believe

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Maybe that's true. But it sucks. I find it hard to be away from Travis. I found out while I was home and my devoted Daddy took a look at my car that all of my tires were bald, my driveshaft was about to go, and there was a hole in my radiator. So... I am home for about three days longer than I had planned. I think that God stretches me that way because I am such a planner and when a wrench is thrown in my perfectly planned out days... I have to fight against freaking out!

But I still wonder about absence.

The bible says that right now we see through a glass darkly but one day we will see face to face. I wonder about that. Right now we are in the absence part.

It takes faith to be absent from someone that you love.

In marriage, it takes trusting yourself to be away from your husband, and trusting your husband to be faithful and the man that you know him to be while you are gone.

In our relationship with God, does it take trusting that both we, and he, is who he says that we are? I think it takes believing him that we are truly going to heaven. It takes a lot of believing. Maybe that is what makes our hearts fonder.

It teaches us to believe.

grief

I'm really struggling with the reality of death. I know I've written about it a lot but it's just so hard. Ami had her puppies a week ago, and about four days ago one of her puppies, ( the runt) was almost dead. So I started helping to warm him up and feed him. He has kept me awake for night feedings for the last four days. I did everything I could to help him.

Today he wasn't normal. I knew that no matter what I did he just wasn't going to get better. It broke my heart. Absolutely broke it. I hated it. And then, as I was holding him to warm his cold body up, ontop of a hot water bottle, he started gasping for air. I knew he was dying, and all I could do was hold him and stroke him and pray for him. It didn't take very long. He gasped. Then he panicked that he couldn't breath. His tiny little arms that he is so weak he never normally moves, moved in an effort to breath, to no avail. I held him as he took his last breath, and fluid came out his nose and his mouth. It was horrible. The most horrible thing I have ever experienced. His little chest stopped heaving, and within ten minutes he was stiff and cold. I kissed him. I stroked him. I bawled like I haven't for a long time.

We buried him in the back yard, under a saskatoon tree where I used to play. And I cried. He was mine. I loved him so much. I tried so hard. I greived like a mother. I turned to God. I know that Tim is in heaven. I know because God showed me. It's just horrible and I hate it. But God had to have a plan in it.

When I think about how hard I tried, and how little good it did, I have a whole new compassion for God. No one tries harder than him, and the death he tries to save us from is not breif.

Home...

I've been thinking a lot lately about missing home.

In fact, I've been thinking about the question, where exactly IS home? Is home where I came from, where my parents are, where I was raised and where the first horse that ever bucked me off still lives? Is it the spot in the Gillard quarter where we camped in our little camper for weeks at a time, and I got to play house for the first time? I set up the camper, fed the boys off of the little propane stove, picked berries, rode horses for hours and hours... and I knew every nook and cranny of that quarter.

Is home where I lieved in Red Deer, my first real house, my first escapade all alone? Is it where I first learned so many truths about God, and came running back to him as my first love?

Is home CLBI where I met my husband, learned so much about love, belonging, frusteration, and God?

Or is home where I am now, my beautiful new home with my husband, where I have the new role of a wife, and where God just keeps building my faith; where I will have our children, where I will learn to love and give, expect and balance. Is it the future that I have, the assurance that I am and always will be loved by the best man on earth?

Is home where the heart is?

Because my heart is in a million places! Sometimes my heart is in places I haven't even been to yet, like in Mexico, on a mission that I want to go on so badly. My heart is where I grew up, where I grew to, and where I am now. Home is pretty spread out if that's where home is.

But then I thought, where is my heart...

above all?

With God.

Wherever he is.

My heart has a home. My heart's home isn't here. It's at home when I know that I AM where God wants me to be.

Ulimtately, my heart is at home when it knows where it is going.

Heaven.

Literally.

camoflauge

" I am basically a good person."

We all know that as the buzz words of someone who does not want to just believe in God. It's the sophisticated shortcut, the way to ensure, that if there is indeed a heaven, you'll get in. Just be basically a good person.

What does that even mean?

Does it mean that you wash your hair, brush your teeth, and present a shining appearance before yourself, the world, and God?

Does it mean you give a few loonies to the guy at Salvation Army around Christmas time?

Does it mean that you've never killed anyone?

What I wonder is this... why are people thinking that they are the same as christians because they do a few good deeds? Are we really that camofouged? I mean, we all know that we are saved by grace, but do we remember that we are supposed to still do good works? We are saved by grace so that we will WANT to do good works. I wonder, do we do this? Or, do we do the same thing as everyone else, not admitting to ourselves that we are just trying to be " a basically good christian?" We need to come out of hiding. We need to be bold. We need to risk everything for Jesus. We need to reach that place where we are so close to God we know that we would willingly give him everything. We need to go beyond basically good christians and start trying to be Jesus. We need to open our eyes.

Come out of hiding, the sunshine feels good.

predictability ( enjoy the video)

So I am attempting to upload a video for my blog, something that I have never tried before. I wonder, will it work?I guess we will see. If any men actually take the venture and attempt to read my blog, sorry, this one is aimed at the girls. It's all about being beautiful, because that's what God is teaching me lately. Enjoy the scenery, and for those of you I've made famous ( meaning you are in the video) be blessed instead of outraged, ok?

I think that God has been making a point of showing me how unpredictable he is lately. For a long time i thought " Just find your niche, settle in, and things probably won't change for a while." I have found that God is just not like that.

I always wondered about Noah. I wonder if he looked at God and thought " Are you nuts? You told us to multiply and fill the earth; we are just starting to make a dent in filling it, and you want to kill everyone and start again! God, I thought that you didn't change!"

He doesn't.

His character is always the same.

But he likes to keep us on our toes.

" You really think that you have me figured out? The one who created all of the species covering land, sky, and sea? The one who makes each snowflake distincly different? The one who delights in the smallest things, and orchestrates the biggest ones? You really think that you have me in a nutshell? Well, lets see if you knew this about me!"

It makes him interesting. It makes him mysterious. It makes him powerful.

It makes him God.

So, why should I be surprised when he gives me a ministry, just to change it into another ministry? When he takes the biggest mistakes in my life and gives them a purpose? Why should I be surprised that sometimes he seems to contradict himself? He doesn't, he just sees a MUCH MUCH bigger picture!

God is unpredictable. It's interesting, because I have always said that I detest predictablity.

interact.

We serve a God that delights in teaching us through things that make us go " what?"

Something that I have discovered over time is that God uses the little things, the hard things, the difficult things to turn us to him. For a long time I have known this, but the second part of the process wasn't so readily visable just a little while ago.

You know, the part where we have to submit to it. The part where we have to look to God in the midst of our distress and say " Ok God what exactly are you trying to teach me?" I think that unless we reach that point in the middle of our frusteration and confusion, God will just keep on giving us the same lesson over and over again.

" What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Creator calls a butterfly." Joni Erikson Tada.

We don't learn by absorption. If we did, I'm sure school and college would be a whole lot easier for all of us... walk in, absorb some knowledge, walk out smarter. No, we aren't created that way.

We are created to have to look for help. We are created so that we question and test and wonder, and finally, the light comes on; excited, stunned, and exstatic, we realize that we've got it. We figured it out.

We are designed to be interactive.

Marketting companies have had that figured out for years. Put a game on the end of a DVD. Invent a million kinds of video games. Teach interactively. Initiate conversation. Interact.

I realize that very often we don't interact with God. We notice the canvas of stars stretching across the sky, but we don't think to stop, thank him, wait for a response. We realize that we are going through something hard in our lives and that God might use it, but we don't go to him, asking him to show us what he is trying to teach us.

I think that we need to become a lot more interactive with God and a lot less passive about our relationship with him. I wonder how many more lessons he could teach us in a lifetime if we would look to him every time something hurts, and try to figure out what he is teaching us.

God uses the hard stuff.

When we let him.

beautiful

Lately I am struck with all of the beauty around me. The sunset that I can see from my window, the mountains that are visible, just their silouette on the far edge of the horizon. I notice the beauty in a pregnant woman's eyes, like she knows a secret that no one else does... like the mona lisa.

Sometimes the simplest things are beautiful. My husband's hands, calloused from spending the day making money for us; the old Lady walking around the market, every line in her face a precious reminder of the wisdom that she holds in her heart. There is so much around us that is beautiful.

And out of all this beauty, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

More beautiful than the sunset that streaks across the sky in blazing shards of orange, burgundy, sage, gold, and dark blue. Mor beautiful than the delicate petals of the rose that Travis brought home for me, to sit, just because it is so perfect, on my table for a while. More beautiful than the wide expanse of land that I can see from my window, the light gold wheat swaying in the wind. More beautiful than the rainbow that dashes across the sky, reminding us that God isn't going to give up on us.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am made by God. Not Leanardo DaVince, not Michelangelo, not Picasso... God. His works speak of the kind of artist that he is.

I am made in his very image.

He is refining me, like gold, like a diamond. I am becoming more beautiful every day.

Not because I try. Not because I wake up and put on makeup and do my hair. No. My beauty is something that is deep, rich, a secret that I carry within me, a smile on my lips. My beauty is not tarnishable. It is a quiet heart, it is a grain of faith, it is love in my eyes.

In the eyes of God, I am beautiful.

This should be every woman's song, the song that she sings in her heart.