the early rain

Two days ago, I (to whom several months ago blog-sphere was almost an entire unknown!) began a second blog. I removed my profile from it and removed the option of becoming a follower, basically setting it up so that it would not show up anywhere.

I reasoned that this would allow me a liquid place to explore the things on my heart and mind without any thought of an audience. My intention was then to make well watered garden at pleasant pines lighthearted and fun.

I titled the new, secret blog "the early rain", referencing Psalm 84:5-7. I have been thinking much of what it means to go from strength to strength, what it means to pass through the valley of bitterness and yet make it a place of springs.

After publishing my first private post, then editing it, then losing all of the edits, then posting Psalm 84, it occurred to me that what I was doing wasn't equipping me to walk in the good works which God prepared for me beforehand. What I was doing wasn't walking; it was allowing myself to be paralyzed.

The truth is that I was pulling in, putting up walls.

This temptation was - and will probably continue to be - so strong!!!

I want to shield myself from further hurt, and my wild heart tells me that the way to do that is to not invite anyone in, to not let anyone know the weakness, the struggles, or the loneliness. I fear others rejoicing in that knowledge, triumphing over me in it, or using it to further wound.

Maybe they will.

But then I began thinking of the fact that I have been created new in Christ and how pleasing Him is really my deepest desire. Can I be an imitator of Christ - yoked to the One who was obedient even unto death- and declare my boundaries? Can I shield myself and at the same time walk in love just as He loved?

The more I think about His call to trust and obey, the clearer it becomes that this yieldedness demands all of me - even the sore and sorry parts of my heart that wait for His healing touch.

As I once found freedom from binding fear by facing the fear that gripped me most strongly, perhaps the way to a whole heart is in exposing all the wounded parts by way of loving.

The more I think about it, it occurs to me that the only way to have a whole heart is to give it wholly away, not holding any part of it back with a mistaken notion of self protection. Jesus did say, "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." Mark 8:35

So I come back, again, to the beginning, to the touchstone. The cornerstone. And at this place of laying down my nothing for His all, I determine afresh to

love

give

be open

be willing

be humble


And this heart, which is not mine after all, is in hands that will not crush a bruised reed or quench a smoldering flax. I can trust that. I can trust Him.

I chase the rainbow of His promises, His covenant, through the rain of His dealings.

He may lead me into suffering, but He will take me from strength to strength.

He will continue to send the rain, life giving rain, the early, gentle rain - gentle enough not to overwhelm tender growth or wash away newly planted seeds.

After all, He has promised to make me a watered garden.

becoming new under the sun

This past Sunday morning, I was blessed to be awakened early in spite of a late night the night before. Somehow I did not find it difficult to roll out of bed and make a cup of coffee. I settled in my early morning spot, the chair next to the window in the family room, pushed back the curtains to witness the glory of the morning before opening my Bible.

It was a spectacular morning, the sun just piercing gold through the trees. As I sipped and gazed, the words of a post I had read the night before at desiringgod.org illuminated my reverie.

The desire to behold, and in doing so become, beckoned me out the door, camera in hand, to greet the morning and its Maker.

I share with you here excerpts from what I read and pics from my morning walk with the Lord. I do so sheepishly, remembering an incident from my undergrad days, when, coming near the end of a lit paper, tired of thinking and writing, too tired to draw the necessary conclusion, I had ended with, "I cannot say it better than so-and-so who said:" and I quoted so-and-so. When I got the paper back, my professor had scrawled in bold ink in the margins, "Oh, do TRY!"

Forgive me, Dr. Moseley; here I go again.  This time I cannot say it better than John Piper with his encouraging and humble way of writing about the foolishness of change (read the full post here). All glory be given to God for choosing to change me.  More, all glory given to God for God Himself.

The most important text on my emergent frogishness became 2 Corinthians 3:18 —

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered: Beholding is becoming.

Introspection must give way to amazement at glory. When it does, becoming happens. If there is any key to maturity it is that. Behold your God in Jesus Christ. Then you will make progress from tadpole to frog. That was a great discovery.

And...

... Self is simply too small to satisfy the exploding longings of my heart. I wanted to taste and see something great and wonderful and beautiful and eternal.

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. It started in literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. It started with walks through the grass and woods and lagoons, and ended in walks through the high plains of theology. Not that nature and literature and grass and woods and lagoons disappeared, but they became more obviously copies and pointers.

The heavens are telling the glory of God. When you move from heavens to the glory of God, the heavens don’t cease to be glorious. But they are un-deified, when you discover what they are saying. They are pointing. “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8). 

What are the sunrise and sunset shouting about so happily? Their Maker! They are beckoning us to join them.

Finally...

Just stay the course and look. Look, look. There is so much to see. The Bible is inexhaustible. Mainly look there. The other book of God, the unauthoritative one—nature—is also inexhaustible. Look. Look. Look. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being changed.

From the unauthoritative book, copies and pointers...

The pictures don't do justice.  Like me, they don't see, or reflect, enough.   

LORD, open my eyes.  Let me see more of you!

Love plans a summer afternoon

I am sitting right now at a little yellow and blue plastic picnic table on the lowest level of the play fort. The two oldest girls are on the swings (the oldest with book in hand), our songbird is on the fort directly above me, and the little one is mimicking me - wiping off the picnic table so I could lay down my tablet, then patting me on the back and peering around me up into my face with a grin... now intrepidly climbing up to join the singing above me.

This was not on the agenda.

After lunch, I put the little one in bed for her nap and then loaded up the older three for errands and shopping.  The plan was to stop at home to unload from the first round, have a little snack, grab the little one then head back out again for round two of shopping.  Given what we have to accomplish tomorrow, this was a good plan, though not one that would be very much fun for the girls.

Thankfully, the lure of a magnificent summer afternoon and a watermelon that has been begging to be eaten intervened.

I enjoy the challenge of capturing experience in words, but at this moment I feel that I cannot do justice to the color and wonder of this here and now.

This gift of afternoon and breeze and shade and light.

The green and gold of meadow, azure and white of sky.  Of space and time with hints of eternity.

Seeing the girls soak in this summer grace, hearing the voices at play (or the sound of pages being turned - now from the hammock).


This would not have been had we not stopped, laid aside the agenda.


It's true, I have no meat for dinner.  (This would have seemed like an insurmountable obstacle a few months ago, but thanks to entertaining a vegetarian weekly for three months and thanks to a garden bountifully producing squash and cucumbers, I can deal.)

It's true, the house is in a state of disarray that I will not let fully register in my mind lest it steal from this bliss... this foretaste.

It's true, all that was not done today will pile up on all that needs to be done tomorrow. But in this, I share the sentiments of Scarlett O'Hara. "Fiddledee-dee! I won't think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day!"

Yes, Lord willing, another day.

Another opportunity to lay aside my plans, give the gift of time to someone else and in doing so find the needs of my heart - needs I could not even articulate - being met.  Finding myself soaked in His love.

How often, Lord, our grateful eyes
Have seen what Thou hast done,
How often does Thy love surprise
From dawn to set of sun.


How often has a gracious rain

On Thine inheritance,

When it was weary, wrought again

An inward radiance.

Thou Who upon the heavens dost ride,

What miracle of love

Brings Thee more swiftly to our side

Than even thought can move?

Our love is like a little pool,

Thy love is like the sea,

O beautiful, O wonderful,

How noble Love can be.

-Amy Carmichael

"where is Grace?"

This is the question I ask more times than I can count throughout each day.

In the house, I worry less about what trouble she can find... or make! ...although she has discovered the fun of dropping things in the toilet bowl and flushing.

We keep the bathroom doors closed now.

And she does like to help herself to whatever she can find in the cabinets and settle in a nice spot for between-meals indulgences.

And then, after realizing that her forays would be interrupted if enjoyed where she could be seen...


"Where is Grace?"

Outside there are more places she can go and an untamed world of possibilities for trouble, so, when bent over the flower beds or herbs, my lost-in-thought is broken in a predictable rhythm of momentary panic,

"Where is Grace?"

Big sisters shrug unconcern. "I don't know."

Darting glances around the yard do not always yield relief, so a quick dash to the front of the house, or the storage shed, or garage... sometimes the playhouse.

Unconsciously holding my breath.

There she is. Breathe.

This time, in the garden. Not quite drowning in the watering cans and quite independently being her Daddy's helper.  I give thanks.

For a few more minutes I can slip into my lost-in-thought.


As I do, I think about thinking.

How completely it can absorb me and keep me from an awareness of the here and now, at the same time indelibly shaping the here and now.

I think about the crazy way my thoughts move, quickly taking off down paths unplanned. How easily they tangle.

How thoughts about hurts and struggles and accusations can grab and stab and hold on more tightly than the briers on the black raspberry vines.

How the bitterness that can come from holding onto the hurts is more dangerous for my soul than the venom of the baby copperhead we killed in the garage the other day.

How the battle to keep my thoughts is a battle to keep myself.

"Keep your heart with all vigilance,

for from it flow the springs of life."

- Prov. 4:23

Here in this hidden place of thoughts is where grace is nurtured. Or starved.

"Where is grace?"

I pray for it.

And sometimes I find myself so thickly entangled that I need help. Darting glances around the Providence of here and now, seeking relief.

I call a sister to listen, and, more importantly, to pray.

As we talk and pray, the briers let go, and I can see again the straight path leading to a clearing.

It leads into the garden being watered by grace.

I am able to breathe, and I give thanks.