Adoption

Over at MOHL, the ladies there have been discussing the different names that Scripture gives the Church.  Since I'm in love with the theology of adoption, I'm sharing about how we have been adopted as "sons of the living God" (Romans 9:25-26).

Taste & See...

This month, the ladies at Meditations of His Love are speaking on Psalm 34.

Today, I scribble on why we need faith to taste,

how a faithless world needs to see us satisfied in Jesus,

and about that one time Peter Pan started a food fight.

Music Review

 

Today is my first post as a new contributor for Meditations of His Love where I've joined a group of sweet women in scribbling about the God who loves us and gave us life.

 

For my first post today, I share a review of the music of Andrew Peterson and how the message of Jesus making all things new has changed the way I live in a fallen world.

Happy Birthday, Bee!

Now that she's walking EVERYWHERE, we officially have a second toddler.  These days, you'll find our sweet Bee just trying (and thoroughly succeeding) to keep up with her big sister.  While still incoherent, she's quite the chatterbox and vocalist.  If she's not singing songs, she's dancing to them--which is a cute, bouncy, swaying, wobble.  Among her favorite songs are our Happy Song, the theme from Bubble Guppies and This is the Day (that the Lord has made).

Bee LOVES books.  Even if the book is bigger than her, thus she cannot carry it, you will see her army crawl across the floor dragging a large book behind her.  She's learned our inflections when we read, so it's the funniest thing to hear her read to herself in gibberish!  Her favorite books are picture/word books and Guess Who?.

She eats EVERYTHING.  Before I inflict jealousy on the moms of all the non-eating toddlers, I literally mean everything.  Her favorite non-food items are potting soil, raw russet potatoes, paper of any variety, anything from the trash and foamy soap.  I promise I don't feed her these things, I'm simply constantly getting it out of her mouth!

For her first birthday, we had a girly luncheon and tea party!  Her decorations were lace, pearls and flowers.  We used my Grandma's china, had soup and sandwiches, and chocolate and strawberry cupcakes!

While she's growing into her own temper, our little Bee has always been a tender sweetheart.  She loves to please, rarely complains and just goes with the flow.  But she also gets her feelings hurt very easily and often!  It's her favorite thing when she and her sister have to apologize to one another; she is tickled to pieces to give/get sorry hugs and kisses.  It may not last long, but there are times I can take something away from her and she doesn't even put up a fuss.  She seems to just trust that she's not supposed to have it, and moves on.

In observing her sweetness, the Lord has humbled me greatly in regards to my relationship with him.  I find I need to trust him even when I don't get what I want or how I want it.  I need to learn to go with the flow, without worries, complaints or fits of anger.  I also need to learn to enjoy apologies (ouch)--just like our precious Bee.

Utmost Thankfulness

I’ve never known real physical poverty, like so many humans have experienced and are experiencing in all parts of the world.  Sometimes my gratitude seems so meager in light of that.  Even though I’ve never been wealthy either, I’ve always had plenty.  Especially plenty enough to look forward to Thanksgiving with presumption that there will be turkey, dressing, trimmings and pumpkin pie on our family’s table.

When I think about the stories on which we pin our Thanksgiving origins—the pilgrims and natives who gathered for a meal—it humbles me in my meager gratitude.  These weary people weren’t instituting a national holiday.  After a difficult year and a bitter winter, the beauty of their thankfulness was their giving it in the land of their poverty.

This made me think of a story that Jesus told in the house of Simon the Pharisee, when a disgraceful woman entered and began lavishing Jesus in humble and sincere worship:

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.”

And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?”

And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7:41-50

The beauty in her worship was her knowing her utmost destitution being covered in Jesus’ utmost mercy.  Oh, how I want her immense gratitude.  I want the gratitude of pilgrims and natives who celebrate provision in light of their suffering and loss.

 

I may have never tasted worldly poverty, but I have, most importantly, known spiritual poverty.  I have been a slave, and accursed.  But God took on the form of my slavery and became my provision—my Lamb—and saved me.  Remembering my complete destitution (as near as the sins committed just this week), and Jesus' complete reconciliation, makes me completely and utterly thankful.

When Your Husband Doesn't Fit

His strong hand holding mine, our fingers entwined and palms perfectly aligned.

I walk in synchronized strides beside him, as if our steps were professionally choreographed.

My body’s design is well-suited under his arm as if he were sculpted to fit me there,
and I was sculpted to fit there.
My head lays comfortably on his chest, as if it were made to forever nestle there.

These were the whirling daydreams of my single days, when I subconsciously thought that the above would magically manifest when I met the mate God had designed for me.  Before Mr. O came on the scene, I experienced two failed relationships; both which were sprinkled with hands that fit, strides that met and chemistry to prove this was it!  But they definitely were not it.  While the stomach butterflies testified that I had found my match, I couldn't ignore the red flags slapping me in the face and screaming for me to run far, far away.

Then I met Mr. O.

A handsome guy who loved Jesus, dressed like an old man, and treated me like he just robbed Mr. Darcy of all his class.  He held my heart hostage from the moment I saw him in his tucked in, tailored button up and his Reformation Study Bible in tow.  After one week of courting, I knew I wanted him to marry me.  After four months of engagement, that’s exactly what he did.

 

But in early engagement and marriage days, I was surprised to realize something.  This man that I knew God had designed for me, didn’t fit me.  Our hands were so different, that I had to twist my wrist in such a way that only the top third of my fingers fit between his, causing our palms to be hardly aligned!  My body design was odd next to his, and though he is taller than me, I had to duck over a little to fit under his arm.  This made for neck-painful snuggle walking*.  Mr. O had open heart surgery when he was five years old, but by that time his chest bone had grown around his enlarged heart, making it difficult to lay comfortable on his chest.  We were a mess!  I promise we aren’t as deformed as we sound, but we’re definitely not going to be the snuggling couple on the cover of the next Valentine's  Day Hallmark card.

 

I loved this guy so much and he infested my stomach with butterflies, but I had moments of childish disappointment when we would go for walks or snuggle to read together.  It was so much work feeling like I had to contort my body uncomfortably to be close to him.  I don’t even know that Mr. O noticed, and he will probably be horrifyingly surprised to read this post.  But I had resolved that I would have to change my strides, twist my wrists, and deform my head on his chest for the rest of my married life.

 

Not long after that resolution, the Lord began to show me all the ways He designed us to fit that were made of much more substance than hand-holding and snuggle walking…

How his teary eyes met my teary eyes when we heard Andrew Peterson sing High Noon and The Reckoning live, because we both love the gospel-resurrection story.  Or when we heard of the violent attacks against our brothers and sisters in Pakistan and Kenya, and stopped our day to weep and pray for them.  Or how we both love the taste of authentic Taqueria tacos, complete with a real-cane-sugar Coca, because it transports us back to Iguala, Guererro, Mexico and the people we love there.  Or how a source of strong comfort in 40+ hours of labor was Mr. O's voice reading the book of Hebrews aloud to me.

 

We went on a date about a month ago, and since we didn’t have a stroller to push, we snuggle walked and held hands.  To my surprise, our strides were the same.  My neck didn’t hurt.  Our hands, while still a little twisted, fit so much better than when we first met.  I transported myself through the last three years of marriage, wondering when something had changed.  Which of us had changed our stride?  Which of our body structures had morphed?  How did our hands fit now, when my knobby knuckles were still there?  When did my head start nestling into his chest? 

 

It made me wonder, if only three years of marriage would sync us together like that, what will 50 years of walking together look like?  How much more will I get his humor?  Will we still cry at the same songs, be impassioned by the same Scripture?

God doesn’t sculpt our perfect spouse from day one, not physically, spiritually, mentally or emotionally.  Marriage is about becoming one, together.  Day to day, fight to fight, romance to romance, tragedy to tragedy, the Almighty God is sculpting a place under Mr. O’s arm just for me.

 

*yes that’s a thing.  That I just made up.

Romance & Quiet

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

Matthew 5:6

 

I read this beloved verse tonight, and it transported me back to when I had read it for the first time.  I was a young lady in my early teens, lost in finding myself and lost in this burning ache to know God.  The One who forged the greatness of the heavens and the miraculous cities of my microscopic cells.  Those were the romantic days of my life in Christ; when he first called my name and my heart longed to hear more.  I couldn’t keep my nose out of his Word, and like a sponge, I absorbed everything I read.  How lovely are the romantic days of our faith, when we are full of angst for our Creator and He satisfies our spiritual taste buds with the wonder of him!

 

I often reminisce through those days in unhealthy ways, wishing that those days were now.  I long for those better ones again, instead of rejoicing in these days, too.  These days that are full of spiritual familiarity and monotony.

 

“Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’

For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

Ecclesiastes 7:10

 

Until tonight, my spiritual life had felt like the middle-child years of marriage.  At least, from what I hear and witness of those middle years!  The season after you have grown past the sweet, romantic days but an eternity away from the seasoned and weathered days of 50 years.  My heart and spiritual life felt terribly quiet, familiar, monotonous, and sometimes out of place.  I even admit to this middle season being fallow ground to complacency and idleness.  During this time, the Lord Jesus had grown somewhat abstract to me.  He’s the perfect Prince in the sky, the sinless, sacrificed Lamb who conquered the enemy, death.  The universe is in his hands and everything in existence exists by him and for him!  He loves me with an unfailing love and has the power to sanctify me into his image.  I know this and believe it, so fiercely.  But sometimes it’s a knowing like the wonder-filled pages of a treasured storybook.

 

I have wrestled with applying that wonder with the God who is with me in everyday life.  This Savior that once captured all of my heart—who let me taste and see his goodness—has felt terribly quiet.  Not necessarily distant, since I can testify to knowing he is with me.  Just not near, and very quiet.  However, I have not been the pursuer nor the one pursued, that I once was either.  It’s like he became two Gods—the lovely, near One who romanced me once.  And this One, the quiet, aloof, familiar one.  The one who has journeyed a long journey with me, and is just quietly here.

Until tonight.

 

Tonight, when I read Matthew’s account of Jesus teaching on a mountainside, I was reminded in the depth of my soul that both those Gods were the same one.  I read these words spoken by the one who is Faithful (promise-keeping) and True (never lying), saying that he promises to fill me with himself if I am hungry for that.  And like a husband lovingly romancing his beloved after 25 quiet, complacent years of marriage, I was reminded that the same Christ that I only dream about is the Christ that I know now.  The One who is here and has kept his promise to be with me is the one who was with me from the beginning.  He is the same.  The same glorified and victorious Son, who will make all things new, is with me now.  Not abstract, but very alive and with me.

 

Tears came as I remembered this, and received it for the first time again.