Christy~A Life that Magnifies the Lord

One evening my sister took me to one of the most enjoyable and interesting events I have ever attended:  “Knit Night.”  You are all probably thinking about now…”Really? Knit as in two needles and yarn?”  Yes, indeed.  And let me just say right up front:  Knit Night is VERY well attended.  We had to park down the street a bit.  My sister has gone to Knit Night for a few years now, and I always smile when she tells me she is on her way because I know Joni doesn’t knit…AT ALL!  So it wasn’t really a surprise when as the night progressed I saw exactly ONE person do anything with yarn.  And that would be Christy; a woman I had the joy and privilege of meeting that night. 

What is especially astounding about Christy doing anything crafty is this truth: she has a painful disease called scleroderma, an autoimmune disease characterized by the hardening of the skin.  There she sat on the sofa crocheting away with hands obviously affected by this disease.  As I talked with her, I found she not only crochets and sews replicas of old, antique quilts, but to support herself, she creates beautiful jewelry as well. 

She talked of her family, a daughter who had married the son of a dear friend, also in attendance at “knit night.”  We chatted about the Bible studies we had done and the goodness of God.  She talked little to none about herself and almost entirely drew the conversation around others and God.  She did not tell me about her disease, or that her husband had left her, or that her last home had burned to the ground.  Others told me these things.  She talked of family and friends, of their kindness and generosity, of God’s provision and goodness.

Have you ever thought about what your life magnifies for the entire world to see?  What is up for display?  Maybe your accomplishments?  Or troubles?  Your family?  Your service?  Your addictions?  Your difficulties?  Your job?  Your afflictions?   Definitely my new friend could have magnified her scleroderma and nobody would have blamed her.  She could have talked about how this disease had changed her, limited her, caused loss, pain, frustration…but she didn’t.  In fact she did something quite different.  She magnified the Lord.  What he had done in her life…was doing and all the graces and gifts she had been given by His great hand.  I was humbled by her complete trust in the goodness of the God she served.

I’ll be honest…sometimes I magnify my poor self.  And it is about as healthy for me as this ant.   I get caught up in it unaware.  Usually something happens that zeroes my focus with pinpoint accuracy…like a laser right at myself. It’s all I can think about…all I can talk about.   It becomes a channel…the thoughts have run the course so many times, my mind is at the mercy of the torrent…the channel is deep, the sides steep so it flows on and on.

I flew over a barren landscape on my way to my sister’s one afternoon.   I was stunned as I looked down at the land below.  It was obvious that water…lots of it…had coursed through at sometime because the landscape was scarred with the marks of the cutting…land, rock and whole mountainsides relentlessly worn deep by the power of the never ceasing water.  Until it did.  Something had changed the pattern.  A small creek flowed next to what once had been a raging river.  Carving its own history now, this new rivulet of water created an entirely new course.

Pastor Jonathan Rue said in a recent teaching at my church that our brain loves habit. (For a video of this wonderful teaching click---> http://subsplash.com/desertvineyard/v/8eef0b1.) In fact our brain loves habit so much it will create a “super highway” of habit so we don’t have to think much about what we are doing.  This completely answers the question of how in the world I can make it all the way home and not remember stopping at one light or stop sign along the way!  The bad news is that all of our bad habits have super highways in our brains as well. 
The good news is just like that little creek I saw from the air, we can create different paths…better habits…God honoring….God magnifying habits!

  Thanksgiving…declaring gratitude…writing it down stops the flow of self-focus and begins to carve a new channel in our hearts and minds.  As we begin to take notice of the everyday graces and good gifts God showers on us and put voice to these things, we magnify the Lord.  













David says it simply and beautifully in one of his own songs: “I will praise God’s name with song and magnify Him with thanksgiving.” Psalm 69:30.

We are, every one of us, holding a magnifying glass to something in our lives or maybe even a lot of somethings.  Ann Voskamp asks these questions:   “What will a life magnify?  The world’s stress cracks, the grubbiness of the day, all that is wholly wrong and terribly busted?  Or God?”

Please don’t hear from this post that you cannot be honest about what is going on in your life.  When the day is miserable from beginning to end.  When your toddler has painted herself and her room with her poo, when your teenager took your car….when the doctor gives the diagnosis you feared…when you are exhausted from all the demands…when all you want to do is sit with your head in your hands and sob, for crying out loud, don’t paste a fake smile on your face and pretend.

Here is the key:  Magnifying the Lord is done best when we make ourselves smaller.  It surely does not mean pretending your difficulties aren’t real.  We magnify the Lord when in the midst of trouble we still number His daily gifts…we still see His magnificence…His goodness…His grace. We still see that HE IS.  

Christy magnifies the Lord by counting and recounting all the good in her life that comes from His hands while her own hands struggle through each stitch, each glass bead strung on a silver thread.

 

What if What We Think is True is Not True at All~

 In the corner of the garage was an old barrel, dust-covered and forgotten.  Over the years boxes were piled on top and then around until it was completely obscured from sight.  More than three decades had passed when the day came that the family home was sold and all had to be sorted into those things to be kept, those to be given and those to be tossed.  It had taken days, but now it was the barrel’s turn. 

The lid was lifted and the smell of what is old and mysterious momentarily filled the air.  This barrel had once belonged to Grandma Brewer, my dad’s mom, and it had  been untouched for at least thirty years.  These were her belongings; the total of those things she had sorted through at one time and deemed worthy of keeping.  In the midst of linens, embroidered and crocheted, was a packet of letters neatly tied. 

 At this discovery, all work stopped as we sat and listened to the words of a grandfather we had never known.

These were letters from a time during the Great Depression when my father, the youngest of four, was just a toddler and my grandfather had gone in search for work, leaving his family behind.   I don’t remember much about any of the letters but the one.  The one whose words visibly shook my father.  It was one sentence in the midst of many and it said simply this:  “I sure miss Hap and the sound of his little feet on the floor.” 

My father had grown up believing he was not loved by his father…maybe loved by duty, but not loved affectionately as we all crave to be.  He rarely spoke of his childhood years, but I do remember well the day he told me he could not recall one word of endearment from his father.  He spoke of an early morning long, long ago when his father asked if he would like to go fishing in the evening at the creek that ran through their ranch after all the work was done.  I listened as my dad described working harder and more carefully than he ever had at all his chores.  

 

 And the time came…everything finished to perfection.  My dad was anxious with anticipation as he waited for his father to come in from his day's work.  My grandfather was true to his word.  Seeing my father waiting with fishing poles in hand, he said, "let's go" and to the creek father and son walked in silence.  And then fished in silence.  Nothing.  My father’s hopes of having some sign of affection from his father that late afternoon ticked away as the sun began to set.  Not a word.  

Seven years later, when my dad was sixteen, he and my grandfather would wearily trudge through the door after a morning of shoveling snow drifts from the road to their ranch after a historic blizzard (http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/etched-in-snow-memories-of-blizzards-still-vivid-for-locals/article_4c6bdb1b-a30c-5737-a529-a85ba8686701.html).  Uncharacteristically, my grandfather said he wasn’t feeling well and laid down on the sofa.  By the time my father came back with lunch from the kitchen, his father, at only forty-six years old, had died of a massive heart attack. 

Perceptions.  My father had only his perceptions…what he thought…what he felt about his own father.  This became his “truth”…unloved, unwanted until the day a barrel opened and a simple sentence from a tattered letter spoke love and truth over a fifty year old son.

I would wager to guess that most of us have false perceptions we have taken into our lives as truth.  Ponder, just for a moment, on this kind of crazy.  Could it be what we think is true, is really not true at all?  Could something that is a lie of perception influence our behavior, our relationships, our lives in destructive and hurtful ways because we "feel" it is true?  Could we be so wrapped up in a perceived "truth," that we no longer see reality? 


Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 that:

 "...we do not wage war in an unspiritual way, since the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ."

Could it be these perceptions...these lies we believe as absolute truth...are strongholds in our lives needing to be demolished?  Could it be what we need to do is take these lies captive every single time they come to mind and make them "bow" to truth? 

 Jesus says this:  “…If you continue in My word, you really are my disciples.  You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”   
John 8: 31-32

Truth is freeing, and God’s Word, THE Truth, is the most freeing of all. 

The Amplified version of the Psalm 15:1-2 is intriguing to me.  Some versions translate the Hebrew word in verse two as "speaks," while others translate it as "thinks."  I love that the Amplified version uses both. 

^"Lord, who shall dwell [temporarily] in Your tabernacle? Who shall dwell [permanently] on Your holy hill? He who walks and lives uprightly and blamelessly, who works rightness and justice and speaks and thinks the truth in his heart."  
Psalm 15:1-2 Amplified

If we tell ourselves and others over and over the lies we perceive as truth, that we were or are unloved, uncared for, not valued, or whatever yours happens to be, we will believe the lie.  We have to think and speak the truth.  Ask God to show you anything in your life that is a false perception you are walking out in your life as if it were true and then begin replacing the lie with truth. 

It can’t be said better than this: 

“Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise—dwell on these things.” 

Philippians 3:8 

Let's dwell on the truth!

Wake to Joy in the Moment

 I stood outside one warm summer evening watching a setting sun pink sky and land with a dazzling array of rosy shades.   The sun had barely fallen beyond the mountainous horizon when two bright pinpoints lined up perfectly with a little slip of a crescent moon.  Venus and Jupiter dancing together, the night's first pair, in a silent symphony of contrasts and then as the night darkened, more and more pinpricks of light grew in brightness and soon the dome of the sky became milky with just a singular section of one spiraling arm of our galaxy, small in comparison to innumerable others.  

 



 

In that moment, I felt the awe of it...the greatness of creation...the magnificence of our God, our LORD, the Great I AM.  It can only be held onto for a flash by human minds too finite for such infinite sights and thoughts.  And that's okay.  To revel in the joy of the moment...to throw grateful arms heavenward...to know that God is good, His creation truly fascinating and beyond comprehension...to sink into the moment without distractions is enough.  It brings the gifts of peace, joy and the healing of us. 

Ann Voskamp says we have to figure out a way to stay awake to our "one wild and beautiful life."  She reminds us that all we have are moments..."microscopic, fleeting moments."  She asks, "How many moments of our lives have our eyes been wide open--but we have been rushing, racing, sleeping right through?"

I was a rusher and a racer.  I ran from one activity to the next and, if I am honest, I not only had an addiction to the rush of busyness, I had more than a little pride in my busy life...until it started to strangle me to death.  I had a two-word answer to the question we are asked by everyone, from our best friends to the checker as we unload our groceries on that continually rotating belt.  (Hadn't realized it until just now...that belt is a pretty good word picture for the subject of this post:)  You know the question...we ask it and we answer it everyday:  "How are you?"  My two word answer:  "Crazy busy!"  How true that answer was.  I was completely crazy in my busyness.  So crazy that I gave up precious things for the "pressing and urgent need."  I rushed through or completely jumped over moments I could have spent with my ever-growing children to pursue my agenda at work. My upside down world needed to change.  And it did, thank God, but not without a fair amount of wrestling with God and myself.

Here is what my children and grandchildren remember most.  The moments we stopped to enjoy:  the evening planet Mars was closest to the earth and we wore aluminum foil hats and ate Mars bars...the day we watched a hummingbird feasting on a huge sunflower...

 


had a picnic in the backyard...painted a mural on the underside of our dining room table like Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel...(ours wasn't quite so elaborate:)


made donuts from refrigerated biscuits...and the list could go on and on.  I hope I thanked God for such moments.  I do now because I realize how valuable they are...treasure in my life...gifts of never to be repeated moments from the hand of God.  

For the most part, these moments are free.  Well, I guess they do cost you something...time.  So take some time to share a moment with God and with others.  Look around and see what He has given and take note, give thanks.  Look up with eyes and a heart to take in the grandeur and beauty of a night sky.  Wake to all the joy that surrounds you!  Share it and give thanks.  Write it down as a memorial to God's goodness.  Sadly, the truth is if I don't write it down, I won't remember.  My gratitude journal delights me all the time just in the reading and remembering.  All those moments would have been lost, but the writing down preserved them so the gift continues to bring joy far after the moment. 

Find a journal and a nice pen (I do LOVE a nice pen) and begin a journey to milestone your gifts.
 
 Much like the Israelites in the Old Testament piled rocks to remind them of God's great goodness, we make neat piles of words to remind us that He is Emmanuel...God With Us always and everyday.  He is our Adonai, our Great Master, who loves to give sweet gifts to His servants! 

If you are "crazy busy," S.T.O.P.!  Plant your feet, take a deep breath and see what God has for you.  You will be pleasantly surprised.  

Blessings, to you, my friends,  of  moments that awaken your joy!!

Sink and Know

Like the Titanic cruising across the ocean, I sank one day.  I had no idea I was heading for an iceberg, and though I had been warned…I steamed on at full speed.  I was, as Emily Freeman writes in her book, A Million Little Ways, “…bound to my own usefulness, big-headed with my own accomplishments, crushed by shortcomings…capable of making art, but also capable of turning the art into something it was never meant to be.”  There was no time for prayer or worship or reading the Bible…I was TOO busy making my “art.”  And it was beyond exhausting…it was literally killing me.

My doctor would tell me as I came to him with symptom after symptom, “This is all stress related.  You have to give up something or your body will make you give it all up someday.”   I would always smile, make some flippant remark, thank him for his advice and the prescription and walk out the door without a thought to heeding a single word he said.  I couldn’t…that would be admitted failure…”a shortcoming” and it would crush me for sure.

And then God sank me.   I guess you could say that the iceberg I hit was the biggest one you could hit…the “God one” but in my everyday living it was seemingly insignificant.   Like a listing ship taking on water, the tipping point was reached, and I went DOWN.

I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone…and yet…that sinking moment was my first gasping breath back to life.  It did not feel like life...it felt like death.  In reality a fatal blow was given that day to my “addiction to measurable productivity” and the adulation of others.  Praise God!  When you finally see your weakness, your irreparable brokenness, there is nothing you can do but sink.  And sink I did into an inky blackness where no one could go except the One who is the Light and the Way.  What I found out was...He was already there just as Psalm 139 said He would be!   Slowly but surely, He "lifted me up"  like David describes in Psalm 40: 1-3:  

"I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned and heard my cry. 

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; 

He set my feet upon a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. 

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.  

Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord."

You see?  Sink into finally knowing that HE IS GOD and He will lift you up giving you new art to do...new glory to give:)

So why do I tell you my story?  Simply this…sink yourself.  Decide to sink into His story for your life…sink into His compassion for others…sink into His love for the lost…His compassion for the hurting, the heartbroken and the grief-stricken…sink into His ability to throw off bitterness and show undeserved forgiveness. 

I listened to my pastor, David Parker, talk about the “culture of Jesus” recently.  As I listened to him, I thought about the “art” in the life of Jesus while he walked this earth.  Though he was a carpenter, probably the best that ever laid tools to wood, no relic remains of his workmanship.  What does live on is how he interacted with people:  His truly unconditional love, His compassion, His acceptance, His forgiveness, His ability to impart value, His example to us of how to live art in our daily lives during this brief “breath” we are given. 

When I look at my sweet Savior’s life, when I read His Word, I can see clearly the way I ought to behave and react, but I am an imperfect, human imitator of this

Divine Life.  I am a messy thing.  I am a child copying Van Gogh’s Starry Night.   My canvas has the hint of the master’s, but the strokes are sometimes hesitant, too much paint or not enough or at times not even the right color.  Sometimes my frustrations rise and the canvas gets tossed aside.  Emily puts like this...we go to wash someone's feet like Jesus did and we spill the water or turn up our noses at smelly feet.  We are imperfect imitators of the art we see in the life of Jesus.   

“Be still…sink…and know that I am God.”  These beautiful, dropping to the knees, “I cannot do it” moments, these are the sinking times.  The sinking into knowing that even though I cannot forgive in my own humanness…I cannot love fully…accept unconditionally…live “a million little ways” consistently or perfectly…that God can and He can change a heart like mine to be more like His perfect one.

Let's keep sinking, my friends, into the safe and loving presence of a Savior who will bring His art into our lives in more ways than we ever imagined!

Love to you, dear friends!

Cherri

Looking Back...

 

I am a BIG fan of good, sound, prayerful, Christ-centered counseling…now.  Prior to the year 2001 you would have never seen me near a counseling office.  Counseling was for the weak…for those who had problems…for people who had “issues.”   In 2001 God did me a huge favor…He showed me myself in all my pathetic weakness and need.  Guess where I ended up?  Yes, indeed…in counseling. 

I had a wonderful Christian counselor who was really quite a saint.  First thing I did when I walked into her office was make it very clear what I would NOT talk about.  (And I thought I didn’t have issues:).  God bless my sweet counselor…she simply smiled at me and said, “OK.” 

One afternoon just as I was getting up to leave she said, “Cherri, I want you to work on something for me over the next two weeks.  I want you to draw a line across a blank piece of paper.  Above the line at the top write ‘HAPPY.’  At the bottom of the page write, ‘SAD.’   Then I want you to remember back to your very first memory and graph that memory above or below the line to the extent that you felt happy or sad.  As you think back over your life, graph your memories on the line and bring it to our next counseling session.” 

 

Two weeks later, I handed my counselor my graph and she thanked me then promptly put it into a file.   A bit anti-climactic after two weeks worth of work, but at my next appointment, she answered the door with my paper in her hand.  Just about the first words from her mouth were, “Cherri, did anything jump out at you while you were creating this graph?”  I had to be honest…nothing had “leapt from the page.”  Even as she showed it to me again, I did not see one thing that would make me say, “Ah! Ha!!!!”  For the next hour we talked about this graph and for the first time in my life I understood myself with a clarity I had never experienced.   She noticed that nearly every good memory I had happened outdoors…summer vacations camping, working in the woods with my dad in our family firewood business, or time spent playing outside in the neighborhood where I grew up.  Most of my bad memories happened inside four walls: some inside the small house where I grew up.   As I think back on that timeline, my life…my childhood was trying to tell me something about the art in my life and what fuels it.

In the book we are doing together, our author tells us that sometimes we need to “look back” and “rescue” the art we were making even as children.  I can tell you that in my life, a lot of my art happens outside of four walls.  Whenever I can, I am outside.   I don’t even have to be “far out.”  A backyard will do just fine. My favorite place to write and do my Bible studies is outside at the table on my backyard patio especially around sunrise.  At this moment I am outside typing away and this is the beauty God has given this morning at Lake Tahoe where I am visiting my sister!

I was talking with my granddaughters one day about beauty.  I asked them what they see as beautiful.  Their list was much like my own:  sunsets and sunrises, wind blowing in treetops, poppy covered fields, billowing thunderheads that fill the sky.   God’s creation fills me and inspires me to create art that I hope with all my heart glorifies the Maker of all good things.  I hope pictures of sunsets, and forest paths, descriptions of sunrises and a valley covered in wildflowers, or a waterfall cascading down a mountainside, fill people with wonder and turn their eyes to an incomparable Creator.

I know that the “great outdoors” does not inspire art in everyone.  I know this for certain because I have a birthed a few myself:).  I have talented and gifted daughters who the LAST thing they want to do is sit outside with bugs and wild creatures.  It most assuredly does not inspire art in these precious ones of mine…but other things do…like music or the “blank canvas” of a birthday party or wedding shower. 

Do yourself a favor.  Sit down with a blank piece of paper and your memories.  Graph the happy and the sad and see if your art peeks out at you from behind those lines.  Rescue your childhood love for ____________ (whatever you might find) and bring it out in the open to bring joy to others and glory to God.

Look back and rescue what God gave you from the beginning!

Love to you, my dear gifted sisters!

Cherri