why did I have to be broken?

Ever been confronted with a big mound of clay and it’s your job to make something useful out of it? the teacher says “today’s project is to make something useful, not merely decorative. Your object can be pretty, but it will have a purpose”

So now you sit and think of all the different objects you can make with this blob of dirt. Okay it’s a specific type of dirt - clay - but it’s still dirt. what can you make? what need exists in your life? or is the vessel for someone else?

If you need to wash someone’s face, you might make a basin that will allow for splashing, and maybe one to pour the water from.

If you need to bathe a baby you would make one even wider, a very shallow basin.

If you are looking to store wine to keep it cool and pour it at need, you would want to make something with thick walls and a narrow neck.

If you need to serve food, the vessel might be a small bowl, or plate. Or if you know you will be serving lots of people, you would of course want to make a bigger bowl.

If thirst quenching water is needed, a cup, or even a dipper will do, but if you want to retain warmth, a thick walled mug might be better.

The possibilities are endless.

Now lets approach the problem from another angle. What if you had a wine vessel? Already made and fired. Firm. Strong. Very set in it’s form and function. One with a narrow neck and thick walls and it is the one vessel available, but you KNOW you are going to need to wash a baby. Would you consider breaking the wine vessel and glueing the pieces back together in a different configuration so that you could wash the baby?

This is assuming of course that you had some kind of divine power and you could fill in the gaps and smooth out the rough edges.

Not too long ago, Angie Smith posted about a time in her life when she (as a form of therapy) deliberately broke a vase and put it back together. She draws some very interesting conclusions from that exercise. Go read it and then come back here.

Now I’m going to add to her analogy:

What if every time God breaks me it is because he needs not just to shine through the cracks in my life, but to make a new vessel in a whole different shape than it was before?

What if the shape of what I was is not going to fill the need God has for my future?

mushrooms, butter, cheese and pasta

This is my gratitude list for today.

I am incredibly thankful for the following:

• for butter. The nutty flavor it lends to anything that cooks in it.
• for pasta and all its versatility, especially the concept of ravioli.
• for caramelized onions. Especially when done in butter and perhaps a little bit of wine to add sweetness…..yummmmmm
• for mushrooms. Especially ones sauteed in butter. Or even those that have been cooked, chopped and stuffed into a small ravioli pouch.
• for the folks at Macaroni Grill who came up with this lovely dish.  Mushroom ravioli, covered in caramelized onions, more mushrooms and cheese, then baked just long enough to make the cheese bubbly.
• and (most importantly) for my husband who will dig down for his credit card when his wife gets an irrational craving for said mushroom ravioli dish at the aforementioned chain restaurant.

Sorry. I know it’s not a spiritually uplifting gratitude list for today, but dangit, that mushroom ravioli is STILL on my mind more than twelve hours later, so….there you go.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Deirdre

a lullabye from the Most High

But now this is what the LORD says, He who created you, O Jacob, He who formed you O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
Isaiah 43:1 & 2

Recently our church choir has sung a song based on this scripture. The feel of the melody is very much like a lullabye.

Perhaps this is purely because of my current situation, but I am more and more seeing God as being tender towards us, His wayward children.

Oh how often we react in this life out of fear.

Fear of rejection

Fear of loneliness

Fear of humiliation

Because of these fears and the grip they have on our lives we frequently choose to do some colossally stupid things, but God will still gather us into His arms and (if we read His word) sing this song into our hearts.

Do not fear for I am with you,
do not fear,
I have redeemed you.
Do not fear for I have called you by name
and you are mine.

Sometimes we think, God can’t possibly forgive ME, I have rejected His counsel, I have turned my back, I’ve done unforgivable things.

but look WHO he was saying this to:

Jacob. the deceiver, the trickster, the con-man, polygamist, failure, complainer

and

Israel. the chosen, beloved, anointed, tower of faith, father of the 12 tribes, blessed and blessor of nations.

Absolute opposites, right?

Folks, remember: Those two names belong to the SAME human being.

I really believe that God, by deliberately including the two names of Jacob/Israel in this verse was speaking directly to people like you and me. People who feel like they are in a cycle of faith/unbelief or obedience/disobedience. (and don’t even try to pretend that you haven’t been there too, cause we ALL have)

God doesn’t say that he will only help us when we have been good. He is reminding us that we ARE redeemed. WE ARE HIS. All we need do is turn to Him. No matter how many times we have needed His saving grace before. He’s already proven His stamina: just look at how the children of Israel treated God through out the Old Testament. They constantly turned their backs on him. How much would we do for an earthly person who would love us like that: perfectly, and without EVER withdrawing that love No Matter What.

Just let it sink in. The God of Creation. the Most High, the Mighty Deliverer has CLAIMED YOU. Personally.

Read it again.

Do not fear for I have called you by name,
and you are mine.

YOU ARE MINE

what would you do in the grip of such love?

the ice cream dilemma

Someone just e-mailed me inviting Martin and me out for ice cream this evening. We want to hang out with them, but the timing is bad. It will be well after dinner and almost right up against bed-time and I found my self thinking “no way do I need those heavy calories that late at night”

In every diet the theme recurs: eat lighter in the evening and eat anything heavy/starchy/sugary (in short anything you are going to have to work off) as early in the day as possible.

So doesn’t it follow that cake should be eaten well before noon? and Ice cream should absolutely only be consumed at breakfast?

anybody with me on this?

my worth is determined by GOD alone

My soul finds rest in God alone my salvation comes from Him.  He alone is my rock and my salvation.  He is my fortress I will never be shaken.

Psalm 62: 1 & 2

My worth is determined by God.

It is not determined by my boss. No matter how tempting it may be to strive for his personal approval. I should do my job, do it to the best of my ability, enjoy being here and leave it at that.

It is not determined by how well I sing on any given day. As tempting as it may be to base my worth on my performance, I have to resist that urge and just immerse myself in worshiping the Most High.

It is not determined by how many friends I have or who invites me to lunch on Sundays. I’m really bad about this one. When I was a kid it was a mark of “wealth” and Popularity to go out to lunch on Sundays after church. I am constantly surprised at how much my heart aches when we occasionally go home from church with no social engagement. Which is crazy because most of the time I am just flat exhausted by Sunday afternoon and would probably be better off with a nap anyway.

My worth is not determined by how quickly I can look up a bible reference or how many bible verses I can quote by heart. Christianity is NOT a competition sport.

it is not determined by how long I’ve been a Christian. People who are “older in Christ” have no more or less worth than I. We are ALL children of the King.

My worth is not determined by how many hits my blog gets per day. As we have had various “big news” items come up in our lives the past few weeks I have been getting really big spikes in my “readership” but they are temporary. And I always put huge pressure on myself to “come up with something really good to post about” the day after a spike. Hoping to retain some of the new readers.

My worth is also NOT determined by my physical appearance. Yes I am overweight. Yes I need to do something about it. But the act of “doing something about it” should not be motivated by a type of self-hate. It should be motivated by a love for my creator who dwells in me and whom I, to a certain extent, represent. At least to the folks around me.

Think about it. If I am depressed or upset by criticism, if I allow my popularity to dictate my mood, if I come in to work depressed because I’m not in favor with the boss this week (which is what happened this morning and what prompted me to write this post), a very clear picture forms in the minds of my co-workers. “oh, she is no different from us.”

BUT If I cheerfully accept criticism as feedback, if I smile on everyone no matter how they treat me, and if I take care of myself not out of self-hate but out a love for God, a very different picture comes across.

I want to be that second picture.

the laying on of paws

Last night the bible study group that meets in our house was thrilled to hear the update that we are now matched with Mel & Steve and that Ginny is on the way (just 9 more weeks at most).

After sharing the details that we could and laughing a talking a while, the leader of the study asked if we would mind if the group prayed for us.

and I thought to myself ??? Mind? how could we mind? of course, PLEASE pray for us!

So they gathered around Martin and me as we sat on a large footstool and put their hands on our shoulders and head and prayed. They prayed for us, for Mel & Steve and for baby Ginny.

It was very meaningful and loving and so touching to know that our friends take this adjustment and responsibility so seriously. They are sensitive to the various issues that come with adoption and they are praying for us as we navigate our way through the murky waters of how to raise a child with two sets of parents and two whole family groups. The hope of course is that we can become a blended, extended family who love each other and stay in contact.

One cute thing happened during the prayer: our cat - Kenya - came in to investigate. She picked her way in between all the legs surrounding us and then jumped up on my lap. Keeping her back paws on my lap she reached across with her forepaws and put them on Martin’s thigh. Then she stood there for the remainder of the prayer, looking intently up into Martin’s face. YES, I peeked. If something jumped into your lap you’d peek too !

When the prayer was over Kenya gave a little chirp and a nod and then returned to the floor and went back to doing whatever it was that she was busy with.

I just thought that it was really sweet that our cat took time out from her important naps and chasing fuzz balls under the couch to let us know she is praying for us all too.

That’s got to help in the cosmic scheme of things, right?

sometimes God just freaks me out

Like this weekend for instance.

Ya’ll all know that we had an adoption match that “went south”

The birth-parents went AWOL, we found out the extended family didn’t support the adoption, all kinds of stuff happened to ensure that the match was one that we would walk away from.

But through all that happened last weekend we came away from it with an absolute conviction of the integrity of our Kansas agency and we made some incredible friends. God is good.

But not only is God good, His timing is…..well downright spooky.

Our first match fell through on Monday, July 7th. The point at which we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that things had gone horribly wrong is when our birth mom didn’t show up for her scheduled sonogram. We were there, at the doctor’s office, with the agent, waiting. hoping against hope that they would show, but they didn’t. That appointment was for 9:30 a.m. Monday, July 7th. (remember that date and time, okay?)

We came home to Georgia. We cried. We prayed. we sent out the disappointing news via email. We praised God for His plan that we knew was going to be good, no matter how disappointed we were at that moment.

The very next day, Tuesday, we got a call about a another couple. This one was 30 weeks along. Healthy, married, 23 yrs old, blonde………..And then came THE QUESTION:

Do you want to talk to her?

Well…….Yes, of course. And also …….. no. We were scared. What if this was too soon? Were we grasping at straws? hooking up with the first thing that comes along? Is it like re-bound from a boy friend breakup? do you need to wait?

and then sense re-asserted itself. NO, there is nothing holy about waiting. And if God is in charge (and we believe that HE is) then HE was the one that placed this couple in our path, so we should talk to them.

We got the dossier/file, did the conference call, and we really got along well. It helped that all four of us are into the same obscure sport: Disc Golf (which I have posted about here before). The guys are more into it than we girls are, but that’s okay. Mel and I had other things to talk about (and before anybody goes off the deep end on me, yes, we have her permission to use their names, they call themselves the birth-parents and they are already calling the baby “your baby” and calling her by the name we have picked out) .

We went out to Kansas to see them and really had a wonderful time together. If we could, we would adopt Steve and Mel along with their baby. These two are really motivated and active and honest. They even refused gifts that we wanted to give them, which is very different from the last couple let me tell you.

So we are matched again !!!!! We have met and loved the birth-parents. We have rubbed (at her request) her beautiful pregnant belly, and we are all holding our breath hoping her little girl stays in there for the full term (just nine more weeks to go ya’ll!)

Here’s a photo of us with Steve & Mel from this weekend:

Deirdre, Martin, Mel(and Ginny), Steve

Isn’t God just amazing?

Now here’s the spooky weird part. The EXACT time that our first couple was supposed to be getting their sonogram………..

Is the SAME DAY AND TIME that MEL was having her sonogram.

9:30 a.m. Central Time, July 7th, 2008

Like I said, sometimes God just freaks me out!

the family gathers….at funerals

like a lot of large extended families, our tends to gather together only at funerals.

two weekends ago we experienced this yet again when Martin’s Aunt Charlotte died. Martin saw people he hasn’t seen in 9 or more years and I meet family members that I had never seen before. It’s not that these people weren’t important to him. It’s that everyone is widely scattered that it is hard to get the various elements of the family all in one spot at one time.

The myth inside our heads is always “oh, I can do a reunion any old year, (blank) is more important this time, so I’ll just skip the reunion” and that’s assuming that your family even tries to have a reunion.

I’m gonna start pushing reunions more.

Here’s a photo of the folks that Martin and I gather with gather fairly frequently (at least once a year and often twice):

the small version of the clan

and this is a photo of all the family members who gathered for aunt Charlotte’s funeral (some of these folks had never met before and some hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade!):

most of the entire clan

next time I have to pose for a group photo, some one please remind me that I look much skinnier BEHIND other people. there’s too much of my fat arm showing in this last photo. oh well.

Anyway. family is important.

water and weeds

In blog surfing recently I ran across a story and I honestly can’t remember where I read it, but it is haunting me…in a good way.

This lady was out watching her children run through a sprinkler in her yard and she found herself looking at the difficult weeds along her path. They’d been really annoying her so she thought to herself “alright, while the kids are playing, I’ll be useful”

She knelt down to pull the weeds, expecting them to be just as stubborn as usual and was pleasantly surprised by them coming out of the ground very easily. “well of course,” she thinks to herself “the ground is wet, that made it easier for the weeds to come out”

Then she paused, and let that sink in.

Maybe when God sends rain into our lives, it’s purpose is to soften the ground of our hearts so he can more easily pull out the weeds that are growing in there.

If you know who posted this story originally, please let me know. I want to go back and comment on her blog, cause this concept is so simple and yet so FULL of meaning for me.

Now I also want to add to the analogy: where else can you pull up weeds with total ease?  Certainly not your yard, the dirt is generally too packed and there are too many grass roots and such in the way.

tilled earth.

Like a garden, or a flower bed.

So Lord, please harrow me up, till me, rain on my life, do whatever you have to do to remove the weeds from my heart.

a good hair day is a blessing from God

Given the current state of chaos my life is in, I was surprised this morning by a very good hair day. And I commented on it to my husband.

Martin looked at me, smiled and said “well I guess this just proves that hair days - good or bad - are randomly generated”

and I said “no! they are a blessing from the Most High!”

I just had to share that with ya’ll. Cause, it IS hair ya’ll. and that’s important. spiritually. I know ’cause Miss Beth says so.