I Bow My Life

It never fails.  EVER.  It doesn't matter which study is chosen for the Women's Bible study at church, which book ends up as our Bible study book through the summer, what message I listen to at my church or even when visiting another while out of town...EVERY TIME He gets me.  Every time it is something new.  In Hebrews 4:12, the writer explains this phenomenon very well:  "For the Word of God is living and active..."  

I've read Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austin, AT LEAST a dozen times.  I KNOW the storyline...Elizabeth and Darcy will fall in love even though Elizabeth is stubborn, Darcy is stuffy and pompous, her sister, Lydia, makes things look pretty impossible through her ridiculous flirtatious stupidity, and Elizabeth's family is "beneath" the illustrious Darcy; but, in the end....love will conquer all:).  I love this book.  It is so familiar to me I can quote the dialogue.  But never once in all the years I have read this novel has it "changed" me.  Entertained?  Absolutely.  But the same Cherri closes the last page that opened the first.

Not so with this Bible we hold in our laps...it is living.  I can read one verse and it can slay me or at the very least slay something in me that needs slaying.  This study is no different...not at all. 

I began this chapter "I Bow My Life" with anticipation.  I love writers like Linda.  She's practical.  I love that fact that she points in a direction and then gives you practical ideas on how to get there.  Nothing is more frustrating than to have a teacher give you profound principles of...whatever...parenting, finances, or Christian living and then drop you like a hot rock.  I can't count how many times I have read a book or listened to a speaker and agreed with their thoughts and was left pondering...so now what?  How do I get there?  What should I do?  When should I start?  I NEED the practical.  And Linda delivers.  In this chapter it was more than I was anticipating.  

I was blissfully reading along when I came to "Lorraine's story."  Lorraine talks of giving herself 98 percent to God.  She had saved that small 2 percent back.  I mean, really, 98 percent sounds pretty darn good to me.  Many times I was thrilled with a 98 in school.  It looks good on paper...98%...WOW!  Except not in the area of living life for our God. Lorraine mentioned her life "box" of 2 percent.  I, too, have a "box" stuffed to the brim with (at the very least) 2 percent of my life...my worst fears and anxious "what ifs." He had been pealing back the lid on that box before I got into this study, this week He pretty much kicked the lid clean off.  Lorraine's words, "God, I am sick of holding onto this 2 percent.  It's making me miserable.  I give it over to You, Lord. My life is yours, nothing held back. Do with me as You wish," terrified me.  Was I ready for this?  Shouldn't you be ready for this kind of surrender?  What if I'm not ready...then won't I just fail?  Maybe I should wait until I'm ready.  Really?  Was I ready to get married?  to have a baby?  Heaven knows the answer to those questions is a resounding "NO."  If I waited until I was ready, a childless spinster would be writing this post.  And if I wait until I am ready to surrender ALL of me life, I can tell you exactly when it will be...as I take my last breath.  I don't need to be ready; I need to be obedient.

"Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.  He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I, too, will love him and show myself to him." (John 14:21)

What commands are His????

Thank goodness Jesus, Himself, answered this question so it would be crystal clear...

"One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating.  Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked of Him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one is this: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31)

Last time I checked "all" meant ALL, everything, 100 percent.  Anything less is not "all."  Including almost all...like 98 percent.  

Lorraine ends her story with these words:  "Relief washed over me.  All my anxiousness was in my Two Percent Box...and that box was now gone.  Oh, the sweet peace that comes with complete surrender to God, the joy of releasing my wrestlings to Him.  To this day, I've never regretted surrendering my life completely to Him."  Don't you love that God allows us to be beacons to others?  Lorraine is a beacon to me.  

This week I have prayed every single one of the prayers of surrender that are in this chapter.  I have written them out in my journal...including the words of the beautiful hymn "Take My Life and Let It Be."  I will surrender my life over and again if I have to.  The benefits to complete surrender are too magnificent.  I love how The Message interprets John 14:21:  "The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that's who loves Me.  And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him." How I need Him to be plain to me.

Surrender...the hardest easy thing we will ever do. "God helping you:  Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering." Romans 12:1~The Message. Let's surrender it all as an offering to the God we love.

Love to you, my friends!

Cherri

Treasures in Dark Places

"I will give you treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name."  

Isaiah 45:3

I have had two deep, dark times in my life.  The first was in my twenties when I suffered a miscarriage.  This loss was so great it staggered me, but God gave me Kirsti and my joy returned.  The second time was in my forties over a decade ago. I ran recklessly into a year-long journey of depression and despair.  I was emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually drained to the point of collapse.  Even now, as I think back on those days, a lump forms in my throat.  Darkness I had never experienced before descended on me and at the worst of it, I lay tightly curled in a fetal position in my bed.  The tears just would not stop. But it was in this place that God gave me a "Light to love on the way," and I have not been the same since...Praise God!

A year before, my boss, the principal at the school where I was teaching, told me:  "Cherri, you are a formidable woman!"  I couldn't help but smile at the truth of it...I was formidable.  I felt formidable.  I could do it all:  be a mother, a wife, a teacher, advisor, activities director, sister, friend, leader in the church, anything to anybody.  I was a great savior and an awesome holy spirit as well.  My boss was right...I was pretty darn formidable.  And then I found a lump in my breast.  My mom and aunt both had breast cancer, so lumps in breasts were not usually a benign symptom in our family.  At first all the tests came out negative, but they were going to "keep an eye on them," so I would be coming back for mammograms every six months.  Then came the call one evening after my first recheck, shortly before I was to leave for an East Coast trip with a group of seniors...the lumps had grown...that was NOT a good sign.  My doctor told me I would have to have surgery to remove all the lumps and as soon as possible.  So to cement in your mind just how "off" I was, I told them the surgery would have to wait until after I returned from my trip.  Stupid.  I could not stomach the thought of failing anyone, because I never failed. 

How many times did I hear with pride, "Cherri, you sure have a lot on your plate"?  Yep, I did...a lot on ALL my plates and my plates were spinning.  I had them humming through the air like an acrobatic artist while I walked the wire not even thinking of the possibility that one of my plates might fall.  But a breast cancer diagnosis hanging over my head and always ALWAYS in the back of my mind, took the "formid" right out of my "able."  You can't feel it in the moment, but the wire is starting to shake.

I had my surgery a couple days after returning from the East Coast and purely by His good grace and mercy, the lumps were all benign, but a different kind of cancer had invaded during the year...a fear of failing...of not being the "strong" woman I thought I was.  Fear of failing morphed into flat-out terror and plates began to fall all over the place.  As my "formidable" spirit ebbed away, I found I couldn't be anything to anybody.  I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head and felt darkness fill every cell of my body, every thought in my mind, every desperate emotion that I felt.  

My sweet husband, once again, had no clue to what to do with this creature who now inhabited his wife's body.  My children were scared, too.  I wasn't the same, not at all.  Peter convinced me one Sunday morning to go to church.  We sat in the back of the church, trying to stay away from anyone we knew.  I just did not have the strength to even pretend I was "fine."  And then the Holy Spirit began speaking to me through my pastor, David Parker, and tears, once again, began to fall.  By the end of the service, I was on my knees in front of my seat sobbing my eyes out, and I DID NOT CARE WHO SAW MY WEAK, PATHETIC, BROKEN SELF.  Sweet, sweet victory in brokenness!  He had "summoned me by name," and in an instant, through the darkness, the Lord began to pile treasure after treasure on me!  

Jesus, He is the "riches" I found in my dark places.  He is the Light that penetrated a darkness I thought hopeless of light.  He is the treasure I found in the midst of dark depression and despair.  And though, like, Kay Warren, I have never prayed for "treasures of darkness," I have prayed prayers of gratitude for those times, and I have come to see them for the priceless treasures they surely are.

I "stumbled" recently upon an old song by Michael Card entitled "Joy in the Journey."  I love so many of the lyrics in this song, but the lines at the beginning are a sweet promise to us:   "There is a joy in the journey.  There's a Light we can love on the way."  Sit back, close your eyes and let the music and words of this song remind you of the hope we have in our Savior.

Redeemer!  Redeemer!  Redeemer!  Redeeming darkness into light!  Despair into Hope!  Giving sight to those blinded by depression!  

Please, if you have treasures from the darkness...if you have made it through a dark time and found "riches stored in the secret places," take the time to share it on the blog.  There are those in the midst of darkness right now who need to know there is "hope for the hopeless."  If you have trouble posting, e-mail your post to me at motheruvmny@hotmail.com, and I will post it for you.  

Light and love to you, my friends, even in the darkness,

Cherri

Plastic Pearls

I got up this morning, fed the dogs, then myself, fixed a cup of coffee and sat down to tackle what was coming next in my Choosing Joy devotional.  Actually, I knew what was coming "Joy in Surrender," and honestly...I wanted to get started.  I was not prepared at all for the story I read.  It so blessed me, that I am going to take the time to type it out here for you.  So here goes:

Plastic Pearls

A four year old girl was taken to the toy store by her mom.  At the toy store, the little girl was completely enchanted by all the princess dress-up clothes and accessories.  The little girl especially loved a necklace of plastic pearls, so her mother bought them for her.

The little girl insisted she always had to wear those pearls.  She wore the pearls while she slept, in the sandbox, talking a bath.  She never wanted to take them off.  "I am a princess," she declared, "and a princess always wears pearls."  Months went by and over time those plastic pearls began to show their use.  The string was dirty.  The paint was chipping.  The clasp had eventually been taped back together.  

Every night before bedtime, this little girl crawled into her daddy's lap to snuggle and talk about the day.  One night, her daddy asked, "Little princess, do you love me?"

"I love you, Daddy, I love you," the little girl joyfully replied. 

"Will you give me your pearls?" her father asked.

"No, Daddy, they're mine.  I'm a princess."

Her father kissed her on the forehead and the pajama-clad girl scooted off to bed.

The next night at snuggle time, her father asked the same question, "Do you love me?"

"Oh, Daddy, you know I do," the little girl responded.

"Will you give me your pearls?" he asked.

The little girl was adamant again, "Daddy, I am a princess," then quickly slid down and ran to her room.

The third night, the little girl, fearing the question that might come, was hesitant to snuggle with her dad.  But love won out and the little girl rested her head on her dad's strong shoulder.

"Do you love me?" he asked.

Big crocodile tears fell from the little girl's eyes and, unable to speak through her tears, she nodded her head yes.  The little girl loved her dad.

"Will you give me your necklace?"  He calmly asked for the third night in a row.

That night the little girl ever so slowly unwound the tape that held her pearls together and obediently gave them to the father she loved.  With one hand, her father tossed them into the fire.  With the other, he reached into his pocket and gave to his a daughter a new strand of beautiful, real pearls.  Exactly the kind a princess should wear.

Angela writes this:  "In that surrender, she (the little girl) had to trust her father's good heart toward her. She had to believe, even when she could not understand, that his desire was for her best.  She had to trust beyond her own understanding:  'Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding'" (Proverbs 3:5)

In 1982, after a long, hard fight within myself, I surrendered to God something so precious I thought surrender completely impossible.  After having two healthy sons who were the absolute loves of my life, Peter and I lost a baby at twelve weeks to miscarriage.  I was completely devastated.  And angry.  While I was in the hospital recovering because the miscarriage, I found out that a family member was going to have a baby due the same month as the little one I had just lost.  In my young mind at the time, God was heaping on my heart cruelty upon cruelty, and I shook my fist right back in His face.  My poor husband did not know how to handle this new creature that came to live with him.  My heart was filled with sorrow, regret and bitterness and had a hole the size of Norway that no amount of love or tenderness from this sweet man could possibly fill.  I was in a cold, dark, deep, hopeless place.  I remember thinking I would rather endure physical pain than this excruciating emotional heartbreak.  In the hope that this hole could be filled with another baby, we got pregnant again.  Everything was great until about eight weeks when the bleeding and cramping began again.  There are no words to describe the desolation I felt.  Why?  What in the world had I done wrong?  Why did He hate me?  Why did He want to hurt me?  

Surrender.  If I am completely still maybe the baby will stay.  Surrender.  Hold on, baby, hold on.  Surrender.  Don't move.  Surrender.  Stay calm.  Surrender.  I can't surrender this.  I can't.  I can't.  I can't.  Oh, Lord, I can't go back into that dark place again.  Please, Lord, I can't surrender this little one.     Help me, my Father, to surrender.

"Remember Isaac and Abraham, Cherri?  Give me your Isaac.  I'll take care of him, and I will take care of you.  Trust me."

In that moment, I took my hands from my tiny pregnant belly and lifted them to heaven.  "This baby is Yours.  I gave him wholly and completely, and I will not shake my fist at You.   I surrender all...even this precious little one."

The bleeding and cramping did not stop.  In fact, I got food poisoning that night and vomited violently along with all the rest.  My Isaac did not get the reprieve Abraham's did...but peace reigned in my heart in the midst of all this...miraculous.  Peter called the hospital to see if he should bring me to the ER.  He was petrified.  This time the miscarriage seemed way worse, but they told him to "let Nature take its course."  Miracle.  (A trip to the ER that night would have probably changed everything.) But "Nature" had something else in mind and It definitely took Its course...just not in the way any of us thought.

A week later, I was still bleeding and cramping.  I went to my doctor because last time my miscarriage was incomplete...hence all the complications.   I thought the same thing was happening all over.  I was sad about the whole experience, but not angry.  At the office, I explained what had happened and that though the symptoms had subsided some, they had not gone completely way.  The only thing curious to me was that I was still feeling the never just "morning sickness" nausea I had felt before the miscarriage.  So my doctor decided to check for a heartbeat.  To tell you the truth...I didn't want him to.  I had already accepted the fact I had lost this baby, so to give me any kind of hope, even for a moment, seemed adding pain I just did not need.  As he set the doppler on my belly there was nothing...just my heartbeat in the background...thumping away like nothing traumatic was happening.  Nothing...no little beats in double time to mine.  And then one small movement of the doppler and...No way!  There it was!  How could this be?

We all cried...me, Peter, the nurse and my doctor.  Miracle.  


And here she is!  My Isaac turned out to be Kirsti!

Kirsti is a reminder to me at this moment that I have surrendered deeper, dearer things to my good Father than this dream I have hung onto for so long.  Does my father have a "good heart toward me"?  Through tears I can type these words...Oh, yes, yes, yes.  His heart is for my good.

His heart is for your good.  His goodness is beyond our understanding.

Love and REAL pearls to you, my sisters!!!

Cherri