Invitations

Have you ever reflected on how God scripts details in our lives? Do you notice small things woven together into an amazing wow that captures our attention better because they happened simultaneously?

I've found the book I was reading coming alive as a phone call about a possible assignment stirs the dynamics inside of what the book was talking about. Will I keep trying to impress, and not break the mold, or will I simply be real? Thanks to the book I was just reading and processing, I'll make a different choice then I would if the timing of this phone call would have been a bit different.

I've seen God giving me an image that comes back to mind later that day as I read another book, and clearly understand what the meaning of the image is as I reflect on the words of the story. Will I choose to keep my heart alive in the midst of heart aches?

I've watched a love starved child run wild after a tiny dab of love was given to them, and heard God whisper, “That's you.”

I've had God cut my work hours in order to have a solitude with Him that brought more healing to my heart then the value of the money I would have made during the same amount of time.

He is a God who invites ever so gently. He never stops, but is constantly on the move to get our attention and call us to more. The spot at the table is open 24/7 and it has our name on it. I love how He catches us off guard and just kindly helps us lower our protective exterior a bit more.

He is always showing us, but never condemning. Full of grace and mercy, His way of confronting is powerful. I want to come. I want to be more. I want to follow His directive. I want to experience more of Him. And I want to become more like Him in this. Inviting. Welcoming. Kindly speaking truth day in and day out, without stopping.

There's plenty of conversations that I didn't handle well. Words I'd take back. And sometimes the wish that I'd have said more. There's been a lot of living, reflecting, processing, and even some progressing in 2018. {Gotta love one-liner epistles}

As we walk forward into 2019, I feel this excitement and joy that invitations will come to turn from looking at the past and learning, and instead focusing on the future and growing. I pray that the internal shift that has been slowly developing will softly harden into a good new normal in the next year. That the things I've been invited away from will continue to fall by the wayside, and that gradually I'll pull more towards the things I've been invited to. This invitation to more has me enamored, intrigued and delighted, and maybe just a bit nervous that I'll miss the mark.

But let's get back to the Invitation. God always leaves the door open, always invites, always welcomes, and graciously keeps loving on us, regardless of our response. He has an open space for us all the time. Let's linger at this image just a bit. Let's get our fill so we can be like Him in this inviting thing.

It's not a Martha Stewart special with the perfect napkins, extra frills and fancy saucers. It's being real, instead of whatever super perfection expectation I feel like everyone else holds me to. It's being alive when my world makes me want to die inside, and it's living soaked up in love instead of grabbing a dab here and there. But even more then all this, it's going the extra mile and offering all this and a cherry on top to those who need it. It's offering them a safe place to be real. It's inviting them to life when the world is beating them down. It's offering them the whole cake of love and letting them eat it, too.

Bring on another whole new steep learning curve in 2019! An invitation to defiant joy sounds exciting to me!

The Kindness Challenge

It's the theme for the new school year. Catch kids being kind. It's been fun to see the positives, to encourage the seedlings of good, and just to bless and be blessed.

One of the threads of this whole past summer has been multiple conversations about stereotyping, and judgements. Reality is, no matter who you are, or what part of the world you hail from, you have a certain filter or worldview that you measure everything and everyone by. Your culture will always try to inform your filter, but it doesn't mean you have to go by what they say.

I confess the man with the beat up car who said thanks sorta blew my profiling way out of the water. You see, not everything is as it appears. Just because a car is beat up doesn't mean the driver's the bad guy. Yours truly can testify to owning a currently scratched car that I wasn't even inside when the damage was done. Crazy things happen like helicopter wind pushing things into cars while you sit in the ER with a friend, but insurance should be covering soon. I could say, "Well my car isn't as beat up as his..." but that misses the point. I don't know his story, anymore then he knows mine. But he was thoughtful enough to say thanks. He really gets the kindness challenge, the moral of the "Find the Positive" story. I have no right to expect less cause his car is beat up worse then mine. Take the beam out of your own eye before you start judging someone else. Could be a 747 made an emergency landing and hit his car. Maybe insurance hasn't kicked in for him yet either.

One grade has been learning about making predictions about what comes next in the story. We can also make our own hypotheses about people and the story of their lives. We need to either confirm that we are right, or adjust our way of thinking, after we find out more details of the story.

Whenever you come in contact with people from different backgrounds and cultures, you come face to face with different ideas rubbing against your own worldview. In the fray, apply kindness and compassion. Accept the kindness challenge. Find the positive. Make the difference only you can make. When they speak harshly, speak grace. When you find differences that are hard to reconcile, combine truth with love.

Another thing this world could use more is empathy. Just because someone looks ok, doesn't mean they are. You don't know what is going on. Broken hearts, shattered dreams, depression, sickness, and more can go undetected to the visible eye. If you have been there, and even if you haven't, apply the kindness challenge to everyone you meet.

The Kindness Challenge. Go ahead, change the world. It happens one small kindness at a time.

Dream Again

50 hours of non mentally capturing work has a way of making visionaries think outside the box. In the space of dust is the perfect place to imagine 6 impossible things before breakfast, especially when you start early.

So why not dream a bit...
What a property could become and the businesses could be...
Who people in dark and dangerous places could become... and how we could potentially help them.
What we want our legacy to be...
The multiple types of work we'd love to do like florist, author, painter, chef, world changer, social enterprising, travel blogger, pilot, designer, and the list could go on...
The things we'd still love to see and do...
How could we bless the people around us, and how can we speak words of life to them?

I watch people around me and wonder if they still hold a dream in their heart. If they have become jaded and quit dreaming. If life has handed too many lemons to feel like trying to squeeze something delicious out of it, or if buried deep inside is still that one thing they want to do.

I get it. Smashed dreams. Brokenness. Raw. But my friends, that is not where it stops.

I've heard so many quotes like "If you find yourself in a bad chapter, it's not the end of the story."
Last year's birthday gift from God was a divinely appointed coffee appointment with someone who has seen really amazing things come on the heels of bad circumstances.
An older lady shared about a dramatic time in her life of losses and gains.
Isaiah 62 talks about how God pursues us till His righteousness reflects back to Him from us. It's His love that takes all kinds of things that we don't like and uses them to show us how much He cares.

Psalm 105 talks about Joseph and how he was tested till his dream came to pass. I heard a sermon recently about how the Bible says during each difficult part of this patriarch's life that "...God was with him." Joseph has become one of my heroes that God keeps bringing back to encourage me. Recently, I found notes from an old Bible School class entitled "Joseph." One of my most favorite Sight and Sound plays is the one about Joseph. I shared his story with a friend going through a difficult time along with the rest of his ethnic group in Asia. I'm sure he felt his story was hard, that it wasn't anything fantastic or special, and yet here I am, thousands of years later, still contemplating his faithfulness, courage, and trust as I process my own dreams that haven't yet come to pass.

So if you find yourself in the middle of hard circumstances and the road is all uphill, rest, but don't quit. As some might say, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."

There are better things to come.
Instead of turning to building relationship safety features and security so deep that most people have no idea what is happening inside anymore, dream.

So go ahead and dream of the impossible, hard things working out.
That work turning out far beyond your dreams...
That relationship becoming way better then you ever could imagine...
That desire being fulfilled in ways beyond your current comprehension...

Dream, not because the circumstances seem to indicate hope, but because you trust in the One who is in the business of redemption and hope.

Dare to go even farther and dream of crushed hope being rebuilt...
Of smashed dreams being resurrected in something far more fabulous...
Of broken things being turned into beautiful pieces of divine art...

Base your hope and trust on Him, nothing else... commit it to Him and He will bring it to pass, in His time, for your good.

New

It's been ages since I've written anything on here, and many of things that have stirred in the silence aren't pieces that go on a public blog. But as I reflect and process on the years since the last blog I published, I'm stirred to inspire and encourage others to stay engaged in the rough journey they may be in.

Isaiah 62 talks about the Lover of our souls pursuing us until He sees His own reflection in us. He won't stop there, but will continue till it's obvious to all the people around us. That is the story of the past years. He hasn't stopped dropping relentless drama, and things that were way beyond me into my life. No, He kept it all stirring, rotating, and rubbing raw till it caught my attention. It's only now that I'm starting to see that He was pursuing me out of love. Deep Love. And He's not finished.

He's not scared of going to deep, dark places to help us find light. I could list people that I'm sure wouldn't go there, or who I wouldn't feel safe to go there with, but He's not one of them. He cuts to the core, and He heals at the core. He remembers things I've almost forgotten that left their mark on who I am today, and brings them back to the surface for healing. It's freeing.

He knows the lack of sleep that has been my reality for the past years. He knows how dark my thoughts can get before sunrise comes. He also knows that He can wake me up to pour love and energy into me so I can carry on, after days when I was convinced I'd hit the end of the end walls. He alone knows how many times He's met me in those pre-dawn moments that have formed our relationship into taking new directions.

The places we've gone, the memories of the soul that my Lover and I have... He made sure the electric was out on the night by the ocean so I'd see the stars like I haven't in years. He was there in the archaic, world history sites as I plodded through difficult emotions. He was there when I climbed my way through a rolling refugee camp that was beyond what I could emotionally comprehend. He was there when I saw so many different scenes that have grafted themselves into the fabric of who I am, and He's helping me see them like He does.

He knows it all, and yet He tells me He's not done. My story isn't over. I'm starting to see a little bit more Jesus in me, but He's not finished till my whole world can see Him in me. There is something far greater then I can imagine that He still wants to do. It's not the end, but the beginning.

I'm excited to see what He's going to do.