Category / Grace

by Jennifer Wells

Teach Me to Number My Days

In Psalm 90, in the middle of a chapter about the passage of time, the inconsequence of our lives, and the judgment of God there is a plea; “So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” When I read it today, it stood out. I’ve read it before and heard it in sermons, but today it felt like a message for me. Sometimes I am tempted to look things up, searching commentaries to find out what something means to the “professional” theologians. But today I felt like I should just sit with it a bit, give it time to process in my heart and in my spirit.

Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.

There are two things I notice – first is the emphasis on measurement. Number our days. I don’t think I am good at this. In fact, let me amend that – I know I am not. Not only am I forgetful, but I am forward-facing. I am goal-oriented, a striver; a first-born with a massive bent toward people-pleasing, an Enneagram 9 peacemaker who bears the weight of the world. Injustice weighs on me, a lack of truth weighs on me, a lack of harmony in any relationship of which I am aware will keep me up at night. I not only know what is lacking in this fallen world, I feel it.

whack-a-mole

Whack-a-mole

And I’m pretty convinced I can do something about it. I am a problem-solver, smart and efficient, good at seeing all sides of any problem. So when I do my thing and harmony is achieved, I feel accomplished and I move on to my next superwoman mission of peacemaking. I live in a perpetual state of whack-a-mole; squash a problem, move on, squash a problem, move on.

But this verse tells me to number my days, that I may get a heart of wisdom. I know in my heart as I read the verse that this is a spiritual discipline, a way to get the knot in my chest to loosen, to get the tears pressing behind my eyes to recede.

Because this world is messed up. Blatant injustice, economic and racial inequality, a Church (at large) who seems at times to be asleep to it all, famine and war. Just today images fill my timeline of children sleeping who are not sleeping, but who apparently are the tiny innocent targets of a chemical attack in their own country from the air. And that is just today’s horror. Yesterday there was another, tomorrow there will be more. Jesus help us. There is so much to fix in this world.

And those are just the macro issues. Our family is facing some hard realities in our everyday life; needs that press in and things outside of my control that I want so badly to fix, wounds I want to forgive that persistently intrude on my days. And we have friends who face challenging kids and big life decisions and personal battles and I just want to help ease the pain they bear. There is much to do in this dark world of ours.

Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.

So today, I am trying the spiritual discipline of measuring God’s faithfulness, numbering my days. I am remembering and listing the passages of Scripture God has given me as promises, over decades; revisiting hard times and remembering the faithfulness of God, re-reading prayer requests in old journals to note the answered prayers and the fulfilled promises. I am not looking ahead, I am looking back, writing it down, a monument to God’s faithfulness and to problems solved just as the Israelites stacked stones to remember.

Second is the emphasis on time. Numbering my days. I am also determined in the spiritual practice of only focusing on today. Not on our long term needs, the long term problems, the challenges I know we will face next month or in a future season. Today. I am thanking God for the daily bread for today. The friends who are faithful, the financial provision, the strives my daughters have made, the jobs Justin and I have that provide, the health of our family. I am taking this life that feels so long to me, but that is but a breathe to the Lord (back to Psalm 90), and I am handing every part of it over to the God who made me, focusing my grateful heart on today.

I was talking to a couple of friends yesterday, women full of grace and truth. I was asking for prayer for persistent needs and struggles that weigh on me. And they reminded me, as faithful friends do, of the truth of my situation, and the truth of theirs. We can become overwhelmed with the one next thing we need, we can take on that weight (because we are get-it-done women), and that weight can crush us. Whether it is our children or our home or our companies or our finances, the weight of what God has given us can be too much to bear. Because we weren’t meant to carry the weight of any of it on our own. We have to remind each other that it isn’t ours to carry. Yesterday all day I repeated that as a mantra to remind my frazzled sole. One friend kept repeating “You are safe. Your Father loves you.” Another constantly reminds me of gifts that are “daily bread.” We have to help each other remember these things. I really think God is teaching me we are part of each other’s “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrew 12), encouraging each other on to righteousness.

Daily bread. Teach us to number our days.

Part of the solution to that control-freak nature so many of us share, that tendency we have to forget the ways God has come through for us in the past, is to learn to count our days.

One last thing I noticed. I love that it is a prayer. Even this isn’t on us. Again, tears behind my eyes. God knows us so well, He knows even this we can’t do well on our own. Here’s the verse in context:

“So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.”

Jesus teach us.

by Jennifer Wells

The Reconcilers

Part of why I blog is to remember little lessons the Lord teaches me, so I can go back and see them later. This will be a short one, because it was inspired by the most mundane of daily tasks and I need to return to them, but I wanted to remember. Lucy, my three year old, loves to borrow her sisters’ stuff while they are at school. Please don’t tell them about this little arrangement I have with the stay-at-home child. Today, she wanted to play with some markers, and before I realized it, she had colored with permanent marker on the little handheld dry erase board Rebekah’s teacher gave her for Christmas last year. This board is a treasure. And right now it is destroyed. This will, if not corrected, cause a level-3 meltdown when Rebekah gets off the bus.

IMG_0916So during lunch today, I sat next to Lucy doing a little coloring myself. I am painstakingly coloring over the permanent marker with a dry-erase marker, trying to erase away the evidence of Lucy’s violation of Rebekah’s property and privacy. It is an agonizingly slow process, if I’m being honest.

And in case you’re wondering about justice (I do love me some justice), I did talk to Lucy about not coloring on sissy’s board with markers . But I’m working hard to make it right for her. As I was coloring, a thought bubbled to the surface. “This is the ministry of reconciliation.” This. Erasing the error of another. Hiding something, taking on a project that is not really mine to fix, but fixing it to show grace. That didn’t feel intuitive, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

I am a big fan of dragging things into the light so we can be reconciled to each other. Let’s get it all out – air our stuff, confess our sins one to another. And I’m not alone. Doesn’t it feel like, these days, we are a little nutty about pointing out the flaws in others? In almost every social media post and online interaction, it’s interesting to watch and see how quickly the post or idea gets the “well actually” treatment. People shame others for errors, or perceived errors, even errors that have been clarified and corrected, just in case they actually meant what we’re pretty sure they meant. I do it, I’ve seen it done to others, and it has been done to me.

And yet, in our job as salt and light, is this another opportunity to be different, to shine bright in a dark world? The ministry of reconciliation can be about erasing something, forgiving it, covering it with grace instead of shining a light on it and exposing it to the world. What is a more graceful response – holding the board in Lucy’s face, meeting Rebekah at the door so she can get in on the chorus, and us showing Lucy the error of her ways? Or erasing the marks made by little hands more likely in ignorance than in spite, and promoting peace.

Peacemaking is such a theme for me these days. As a peacemaker, I really believe in all truth being God’s truth, and holding all things up to it. I can get overzealous in that and I can point out your error with the best of them, particularly in an area where I am passionate or sure of my rightness. But we are to be people of grace and truth. Jesus’ blood is said to have washed away our sins, not just magnified them so we can feel shame (1 John 1:7).

The ministry of reconciliation comes out of 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul says,

 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

It describes this two way transaction; Christ reconciles us to Himself, and he gives us the power to reconcile others. I read a commentary today that said, “The reconciled become the reconcilers,” which I loved. And it describes the action as “not counting their trespasses against them.” Doesn’t it feel like, all too often, we Christians are the worst at counting “their” trespasses against them? As if we are so innocent. Why do we feel that weight and that pressure to ensure the righteousness of another, instead of trusting them to God as we trust God for our own right standing? Is it because of our fear of a vindictive God, or because we have the ministry of reconciliation all wrong?

I’m wrestling through it as I erase, but I like the idea that we function as erasers in the world, minimizing the shame and guilt and fear of others. And I like the idea of God, as a parent, erasing the sins of a beloved child. It’s such a sweet picture of God, when I default sometimes to imagining Him infinitely more harsh.

So today, on a normal Friday, I’m happy to join him in the ministry of reconciliation. And I hope you have opportunities to do the same. God knows we all need it.

by Jennifer Wells

Grace Grace Grace

I have realized something about myself lately, a thread that the Lord is connecting. I love getting to talk to women during the fun or scary transitions of life; it always feels like a weighty encounter, and I have realized that I tell them all, basically, variations on the exact same message. I feel called to it. I run to the opportunity, sometimes texting someone I haven’t talked to in ages, just so I can share this one little encouraging word from God – my spirit reminding her spirit. Getting married? I have one piece of advice I’d love to give. Having a baby? Please let me tell you the one secret that kept me sane. Lost a job? I’d love to tell you how I got through our job losses without losing it. Lost a sweet baby? Oh I love you so much, and can I share with you the one thing that enabled me to breathe?

I truly think it is my mission in life to remind the people I love of this one thing, because for some reason we so quickly forget.

Give yourself grace. It is normal and okay to feel what you feel. 

I was texting a beautiful friend, recently engaged, just tonight. She’s one of the most incredible people I have the privilege to know, but I know her and know she has always been hard on herself. I loved giving her my advice; So many things are about to change, sweet girl. Give yourself grace when you feel overwhelmed by it. When you feel doubt, when you feel fear, it is normal. Give yourself grace. God is bigger than your momentary doubts in yourself.

I love to tell new moms, or moms of special needs kids, or moms on the 4th snow day in a row; Give yourself grace when this feels hard, because it is. Whatever you feel, whether it is fear or doubt or panic or anger toward this child that you love, it is normal and we all feel it at times. Don’t live in shame. Give yourself grace. Run to God with those feelings; don’t hide them. He will help you get through this.

When friends are facing financial burdens or sudden job losses, I just want to cry out; Sweet friends, give yourself grace. It is okay to feel panic and fear, completely normal. Let me pray with you. I’m praying you can breathe out that fear, that panic, and breathe in the grace that is yours. God sees you, He knows your situation. He loves you and is mighty to save. He alone is able to change this situation you cannot change and at His feet you will find rest. 

When friends want a baby so much they ache, or they just lost another baby; I love you so much and I ache with you. Please give yourself grace to mourn this, to grieve it however you need to. Grief isn’t linear – you won’t go through stages in any way that makes sense. Give yourself grace. You are not crazy when your emotions are everywhere. This is a crazy-making challenge you are facing; it is normal to feel this way. I’m praying for you and love you and wish I could change it for you. Please just breathe in the grace that is yours in this moment.

grace

Our oldest daughter, Grace.

If I were going to get a tattoo at my *advanced* age, it would say grace. I named my first daughter Grace. I need it and sometimes forget it is mine for the taking despite the fact that I’m swimming in it. And because I forget, I remind others, sometimes to also remind myself. We all are too hard on ourselves, too quick to equate weakness with sin, fear with sin, doubt with sin, failure with sin, our human emotions with sin. So we pile on shame and try to wrangle our emotions in an attempt to somehow prove we are good enough to approach our Father. Meanwhile he is our Father. Not the perpetually disappointed Father, or the impossibly high expectations Father, or the stern unapproachable Father. He’s the one who loves us unconditionally, who wants us to cast all our cares on Him, who created us and knows our every thought, who walked on this earth and died for us, who said in Exodus “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

There are three traps to watch out for when we are going through something hard:

Trying to stop our emotions. We want to wrangle them or manage them or just stop feeling, but they swirl around and interrupt our sleep and steal our joy. What do we do when we feel out of control?  I’m learning to lean into the emotions, to study them like a scientist instead of fleeing from them. To stop fighting, breathe deeply and name them, telling God about each one of them.  For me, speaking them starts to take away their power, and I start to feel that knot in my chest loosen. I feel fear, and I hate it. I feel anger toward this person, because they really hurt me. I feel panic, even though I know I am not alone. Please help me. If we can just speak what we feel to the One who made us, no matter how messy it is, maybe we can rest again in His plans for us.

The shame cycle. Sometimes we are so busy apologizing for what we feel and feeling bad about it that we get stuck in this tornado of shame about our feelings. My therapists through the years have helped me so much with this one by simply giving me permission to have emotions and to feel what I feel. I don’t know where I picked up this idea that my feelings were shameful, maybe church or home or just first-born perfectionist nonsense. But it is pointless to feel shame for what we feel. Our feelings are just signals that there is something we need to work through. Shame and condemnation are not from God, so I think we take those voices to Him too. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, remember? God I don’t feel lovable, but I know you love me. I feel alone, but I know you are with me. I feel weak, but I know you are mighty to save. I don’t believe any of this truth right now, but I trust you to turn my feelings around in Your timing. I feel a lot of shame, even about this, but I trust You to release me from that because I know that is not of You. I’m a mess, but I’m Your mess, and I know You love me. 

The trap of isolation. We cannot brave it alone; we need grace-filled friends who will join us in prayer. I had lunch with a friend a few weeks ago and just speaking some of my thoughts took away their power, and she spoke peace to me as well as truth I needed to hear. Her perspective helped me see things, and myself, in a new way. She didn’t coddle me, but she did remind me to give myself grace. Many people who love me and love Jesus have given me grace in this season. I got a message tonight from someone I haven’t talked to in person in almost a decade, offering grace, community and understanding for the struggles we are facing. So encouraging! She used social media, which we all know is challenging these days, to show me love. What beautiful redemption of that medium, to use it to show solidarity and community to people in our circles. A great reminder that we need each other. We were made to face this big stuff together.

Give yourself grace. I’m going to keep reminding the people I love until the end, because we all need reminders of the grace greater than our sin. Our Father loves us so much, if only we could glimpse a fraction of his love.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30
by Jennifer Wells

Learning a New Way of Grace

This season seems to be about un-learning, detangling, undoing what I have done for so long that it no longer seemed optional. I’m questioning everything – relationships, beliefs, career choices, patterns of behavior. I keep being surprised by grace. Asking questions I was afraid to ask, even to God, and finding lightning didn’t strike, and God is still good, on the other side of the questioning.

I was talking to a friend this week. I’d been afraid to call him, because I was calling to say no to an offer he had made me and I’m a decades long people-pleaser intent on causing no disappointment to people who love me. With a shaky breath, I told him I couldn’t commit, that I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but that I had no energy or excitement for what I knew would require both. With kindness he said “You’re hurt, Jen. I completely understand and love you – we are family anyway.” He told me he had pastored long enough to know that God’s timing was better than our forced timing and that he trusted what God is doing in me now. He offered me grace, and I gratefully and shakily accepted it. Grace. Even now telling the story I have tears in my eyes.

I feel like, for years maybe, I had slipped into a way of living that focused more on performing and pleasing and forgot about grace, and oh how I missed it.

This morning I was reading the book God sent me for this season, Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist. I’ve underlined about 3/4 of the book, which has utterly confused my youngest daughter (“Mommy – you shouldn’t color in your books”).

“You don’t have to sacrifice your spirit, your joy, your soul, your family, your marriage on the altar of ministry. Just because you have the capacity to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it… You must ask yourself not only what fruit they bring to the world, but what fruit they yield on the inside of your life and your heart.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I was surprised to find a holdout of that old, terrible doctrine: if it hurts just awful, it must be God’s will for you. And the other side of that same coin: if it produces fruit, it must be God’s will for you.”

Later in that same chapter:

7131869-small-stream-running-over-moss-covered-stones-stock-photo“I’m reveling in the smallness of my capacity. This is it. This is who I am. This is all I have to give you. It is not a fire hose, unending gallons of water, knocking you over with force. It’s a stream: tiny, clear, cool. That’s what I have to give, and that small stream is mine to nurture, to tend, to offer first to the people I love most, my first honor and responsibility. 

The twin undercurrents of being a woman and being a Christian is sort of a set-up for getting off track with this stuff – women are raised to give and give and give, to pour themselves out indiscriminately and tirelessly. And Christians, or some anyway, are raised to ignore their own bodies, their own pain, their own screaming souls, on behalf of the other, the kingdom, the church.”

Can I confess something to you? I’m visual and I see things in my mind sometimes that I don’t understand until later. For years I have had this image of myself that I have seen over and over in my head in times of exhaustion. I’ve seen myself step outside my house, seemingly calm but with an upright back and clenched fists, and I will walk outside and scream to the sky, with no sound coming out. I never understood it, I always knew it was bad, but I didn’t understand why I was screaming, why I was silent, why I kept seeing it, why it felt like it was all I could do in those moments. When I read this it didn’t become all clear, but part of it clicked. I’m not sure I ever thought I had the authority over myself, over my circumstances, over my life, to scream or even to stop. What she wrote about “ignoring our own bodies, our own pain, our own screaming souls on behalf of the other, the kingdom, the church” rings so true to my life over the past decade (and in the lives of so many people I’ve served with in that time).

And now I have stopped. People keep asking me what I’m doing next, what is the plan now that I don’t work at a church anymore. I simply don’t know, which as a first-born planning-obsessed person, is a hard answer for me to give. I’m still untangling all of this. But I have found quiet, and stillness, and gratitude, and my family, and God and GRACE in this place of stopping. And I will stay here as long as it takes to heal and find my way again. I am a tiny stream, and I’m learning to even be that well.

by Jennifer Wells

Skinned Knees & Dreams

angel-and-lucyA couple of weeks ago, our youngest daughter Lucy wanted to walk our dog on our daily walk around a neighborhood lake. Our dog is incredibly sweet and good, so gentle with Lucy and patient with the “intense loving” of a three-year old. So I let Lucy walk Angel, but I told her to hold the leash loosely and let go if she took off, because our dog cannot resist the urge to chase the squirrels who live around the lake, who taunt her then race for the nearest tree. A few minutes into our walk, our dog took off, but Lucy didn’t let go, and Angel pulled her onto the ground and drug her along several feet before we were able to stop her. Both of Lucy’s little knees were skinned really bad, and for weeks we have been caring for her knees, applying bandaids, hearing about it in the constant way that parents of small children understand.

This morning I was getting Lucy dressed for school – and she stopped me in wonder and excitement, “Momma – my knee better! It all healed!” She was so excited, and inspected both of her knees carefully. In that moment, I felt like the Lord said to me “Healing comes in unexpected moments, when you aren’t watching. It isn’t active, it’s passive. You can’t rush it – you just realize one day that it’s over, and you’re healed.”

I drove her to school but kept processing through this idea on the drive. Because these days, I’m hurting. This most recent ministry loss has been a really big one for me. I want to be able to actively do something to get better. Read a great book or passage of Scripture, make a new life plan, walk and pray, get into grad school, pray blessings on people who hurt me, redirect my passions into a new project, watch another episode of The West Wing, anything but wait on the Lord. I want to do something.

And I do, all these things and a hundred more, but it doesn’t help. Just like the skinned knee, all you can do is walk with the pain, treating the symptoms, guarding it against further injury, until one day you look down and it’s finally done. It’s not pretty, it has a scar and a reminder of the wound, but there is no longer danger of infection, and you finally aren’t bleeding all over the place. You’re healed.

The Lord has always given me dreams at key moments in life, and even a few times my dreams have contained insights into a situation. Early in my ministry life I had another big loss, when I left my home church. I became a believer in Christ there, and began my ministry life, and met my husband and the closest friends I’ve ever known. That church was my whole world. But toward the end, I served there during a really difficult season in the life of the church where it split in two, with people I deeply loved divided and hurting on all sides. I tried to stay and help heal the wound and close the gap, but eventually had to leave because that wasn’t my job, and because early in a conflict nobody wants peacemakers, they want people on their side, which is understandable when your world has been shaken. If you haven’t experienced a church split, I hope you never do. Only two entities hurt like that when they break apart, families and churches, both because of the love you have for the people and the intimacy of the relationships.

So this week, I dreamed I visited my home church to help produce a service, and then shortly after I had a job interview there. I talked about all the things I have done since leaving, and I saw in their face that my skills and experience would help them. And I felt that same admiration for the church as they felt for me. As I walked those halls, and attended a staff meeting, I saw the new staff in place and the work they were doing, I realized in my dream (as I have hundreds of times in reality), that the work of the Lord has been enourmous there in my absence. That the church that I love has healed, just as I have healed. It was a dream full of restoration, of the work of the Lord in both me and them in our time apart, a glimpse of the scope of the Kingdom.

I woke up, thoughtful and hopeful, and told Justin about the dream. And this morning, after talking to Lucy and time talking to the Lord, I am putting it all together.

I know the end of this story of healing, because I’ve walked it and because I trust the Author. God is going to do amazing things at the church where we recently served. His favor and power will work for them, and they will grow and expand His Kingdom. And He will lead us as well. We will do things for His Kingdom that are bigger than anything we could do in our own power, and He will open doors we never imagined He would open. I don’t know why He decided that our time there is up, why our gifting no longer matches their need. And right now, in our hurt and uncertainty, there are times we don’t feel like being peacemakers, we want to know people are for us. But that will pass as we heal and as the ground around us feels more steady. Until then we will choose peacemaking even when we don’t feel like it. Because there aren’t sides in this, we are brothers and sisters trying to bring a Kingdom to a dark hurting earth. And brothers and sisters fight, they hurt each other, they need time apart, they need their own passions and spaces and friends and seasons of life. But in the end they are for each other, they will defend each other, they are family.

And together or apart, in time, we all realize we have healed. I keep reading the Sermon on the Mount in The Message, because the language is so foreign to the way I’ve read the Bible in the past, but so familiar to my heart. “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you can find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought… You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.”

by Jennifer Wells

Life in the Tension

Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
    collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
    set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
    and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
    like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
    you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:1-5 MSG

In recent months, Justin and I have made some rather serious life changes. We have both left the church where we have served since 2013, although we love it still. We both came to the end of ourselves there, and realized we could not continue to pour out because we had nothing left to give. So separately, but in rather quick succession, we left, for reasons so complicated I have struggled to communicate them to the people closest to us. And it has been incredibly difficult for me. Even though the Lord was near and spoke clearly, even though our decision was confirmed 100 times in 100 different ways, I am still grieving. Again we are leaving a church we love, again we are losing friendships and leaving people we deeply loved serving with, again something I thought would end up one way ended up another, again our children are affected by the co-mingling of our church home and our ministry life, again our family is facing an uncertain future. We moved here for this church, every friendship I and my children have has this church at the center. So I am at different times sad and angry and relieved and lonely and afraid and feeling free. It is a very complicated time for me.

Justin, in the way men do, is better at compartmentalizing things, better at redirecting his energy. He immediately got another job and another wonderful opportunity, this time outside ministry, and he is absolutely soaring in his newfound role and newfound freedom. And I love watching it, it is so clear to me that he is exactly where he is supposed to be, enjoying the fruit of obedience.

But for me, it is a little more grey, and the fruit has been harder to find. I am still struggling to define what is next for me, and what “success” looks like. Is it a new job – a new position where I feel meaning and where I am contributing to the Kingdom? If it is, then I am falling terribly short finding it. I have never had a hard time finding work, in fact I get job offers with such regularity that sometimes it causes confusion to constantly have options. But the job offers aren’t coming like they normally would, and the few that have crossed my plate I have immediately heard a no from the Lord. It is like He has hedged me in. I remember studying Hosea, the prophet who the Lord demanded marry a prostitute to provide a terribly uncomfortable living example for the people of Israel of God’s love despite their unfaithfulness. There is a verse in Hosea 2 where it talks about Gomer (the prostitute) continually running away to return to her former life, and it talks about God hedging her in with thorns, literally blocking her way as she tried to run. And right now it feels like that a little bit. Like the paths I am trying to take may not be the paths I should take, and I am hedged in, forced to wait. And I keep telling myself that God knows our financial realities, and He is never late in providing, but getting my mind to rest in His timing has been a hard task. I’m awful at waiting.

But in the meantime, forced to wait, the Lord keeps drawing me to the study of wisdom, and I’m spending a lot of time praying and walking alone, and soaking up time with my kids. I realized last week that I had begged the Lord for more time with my girls, and now I have it, and I am begging him for what work is next. How dare I continue to ask, and not spend at least some time overwhelmed in gratitude for Him answering my prayers? So I am trying to sit in gratitude. I’m enjoying the daily explosion of language and personality that Lucy is showing us, enjoying the seriousness of Grace’s questions about faith and life, enjoying the total lack of self-consciousness of Bekah’s personality (of which I am continually in awe as a person forever lacking confidence). I am loving cooking more meals, taking more walks, getting to be a mom and wife first in this season, and I want to acknowledge how grateful I am for that incredible gift.

But right now, I am holding many things in tension. I actually have grown to love the complexity of feeling many things at once and knowing that my heart and my God are big enough to handle the full range of emotions that are appropriate to feel at this time in our lives. I have been in this season many times, most often at times of the loss of either a relationship or a job or a church or even a pregnancy. But because I have walked this path before, I am aware it is isolating. Not many people are comfortable walking with a person who is feeling so much, and working through it. We as humans like absolutes, for us or against us, right or left. But this middle stuff – the complexity of everything at once? Those friends are hard to find, possibly by intention. I’m not sure there are supposed to be many people walking alongside us in times like these, maybe part of the purpose in it is to push us to the Lord as our primary source of support. Because that is the reality. You let a few very trusted people in on part of it, but the bulk of it is just dealt with between you and God. Taking these things that are contradictory and confusing and going to God with them, asking Him to help sort it out. In fact, it may even be the wisdom I am studying and asking God for to be able to hold my fear and my confidence and know that both are valid, my anger and my feeling of peace, my guilt for staying at home and “not contributing” and my joy at only having to worry about my family. Maybe wisdom is finding God in the tension, and taking to Him the things I can’t control or change, while thanking Him for the things I have been given, and asking Him for the things I need.

I read this quote this morning, and it summed it up for me. “If you want to flourish in the life God intends, you must be grounded in wisdom” (Margaret Feinberg). Here is what I know. I want to flourish in the life God has given me to live, as a wife, a mom, and a minister of the Gospel. And I think wisdom is the first step, and time invested in chasing it is time well spent, so I am chasing it as if my life depends on it, because it does.

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by Jennifer Wells

Tighten Up Your Courage

I’ve written before about the way that God speaks to me. These threads or ideas start swirling in my head, and certain things I encounter in my day to day life seem to glow with significance, and I know they will eventually form into a complete picture, a message from God. But I’ve learned to be patient for that final revelation, because noticing the ideas swirling and the moments that are significant requires me to be present in my life, and that is sometimes as important as the final message.

Lately I’ve been noticing fear, in myself, in my children, in the motivations of people around me. Once you start watching for it, you see how utterly soaked in fear is our entire culture, which is heartbreaking.

Our family is in the middle of some job changes, and it has me very prayerful and cognizant of the environment around us. I’m trying to notice when I’m reacting out of fear, or feeling it, and it is taking energy and practice for me to combat the fear that is, really, an enormous part of our reality as humans. Both I and my oldest daughter, who has always been so spiritually sensitive, have been having dreams about the fear in us and the people around us. So I’ve been praying for freedom from fear, and tuned in to noticing it.

I’m a big musical theatre person, and both in the Hamilton musical and in Beauty in the Beast, I’ve noticed this line “Screw your courage to the sticking place.” It struck me as interesting, so I looked it up and it is a Shakespeare quote, from Macbeth Act 1 Scene 7;

Macbeth:
If we should fail?

Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we’ll not fail.

It basically means to tighten your courage down to something stronger, like twisting a peg into its hole, to reinforce it. When I realized what they were saying, it was an illuminating moment.

The strength is not in the peg, or in the screw. It is not in us to fight fear and be brave. The strength is in what we attach ourselves to, and how tightly we connect. We need to daily, moment by moment, tighten up our courage to the sticking place.

And the sticking place is, for me, our great God. And if you look at the verses on fear in the Bible, and there are 365 of them (as all of the embroidered pillows you’ve seen on Etsy proclaim), they are all about God being our defense against fear:

For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we may boldly say: “The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:5-6

Screw your courage to the sticking place.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-8

Screw your courage to the sticking place.

The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid? Psalm 27:1

Screw your courage to the sticking place.

The action is to tighten into God, not to fight fear. I’ve been getting that wrong, no wonder it has been a frustrating fight. Fighting fear has nothing to do with fighting fear – it has to do with connecting to the author of love (the opposite of fear). Screw your courage to the sticking place.

Right now, where I stand may seem wobbly, and I may feel anything but brave. But if I screw my courage to the sticking place of God’s great love for me and my family, and His power and might, and His plans that never fail, I can take courage and not be afraid.

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by Jennifer Wells

Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is an idea essential to reading or watching a movie, a contract between writer and audience, where the writer makes a story somewhat plausible and gives the audience a reason to want to believe it, and the audience buys into the story to experience something moving. It is why we can read Harry Potter and envision a Quidditch match, because JK Rowling made it fascinating and painted a beautiful picture, and our brains forget for a while that flying on a broom is a ridiculous idea in order to allow us to experience the magic of the impossible.

We live in a cynical society, yet we are able to escape into fantasy because we are able to suspend disbelief.

girls_ChristmasThe fact that my girls still believe in Santa requires an extraordinary amount of suspension of disbelief, given the unfortunate fact that Justin and I are terrible at making the story somewhat plausible. Four years ago, when Grace was four and Rebekah two, their Santa gift was a new swing-set. It was a freezing cold Christmas Eve, and Justin and my dad put together the least expensive, but most difficult to assemble, metal swing-set we could find in the garage after the girls had gone to bed. It took hours and I remember them laughing and yelling at the thing good-naturedly as my mom and I wrapped gifts inside where it was warm. After they finished, they carefully carried it around to the backyard, and I went out and tied a big red bow on it. We were so proud to have assembled this behemoth, and imagined the girls’ surprise and shock when they saw it. Christmas morning, when we went to wake them, Grace jumped out of bed, ran to the window, and said “Oh! You put a bow on it!” Apparently she had watched the entire operation unfold from her upstairs window.

The next year, we were living in Dallas still but working in Houston, and were too tired to make it home after our Christmas Eve services, so we spent Christmas Eve in a Holiday Inn off the highway somewhere around Waco. When we got home, I made the girls run upstairs and put on their pajamas so Justin and I could hurriedly throw the Santa gifts under the undecorated tree in our sad, already packed-up living room. I wanted a little magic in a chaotic season of transition. I thought we had pulled it off, except I had decided to not buy anything for Lucy or Justin, because Lucy was too little to notice and Justin wanted nothing else to pack and haul to Houston. I wasn’t thinking about the big girls, though, until Grace, in great distress, asked me what Lucy (at the time 6-months old) could possibly have done to get on the naughty list? I don’t even remember the lie I told, but as soon as she said it I realized my very big mistake.

Last year, their big gift was a trampoline, and a couple of weeks after Christmas, when they were underfoot, Justin sent them in the backyard to jump. They started to protest, and he said sarcastically, “I’m glad I bought you guys a trampoline so you would never use it.” They both stared at him in shock, and Grace said “You didn’t buy the trampoline – Santa brought it and the elves put it together!” Justin mumbled something incoherent as I laughed at him in the background.

This year, on Christmas day as Justin is programming the X-box Santa delivered, he in frustration says “For the money I shelled out for this thing you’d think it would work.” Grace’s head immediately popped up as I tried to catch his eye. Justin, not catching on, says: “I want my 400 bucks back.” Grace asked him what he means, since this gift came from Santa, and he says back “I have to pay Santa for it… Times are hard.” She looks back down at her game, satisfied with his answer, and  he looks at my mom and me, both laughing, and says “That’s all I could come up with.” 

We are bad at this! We try to weave a plausible tale, but we fail miserably. At some point, when she was younger, I have even told Grace that Santa is based on a real man who lived a long time ago who was generous and loving, but that he is not really a real person who delivers gifts to our house in the dead of night, and she has either forgotten or just chooses to believe despite it.

She is able to dispel doubt without a backward glance.

I love it, and I wish my mind worked that way. Their desire for magic overrides their rational brains that have to know that mom and dad are really really terrible liars and that we are, in fact, both Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Children are great at this, and I love that part of their minds. It is, quite honestly, why we continue to do the whole Santa thing and the whole tooth fairy thing. There is only a certain amount of time in life where true suspension of disbelief is possible, and because children are whole-hearted creatures, they are really good at it.

It seems weird to compare my children’s belief in Santa to my faith in Christ, but I’m going to attempt it because it’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. I want to be more like Grace when it comes to my faith. She dismisses doubt with such ease, and I envy her whole-hearted and stubborn belief. I want to be more like her. She has strength and lately, in my faith, I feel weak. I am a wrestler – I am up now in the middle of the night because I am wrestling with fear and doubt. And my rational mind knows the things I am fearing aren’t real  and the doubts I am battling are lies. My heart knows the truth that I am loved and valuable and was created for a purpose. Yet I wrestle and I can’t seem to dismiss the nagging doubt. A former boss repeatedly encouraged me to dismiss doubt and fear and not give it any time or energy, but honestly sometimes I don’t know how to do that.

I don’t know how to suspend my disbelief.

So again, as I have done so often since her birth, I look to my oldest daughter. She really does teach me more than she will ever realize. I ask the Lord for childlike faith. I ask my Maker, my Father, my Creator, my King to help me in this war I am waging against fear and doubt. I ask Him to be mighty to save. I choose to believe, and to shake off the nagging sense of doubt. I wait for the voices of fear and doubt to be silenced by the God who has written this story, this true story, of victory over sin and death and doubt and fear.

I have every reason to believe. This story is not only plausible, it is true, and I know the ending. So I ask my God to help me suspend my disbelief and cynicism. I have no reason to be afraid.

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. Psalm 56:3

by Jennifer Wells

Accepted

“Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe.  God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” Acts 15:7-11

About a week ago I suddenly realized the diversity of my friends. I have crunchy granola anti-vax home birth hippy momma friends, and I have others who, like me, have the pediatrician on speed dial and would have had an epidural for the entire pregnancy if the doctor had let us. I have friends who are right of Ted Cruz and friends who are left of Bill Maher. People who passionately believe like I do and people who just aren’t interested. To illustrate the diversity – one of my friends literally breastfed until her children could ask for it, and I laughed every single time. Who knew I’d ever be friends with a woman like that – me who snuck bottles to my kids when the lactation consultant walked out of the room in the hospital? And yet we are friends and she lights up my days. My friends are all passionate women – I am drawn to strength and my people have it in spades. We can soap-box for hours about the things that make us tick, but those are often fundamentally different opposing viewpoints. And yet we live in peace. We love each other. We don’t see eye to eye on some big hot-button issues, but I could still text them when I’m having a rough day and I know they’ll drop whatever they are doing and talk to me and pray for me, if prayer is their thing.

Taking stock of my friendships struck me for many reasons. First of all – it struck me because I realized what a rarity that kind of unity is, despite our differences. It really is an extraordinary gift. But it struck me also because it sounds strange, but I’m proud of myself that my friendships are so diverse. You see, in my past, I was rejected by people who did not agree with me on some divisive issues, and I lost them because of it. People who should stick by you. Big relationships, lost seemingly forever. To them, the issue was more important than the relationship, and more painful than that, the issue was more important than me.

But not so with my friends – and when I realized it, I had to admit that I let these friendships sneak up on me. For many years I would have guarded my relationships and only gotten close with people like me, simply because I feared the rejection that I thought was inevitably coming because of my past. But I had let them in and we live in peace and joy, and something in me is healing and shifting because they still love me despite my differences from them. I bear the scars of rejection, and scarred skin is always more tough than healthy skin, yet I had somehow let them past my defenses, and they changed my life.

Acceptance.

Rejection.

For me, the theme of my life outside of Christ, the defining characteristic of my darkest memories, the knot in my stomach and the feeling of tears pressing behind my eyes can be summed up in one word: rejection.

You aren’t good enough.

You failed at that.

You behaved badly.

You are too much.

You are not enough.

You are not worth fighting for.

Have you ever thought about how much of the world we live in – our present reality – is marred by the sting of rejection? How many of our losses, the scars that mark our consciousness, the defensive walls we construct, are a direct result of the rejection of someone who was supposed to love us? Someone who should have been safe, but when we let them in, hurt us.

I think it could be the defining characteristic of this fallen world. Rejection. Because even if we are accepted in this world, it is usually only for a season. The other shoe almost always drops. Marriages break up. We stop performing at the right level at work and start being phased out. Our bodies decay. We just can’t seem to measure up to the expectations of that person who means the world to us. Someone decides they are done with us, and they (literally) turn their back.

This week it seemed like the rocks were crying out trying to get me to understand this lesson. Every experience somehow had meaning behind the immediate context.

Because, for me, Christ was revolutionary for this one reason. It sounds cheesy, I know, to my friends who don’t get the whole Jesus thing, but in Him I knew acceptance and unconditional love for the first time, in my life.** It changed me. It healed in me something that felt profoundly and irreversibly broken. I let him in, and now years later I am letting more and more people in. My friendships give testimony to the healing I have experienced,

My hilarious breastfeeding-wonder friend is a direct result of God’s work on my heart and in my life. She, and many others totally opposite of her, are walking talking evidences that I am being made new and that I am not walking in fear like I once walked.

Acceptance. I’ve experienced it and found it worth fighting for, worth risking.

**By the way – acceptance is at the core of the character of Christ. There was none righteous, so He became righteousness for us all. There is almost nothing in this world that makes me more angry than people who reject others and say it is in the name of Christ. Those who claim some people are beyond his love and redemption. That is not Jesus. Jesus accepts us. Jesus loves us. Jesus heals us. Anyone speaking “in his name” saying the opposite does not speak for the Jesus I know. The verse at the top of the post was written in response to people who were trying, 2000 years ago, to limit the scope of Jesus’ acceptance to a select few – and it still happens today. But Jesus accepted then and accepts now and confounds expectations every time, which is why I love him and follow him  (I told you me and my friends could jump on soapboxes).**

Last night I went to an event where the speaker talked about scars that are on our souls- and I saw clearly that my scars are almost all from rejection. But she also talked about when you offer up those scars, when you are vulnerable and honest and let light in to those places of hurt, those scars become your story. You go from being marred to being marked for a purpose beyond yourself. And that starts when you take those scars, those hurts, those rejections, to Jesus. When you relax in the light of acceptance. I still have work to do in this area – still have things I need to release – but I think a shift in me is taking place where I feel and understand the acceptance of Christ more than the rejection of this world, and it is freeing.

Acceptance. Such a hard concept to grasp in this performance-based, rejection-riddled world we live in. But so necessary for freedom.

Tonight one of my girls lost it in a big way in a public place. And honestly, this behavior is not rare or unexpected – it just happens with her occasionally. I kept thinking about this lesson even as she raged, even as I had to isolate her, even as I sat down with her in her room after it was over and she was calm. These are the deep parenting waters that I have waded and sometimes felt I was drowning in, since she was a tiny girl. She has taught me so much about the Lord. She has taught me so much about myself. I know this is hard for her. I have been her. Tonight I kept thinking, as I handled the situation, “How do I show her love and acceptance, how do I impact her heart and her character even as I deal with behavior that cannot be tolerated for her own good?” Because I can’t revel in acceptance and show rejection. If it is the defining characteristic of my new life, it has to be on His terms, not mine. It has to be absolute. So I pull her close, we pray together, we talk about how sweet and beautiful and kind she is, and how I want her choices to reflect that. We talk about how much I love her even in those crazy moments (such a work of Christ in my heart because, let me tell you, I have not always felt that way). We talk about how there is nothing she can do that will ever cause me to not accept her, and how at any time, in any situation, she can pray and Jesus will listen to her because He accepts her too.

Because here is the truth, she lives in this world. She will face rejection over and over and over and over. She will be scarred by it. It will leave a mark and mar her in many ways I’ll never be able to prevent or anticipate. I myself will probably inflict rejection on her in ways I don’t recognize. Rejection will probably be the defining characteristic of her life outside of Christ, just as it was mine.

But the earlier and sooner and stronger I can help her grasp His acceptance – that will make all the difference.

Acceptance. That will be the thing that draws her to Christ. That will be the thing that cements her when the sand of this world shifts. I have prayed since birth over my girls “let them love you with all their hearts” and it is true I want them to, not because I want them to share my religion, but because I want them to love the God who accepts them. Who loves them with a perfect, everlasting love.  I want that healing to begin in their hearts. I want them to know that acceptance. I want them to bask in the light of that love.

Acceptance is at the core of what I believe. It is at the core of what has changed me. And it is at the core of what I want to pass on in this rejection-happy world. May God help me live it and share it with those around me.

by Jennifer Wells

The Life Free of Disappointment

Sometimes in our world there is news or a circumstance that breaks through the cloud of Christian clichés that give us an illusory sense of control over our life. Do you know what clichés I mean? We’ve all heard them. Someone puts their house up for sale, and it sells immediately, and someone posts “That’s God’s favor, right there!” Or the guy speaks up at community group about how every time they give to the Lord, money just appears out of nowhere.

And I always think, “That’s great, but that’s just not how it goes for us.” In fact, lately, as I look around, many of our friends are in this place with us of trusting God despite great disappointment and amidst the carnage of broken dreams.

  • What do we do when the miracle we hoped for, prayed for, and desperately needed, missed the deadline?
  • When the adoption we knew we were called to falls through, leaving us devastated with an empty nursery?
  • When we feel called to be a wife or a husband, but the years of waiting for a partner has made our hope weak?
  • When we find out that the parent who is the glue that holds our family together has a body racked with inoperable cancer?
  • When the money we needed to make the payment doesn’t show up?
  • When the path we know God told us to take leads us into a valley deeper than anything we’ve ever known?
  • When month after month after month our body betrays us and the baby that we hoped for isn’t there, and we feel broken and forgotten?

Where do we go when life is real and tough and the clichés and “what you give, you get” faith doesn’t pan out? This week I, along with the rest of the world, have watched Rick and Kay Warren face every parent’s nightmare scenario. We all know the fear that we will lose our child, and it is hard to even imagine that these righteous wonderful people are now facing the aftermath of the suicide of their youngest son after his lifelong struggle with depression. I am broken for them.

These earthly realities, and the Warrens’ pain, confronts us with the simple terrible truth that sometimes, in this world, the miracle we need doesn’t happen.

 

What do we do with that?

I think we have no choice, in these places of brokenness and desperation, but to force ourselves to look up to the Lord and look ahead to the next world. To say, with abandon, this place is not our home and the circumstances I see now are not the whole picture. To allow ourselves time and space sometimes to grieve. To cry out in justifiable anger and fear and disappointment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Because, just as the Lord not only allowed but ordained his Son to die on a cross in this world, to achieve a greater good in the world to come, unimaginable sorrow and pain is sometimes allowed in our lives in this world to achieve a greater good in the world to come. And we don’t always get the luxury of understanding why.

The healing we hoped for comes in the next world, leaving only devastation in this one. The investments we are making are in the next world, leaving debt and insecurity in this world. The children we want to carry in our wombs and fill our homes in this world are sent instead to heaven, where we will someday hold them (and hopefully understand). The path we are on will sometimes take us into pain and loss in this world, to reap a harvest of joy and righteousness in the next world.

We do have hope for a future, because of Christ (and for that I am so grateful), but sometimes we need to release our desire to see that hope realized in this world. Because the simple fact is, sometimes it isn’t.

I think that is the hard lesson of the Warrens. They will see their son again. He will be whole, at peace. They will be reunited. But everyday until then, as they walk this earth, they walk it with the weight of grief. And may God help them, and us, to bear that weight well until they can say, with their Savior, “It is finished.”

And then the life free of disappointment will begin.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev 21:4)

Until then, we “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15) and we “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). And we stop with the ridiculous unhelpful Christian clichés that do nothing but add weight onto our brothers and sisters who are bearing burdens.