Fair Colored Stones and Sapphire Foundations

This will be difficult.  This will be my story.  My very particular, personal messy story.  I shake in my boots....the rubbery kind I wore when I was a kid that you pull over your "real" shoes?  Because that's what it feels like to talk out loud and brave; like my nine year old self standing in front of class.  Except, then I was trying as hard as I could to look as good as I could to all of you out there, and that's where I lived for the next many years.

Rule following was my "savior".  It was a way for me to measure my acceptability to God and to others.  I could mark my place with them, know where to stand and how high to jump.  Rules made me feel safe, because the truth was I didn't feel safe at all.  I'd been told God loved me in my sunday school class but  I lived with a nagging sense of walking into the midst of a party that I hadn't been invited to, at home and out in the world.   In a sense, rules became the "person" that made me feel loved and I trusted them.

I grew up and got married and the world became even more confusing to me.  I compensated for what was happening in my marriage that I did not understand by keeping tight company with my rules.  When I couldn't find a way to win the approval of my husband, I sought out other rules and gathered them up around me like so many bricks and began to build a wall high enough and thick enough to keep out the confusion. It's a shameful feeling, not thinking you're "enough" and so I found myself hiding behind my rule wall, smiling big and bright, in hopes the brightness would keep people at a distance so they couldn't see the cracks starting to form.

The years went by and the rules became ammunition between my husband and I.  We lobbed them at each other like grenades and they left bloody gashes on our hearts and spirits that left us weak and wounded and open to attack.  The enemy of our souls drove a stake in the ground of our marriage and I gasped my last breath and chose to raise my white flag and walk away.  I was reeling, and as I staggered for a rule to hold onto, I looked around and found nothing with which to build a bed to lie on and rest.  Romans 8:37 says that those of us who love God are "more than conquerors through Him that loved us."  As I struggled to find a reason to keep breathing during those days, I felt more conquered than a conqueror.

I'd lost the ability to raise my smiling mask and looked around at the broken rules laying all around me I had no way of redeeming and wondered what to do next.  "God?"  I said, to what felt like an empty room.  "Help."  That's all I could muster.  I had no idea what to ask for. He reached out and swept up all those broken rule-bricks and helped me to start over, learning how to trust how much He loves me, rubber boots and all. He blew my nose and washed off my face and set me aright and I learned the freedom in living authentically.  I trust Him now, instead of my rules, and that has made all the difference.  I live because I love God and I love because He loves me.

"Oh you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold I will lay your stones with fair colorful gems, and lay your foundations with sapphires." Is 54:11.  That bright light you see shining from me now?  That's not my smiling mask.  That's my fair colored gems and sapphires He promised.

Miracles Are Made in China

 In China, when you find yourself pregnant, afoul of the one child law, you face severe repercussions for your family, potential loss of job, health care and access to resources.  If you give your child up for adoption, you may be arrested.  Many women are pressed into making desperate choices; leaving their newborns in an outlying area where they will not be seen, or worse  killing their child.

In the early hours of an October morning, 15 years ago, one brave woman risked all of that, wrapped her baby girl up in a basket and left her in front of a bar in the middle of town directly across the street from an orphanage. She was approximately 3 days old.  The police took the baby to the orphanage where they cleaned her up and gave her a name, Ji MeiQin, in english, "beautiful music".  She was placed in a wing with 80 other babies and thus began her miracle.

One year passed. And then one day, in a shabby little room in a social services office in Foshan City, China  an orphanage worker walked in and placed that little girl in my lap and thus began my miracle.  I loved her immediately.  And I would be the only mama she ever knew.  And as I sat staring at every single detail of her, just as I did with my biological children when they were born, I felt a strange pain deep in my gut.  Somewhere nearby was a young woman who would wonder, for the rest of her life, about this baby I held close to me.  I whispered a "thank you" and asked God to put it in her heart.

Because of that brave woman, my daughter, Naomi Mei,  celebrates her 15th birthday tomorrow.  She is light and joy everywhere she goes.  For those of you who know her, and will be wishing her a happy birthday, please remember to ask a special blessing for the woman who made this miracle happen.

I love you, Naomi.  You are a miracle.

Dancing in the Minefields

There are 81 days left in this year and I've begun to look back over the calendar in my mind....like sifting through a pile of old photographs....I pick one up and smile the wistful kind of smile that calls the day back, another makes me laugh out loud.  There's one that looks mysterious to me,  like I'm not done with it yet, some make me catch my breath and hold my hand over my heart to keep it in it's place.

I've traveled through the valley of the shadow of death, holding the flashlight, as my father said goodbye to this world; the very first person I ever called my best friend, I sat by his bed and sang him songs and reminded him of my memories when he didn't have any left of his own. He slipped away in the early hours of a new day and left behind a daughter who knew what it meant to have a dad who'd loved her well.

I saw my beautiful boy make his childhood dream come true and go off to make his way in the mountains under the western sky all on his own.  He walks tall and straight and sure of himself.  He's a man now.  He drinks his coffee black and reads books about the deeper things in life. I used to teach him his abc's and now I marvel at how he teaches me.   I will remember our midnight talks about anything and everything when the house was asleep; just he and I.  My mama heart fills up full with a love that threatens to burst and then, just at the last moment, it leaks out of my eyes and down my cheeks.  Goodbye, boy.  Don't forget to find the path back every once in awhile to tell me your stories.

I've found friends that feel like a change pouch full of gold coins.  They speak into my life and invite me to family celebrations and see my loose threads and lopsided pattern and love me in spite of them.  They don't leave me on the side of the road when I fall down and come and get me when I wander off, as I'm prone to doing.  They have taught me to take off my mask and shine.  And if my shine gets too shiny they put on sunglasses and wait patiently until I figure it out.

I put on my very first mother of the bride dress and watched my girl turn into a princess and cried tears there aren't words for.  I watched a handsome young man take her hand and lead her into a new life together with him and she will be his wife and the two of them will cleave together.  And it is good and right and beautiful.  I've seen her walk through, push through, dark places and insist on rising out of them and becoming whole and free.  She was once my little girl; she is now a hero to me.

I met a man and thought that it might be love and made friends with the disappointment when it wasn't.  I've learned to shake hands with what I don't always understand and press on.

I've danced in some minefields this year and I've come to tell you it has been worth the journey.  I've been, at different times, quietly worshipful and noisily grateful....and always knowing....God is at work.