my family that gets to go!? What if my whole destiny depends on my ability to keep dreaming? To dream and keep my passion burning deep so that when the time comes I'm ready?

I think on Martin Luther King, Jr. and wonder where our nation would be if he had stopped dreaming? He changed a NATION for crying out loud! His dream was impossibly big and huge and hard, but it was the heart of God inspiring it with in him! I dream of changing a nation and pray that I could be devoted to my dream as he was his.

So I challenge you with this...let yourself dream! Dream of freedoms won, and nations released. Dream of your children following God to the ends of our earth and your children's children after them. Dream of your marriage causing envy in all those around you because the love that you share is so tangible. Dream of your families being reconciled and those that are unreachable being reached. Dream big dreams and small dreams...Outrageous dreams and down right silly dreams. Dream with faith that God CAN do it, even if He never chooses to. As Beth Moore so boldy puts it: "If I err, let it be on the side of faith!"

I see now, in our own way, we are all called to dream. We dream God's dreams and in pursuing them bring the Kingdom on earth.