Where I Am

What a week it has been.  I've moved into a new home, had it filled four times already with people, laughter, tears, prayers, worship and cooking.  It's a place of family and a place I believe will be about restoration for hurting and lonely people.  I've shed some tears of joy several times this week as I have gone to bed with a heart full and hope of days to come.  God's pursuit of the heart is unending, unwavering, relentless and stubborn.  My friend Emily's daughter is obsessed with princesses right now.  She twirls and spins and asks Emily when watching a princess movie, "Where's her daddy?"  You would think she would be curious about Prince Charming, but no, she wants to know where the princesses daddy is.....On a side note, Prince Charming has never totally moved me and I think I can pinpoint it to the fact that he wears tights or skinny leggings and I just don't think I will ever be attracted to a man who wears skinny jeans or leggings or tights. I've digressed.  All that to say is that I'm seeing Daddy in so many ways and I am grateful. There have been many times over the past six weeks that I have needed to see my Dad and He has been WITH me every step of the way, especially when it is areas where I do not see the next step.  He is a good, good Father. A Father who pursues and will not let go.

During this super fun season, there are still some things that haunt me. There's a struggle even typing this, because I feel the need to be okay because everyone else wants me to be okay now that I have a house. I can feel guilty with having received so much that it is overwhelming, and yet still have some deep things stirring and never letting me just be. Can there be room for both joy and grief? I think so.  My way of "coping" is to analyze and evaluate what's going on internally. "Evaluating and analyzing keeps you from having to face your longing."  These words from a wise friend of mine over dinner tonight caused me to stop breathing for a moment.  She was right.  If I stay in my head that means I don't have to engage my heart with my good, good Father. It is avoiding in the most glorified way. Another friend of mine has a daughter who when I first interact with her she is always super cautious and shy.  She will hide behind him and then over time she will engage with me, talk to me without looking and then eventually she will be sitting with me and sharing some things that are on her heart all while engaging me in face to face conversation.  When she gets to that place with me, I am riveted because she is pouring out her sweet heart and I know that moment is sacred and to pay attention.  She's not in her head analyzing and evaluating, but living freely and openly.  She's 4 and she challenges me to engage with my Father in my longing, not just my head.  I think He is deeply moved by sons and daughters whose hearts are fully alive to Him.  Time and again throughout Scripture the authors speak of the heart - over and over and over again.  And honestly, it is refreshing looking at all the passages and realizing that I don't have to be afraid of engaging my heart.  So many people in the Church are terrifed of emotion and we are always hearing caution about not letting emotions rule you. True and I agree, but how often do we hear of warnings to stop living in our head and to engage our hearts? Let's go for it.

So, are you one who struggles with living in your head? Perhaps it is a crutch that keeps you from engaging with the Father in the tender places of your longing.  Praying and trusting He will meet you there.....

Day 1 of giveaways

Today is Day 1 of giving away crap  stuff 

leading up to my big move.  

I will be here all afternoon if you would like a 

crockpot, cookbooks, Sophie, a hodge podge

of picture frames and Sophie's diabetes.

Home Inside of Me

In college I'm pretty sure we did a cheesy interpretive dance to a Wes King song called, "Home Inside of Me" - don't judge! You know you wanted to be up there on stage too. :)  Pause.  Okay, I've come out from under the bed due to embarrassment and wanted to admit that I kinda liked that song. It's all about God choosing to make his home inside of our lives.  My beautiful church would call that heaven down inside out living. The name Beth means, "House of God."  The road to living up to my name sometimes feels long and other times has felt like a crazy fun story. For a long time I have wanted God to feel as at home as possible in this sometimes too uncomfortable skin of mine.  What is it about "home" that so many of us ache for?  The world is not how it should be, so we long for Home....

For a number of years there has been an increased desire for a tangible home of my own, but honestly it just hasn't been a  possibility.  I have shed tears over the longing for a home, all while God was continuing to invite me to a deeper understanding of what my name meant - House of God.  As I discipled/mentored college student after college student and watched them graduate and buy a home, the comparison game became a thorn in my flesh.  Having students and staff over to my house was okay, because I didn't mind asking them to sit in a circle in my living room floor, but over time I began to want to offer them a seat. :)  Over the past year with comparison (still is) unfolding, HE began to loosen my firm grip on a dream I was holding onto a little too tightly.  He's pretty jealous for our hearts.

So here's the story.

December 7th - student loan payments enter in to repayment and it is A LOT of money. Will take 7 years for me to get the debt down to a debt/income ratio where the bank will give me a home loan.

December 16th.  My friend and our college pastor Jeff preached this particular Sunday.  He shared story after story about the Church being Jesus to one another.  The stories were powerful and I kept thinking about how I wanted to love my church and people the way that Jeff was talking about.  He gets to the end of his sermon and he says he feels compelled for us as a church to pray for two things.  The second thing had to do with finances.  Specifically it had to do with, "Someone all of a sudden has come in to debt and feels held back from dreaming dreams with God about the future."  He wanted those of us struggling to stand up.  I did not want to stand up.  I was too embarrassed and ashamed.  AND if I stood I wanted to tell everyone that it was student loans, I was responsible with money, and I had a really high credit score. ha! I wanted to control what people thought of me, but I couldn't.  I could only stand.  My church prayed over me, shoved $20's in my hand and I left feeling so exposed and vulnerable.  I went home and put a pillow over my head for 2 hours and texted my cousin Ami telling her about it.

Fast-forward two weeks to December 31st.  I was talking with two friends about my situation and how stuck I felt.

January 2nd - I get a call from some supporters of mine who do not go to my church.  They were asking questions about my loans and had decided they wanted to pay them off.  Did you read that? PAY THEM OFF.  People. that was over $40,000 and it was not a tax benefit to them.  Completely extravagant gift with nothing in it for them except that they loved me and wanted to see me free. Grace.  Mercy.

Shall I look for a home now?  I told numerous people that I felt like finding my home was going to be such an obvious God thing, almost like I would be driving down the street and someone would walk out and put a sign in the yard right in front of me.

March 5th - I paid off the 34 cents that was left on my loan balance.

March 6th - apply for a pre-mortgage qualification.

March 7th - send out a gut-level, vulnerable newsletter to my supporters asking them to pray about two things. The first thing was about my longing for a home.  The second was about.................. if you want to join my support team you can and I'll email you the newsletter. :)

March 9th - Go looking for houses.  I pass this one house and they have just put the sign in the yard and I craned my neck and asked my realtor about it.  She had sold it to the owners.  We looked at a lot of houses, but none that I just felt right about.

March 10th - email realtor and ask if I can see the house on Monday.

March 11th - Walked into the home and immediately started crying. This was it.  Everything I had prayed for and envisioned.

March 11th PM - Put in a reallllly low offer.

March 11th PM - start dealing with mortgage lenders and so much smoke was coming out of my ears, you would've thought I was elected Pope.

March 12th - found out that the owners were ministers in Hawaii.  I stalked them on facebook and wrote to them.  So not apropos.

They came back with just a little higher offer and BAM.  I am on my way to being a homeowner on April 30th.

I know there will be bumps in the road along the way and I have had heart palpitations all day, but I am at peace.  Over the years it has become much more comfortable for me to do hard.  I can do hard, but this whole lavish season of answered prayer in areas that seemed hopeless....well, I have no words.  Just tears of thanks to Him.  I'm not a name it and claim it type person, but God is teaching me about having faith to believe for things that are on my heart.  However the key point in all of this is the fact that He asked me to step out and be vulnerable with my need.  Because he asked me to kick my pride to the curb and stand up that December Sunday, my whole church gets to experience the joy of being a part of praying and believing with me.  Because He asked me to be real with my supporters, they too get to share in the joys of the Giver. Risking to share our dreams desires is so scary.  I have walked around feeling more vulnerable and exposed than I have in my entire life and it feels like coming home.

When you come visit me in God's home for me on this earth, I pray you will encounter His presence, healing and be refreshed.  If you need a respite, come to this home.  We will worship and pray and we will LAUGH.  I can't wait to sit on my little porch with you.  Thank you for being a part.

Letter to a "Natural Helper"

The other night a friend of mine started talking about high school and how he had been nominated to be in a club that was geared toward peer mentoring. He said it was quite the honor.  I could not quit laughing as I thought about how I too was nominated to be a “Natural Helper” when I was in high school.  I really hope if you are reading this and we went to Central together that you are rolling your eyes as well as rolling on the floor with laughter.

As I look at that picture, there’s such a mix of emotion as I take note of the irony of where I was in my own life, the sadness over the death of at least two and nostalgia of days that have now turned into years of friendship and history lived with my brother/friend Chris. Over the past few weeks I have been so aware of the seasons of life. They remind me of seasons passing; summer, autumn, winter, spring. Repeat.  

So as I look at my redheaded self at the age of 18, what would I now want to say to her about seasons and what was to come?

Beth Anne,

1.  You roll your eyes now, but later on you will miss the people who knew you and called you that during the double name fad.

2.  Do not wear so many flannel shirts in college (with the exception of #3). 

3.  Value yourself enough to not wear a hoochie-mama-mini skirt to chapel when you are being presented for homecoming court in front of the entire student body.  Resort back to exception of #2.

4.  I love that you love your converse tennis shoes.  That won’t change and it’s okay.  You will love lipstick as much as your converse.

5.  What freedom you will find, I wish for it sooner for you, when you let someone go that was never yours to hold onto.  That pain of letting go is a beautiful sacrifice before the Lord.  It won’t be your last, and each time you will become more and more anchored.

6.  You are going to freak out in your mid-twenties, late-twenties, early-thirties and mid-thirties when everyone is getting married, married, having babies, stopped having babies, and you are still renting and have a dog that *^%& on the carpet on occasion and needs insulin shots.  Breathe.  Jesus knows.  He cares.  HE will invite you to dream bigger dreams than ONLY the dream of family.

7.  Don’t watch the movie 27 Dresses.  You will have 23 and it will not be good for you.

8.  Speaking of family, you are going to wrestle, like you won’t live through it, when you start looking at your issues relating to family.  Honestly, I would not change a thing about how you will wrestle.  You need to in order to be able to “go there” with people who will have not had a charmed childhood, adolescence or teenage years.  Don’t let anyone shame you for it.  Jesus knows.  He also knows when it is time to let go and accept family for who they are.  There’s freedom there.

9.  When you decide to go into full-time vocational ministry, don’t put your dreams on a shelf and spiritualize “calling.”  I believe it is wrong and it will lead you to being prideful.  Act, sing, dance and don’t hide that part of yourself or ignore it.

10.  You were raised in a culture of a woman not being able to do much in the church apart from childcare, choir or women’s ministry.  The amazing people there poured their life into you! It’s because of many of them that you are walking with Jesus. However, you are also meant to have a voice in Jesus’ Kingdom coming on this earth.  So, take up your arrows and ride your horse towards the passions He places in your heart.  You can do that AND still be feminine and a lady who knows to chew with her mouth closed, one hand in her lap, and not reach across the table for a dish.  You will love hearing women speak and honestly, at times, will become quite exhausted of hearing sports analogies and sound effects. Women and men alike need to hear women speak and teach.  Some dear men and women close to you will have heart palpitations as they read this, but it’s okay. Actually, those men won’t read your blog, so don't worry, and if they do they can wrestle with it. Jesus is the one opening doors for you.  You just walk through where he is leading.

11.  Be yourself.  Don’t hide. 

12.  Never forget you are a “Natural Helper.”

13.  This won’t happen to you, but don’t get stuck in the high school glory days (see #12).

14.  eHarmony is the devil. 

15.  You figure out the rest from here, dear friend.  Be kind to yourself on the journey.  You are going to need it. J

Every Season by Nichole Nordeman   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dwpdZdvCl8

Coming Alive

I sat across a table this morning with two women who BRING LIFE.  We were discussing what word we would use to describe 2012. Joy.  Courage.  Coming Alive.  It was a jarring revelation to me that mine was, “coming alive” because so much death has to happen in order to LIVE.  Ironically, a small death in me is leading to more life.  I had a lot of conversations this week, but one particular conversation cost me something.  It felt like death. I left knowing I had been obedient to do and say what I needed to say, and while the other person was encouraged, I felt grief.  I had a choice to either sink into my couch and weep and go to a dark place or I could worship and reveal my heart to Father. I have no idea how or why, but God wooed me to engage with him.  Tears were still there.  The feelings of being exposed, vulnerable, and nothing in it for me were still alive and present, yet I felt life. I felt glad.

This morning as I was getting ready to meet my friends I thought about how everything Jesus did cost him something.  Everything. Was he the loneliest person on the planet?  The most misunderstood?  Hated and his life sought after yet also adored and loved, but what did it cost him?  He laid down his life.  He called people to new life, to follow, to change vocations.  He healed and some did not thank him.  What was that about?  How I forget to thank.  Lame and begging for years and then what we think is our deepest longing is met, we immediately forget to thank him.  It cost Him.

Laying down your life to love your brother or sister will cost you.  I was wrong when I stated that there was nothing in it for me. Yet, you and I gain everything.  I gain a deeper understanding of what I want to resist, yet long to embrace. The Gospel – Jesus is our prize.  No guarantee in this life but HIM- the hope of glory.  This isn’t a popular message.  Why does it have to be about me and what’s in it for me? People cringe when I tell them my favorite book is called Shattered Dreams because we do not want to hear that life on this earth might not work out the way we hope and dream. I remember first reading it and throwing it across the room.  Sorry, Larry. 

However, it leads to invitation after invitation to KNOW him.  To know we are loved and to enter in to communion with the Creator. So this bit of grief this week has turned to a deeper gladness….a kindness…an opportunity to press in and come out smiling.

It feels vulnerable.  Some people who read this are not okay with vulnerability on the internet/blog world as it makes them uncomfortable, but in so many ways it is healing for me.  It costs me something to write.  My pride.  Which probably needs to die anyway. 

There’s an unveiling that happens.  The unveiling of the heart, the face…..living exposed. I started wondering what the veil symbolized in a wedding ceremony. Over time, the veil became a symbolic means of assuring the husband and his family of the bride's virtue. The lifting of the veil during the ceremony signified that the groom was "taking possession" of his wife by seeing her face.  In some traditions, it served the dual purpose of symbolically "revealing" the bride to the groom's family.  How true of what God does in us……if we choose to stand before the Groom as the bride/the Church and reveal our face to him so he can take hold of us.  Come for us, Father.  Until then, may we continue to lay our lives down for our brothers and sisters as you reveal yourself to us.  You make us come alive.



Sometimes Cold Play says it best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kf_6BWcOOg

Beauty

Beauty.  Is there another word in the English language that is more difficult to define?  I think not.  Some say beauty is about symmetry. You know, "an imprecise sense of harmonious or aesthetically pleasing proportionality and balance; such that it reflects beauty or perfection."  Sigh.  If I go by that definition, then I am not a beauty.  Perfection? Uh, no.  I have this scar above my eye from when I fell and hit my head when I was three.  I needed stitches and cried like I was dying. Beauty?  When I smile, one eye squints more than the other.  Beauty?  And when I am in shock, one side of my forehead goes way higher than the other. Symmetry? I think not.

I have a friend who is stunning.  She's the kind of friend who is noticed by a crowd whenever we go out. Seriously.  She's BEAUTIFUL.  So beautiful that if you are in an insecure place, you could tend to feel invisible.  Do any of you have a friend like that?  Do any of you walk insecurely?  Maybe your short and want to be tall.  Perhaps if you just lost that ten pounds you would feel really great about yourself.  What about if you just had some money to dress the way you really wanted to dress (darn you, Anthropologie)?
It is so exhausting to keep up with what my idea of beauty has been. EXHAUSTING.  The emotional struggle and the amount of time it takes up in my heart and head is RIDICULOUS.  I told a friend not long ago that I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't thinking about finances or things associated with what I think comes with beauty.  What takes up the most space in your head and heart?  Perhaps it is an idol? Perhaps in God's kindness he is inviting me and you to something more?

For awhile now I have been praying for God to give me a new name.  What I mean by that is that there have been wounds that I have lived out of and names I have called myself that my Father would never call me.   Numerous times throughout scripture (specifically Proverbs 3, 6, 7) there is a challenge to bind God's words to us around our neck and write them on our heart.  Today I was given three words to write on a piece of fabric and they are now bound around my right wrist until.... Beauty.  Joy.  Covenant.  Much better than Unchosen.  Sorrow.  Broken promises.

Slowly God has begun to uproot my ideas of what beauty is and transform it to really begin to have his eyes to see..........

Beauty is an early fall morning at Cades Cove where the silence and beauty is deeply restorative.

Beauty is loving the helpless, dying, broken at all costs.

Beauty is seen in my mother's hands who worked three jobs while trying to provide for me and my sisters during a divorce in which no one will ever know the horrors she and my sisters had to endure.

Beauty is seen in my pastors heart as he weeps before his congregation while pouring out his weaknesses and all the while giving praise to God for his journey.

Beauty is seen in that beautiful elderly woman as she lifts her hands in praise even though society doesn't value the "greatest generation."

Beauty is seen in a group of friends sitting in a circle attentive to one who is in a dark season.

Beauty is feeling rejected, yet remaining open to others and to God even in the midst of questions.

Beauty is honest relating.

Beauty is that moment on Christmas Eve as you sing Joy to the World and really mean it.

Beauty is the first step of a toddler and the sheer joy on the parent's face.

Beauty is transition.

Beauty is being present to hear.....

Beauty is FALL!

My friend Beth told me an interesting fact last week.  She said, "Beth, did you know that the color of the tree in fall is the tree's true color? The intensity of the sun and the chlorophyll in the leaves is what makes them green."  I love that!  Beauty is being our true self - it is being who God says we are and living out what he promises.  So today, here's a toast to letting you be your true self and color and beauty. It is fall after all.   

Angry White Woman

An update on 10/10/12
I just read this on Ann Voskamp's blog www.aholyexperience.com
"Cynicism isn’t strength and ranting doesn’t rejuvenate andfrustration can never accomplish what Faith can. 

Does my life testify to my belief in the power of complaint — or the power of Christ?

The Joy of the Lord is our strength — and anger leaves everyone weak."

Anger and passion are different.  Passion leads you to a place of trust and looking at Christ.  Anger leaves you, well, angry if you do not look to Christ.


Posted on 10/8/12

My friend Buddy challenged me to write something that I would never post and I said, “Okay!” and then he followed it with saying, “And then I want you to post it.”  My response to Buddy and his wife Kathie cannot be put into print.

I am angry.  It’s the kind of angry that is not easily shaken.  The kind that has been brewing and simmering down to the very marrow of my being for a few years, but has escalated over the past year.

o      

     Last year i saw clients 20 hours a week and they were the lost that i needed to         get face to face with in order for me to know Jesus in a deeper way.  How had I gotten so disconnected from the world?  You add my dear clients with a class called social and cultural led by an amazing African American man to a class of all white Anglo protestants and i am rattled. Did you know that white people are ethnic too?  American history became hard to stomach at times when looking at what this country did to the Native Americans.  Then you realize many of the Puritan’s that my culture elevates, also had a hand in some nasty history (I admit that I love the Puritan writings and have some of their books).  Warning – this video will be highly offensive to my white brothers and sisters, but to my black brothers and sisters, I think you will stand and cheer. It’s amazing what acknowledgement can do.

o  

   

h         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7Qmf9GwY0&feature=share

o          i am angry.

o          i'm angry at the arrogance of reformed theology and how anyone who might have an emotion  or speak in tongue’s is seen as one who doesn’t have as strong of a theology. 

o          i am angry at the actions of  brothers that will get up and leave a session if a woman is speaking and then use SCRIPTURE as an excuse to “act a donkey” and not a brother to their dear sister.

o           i'm angry that my African American clients have a much bigger hole to try and climb out of then anyone I've ever met in order to JUST GET NOTICED by people who might be able to help.  oh my word. it's like this silent scream that doesn't end.

o     

o           I’m so sad that many friends feel they can’t take their gay friends to some churches because they are still using the phrase from the pulpit that, “God didn't make Adam and Steve, he made Adam and Eve” as if that statement will really draw seeking friends to Christ.  What on earth?  Thankfully the church I attend now is one who loves people where they are and believes in process, but they don’t water down the Gospel. Gospel – Good News.  Thank you, Jesus.

o     

o          In the Casting Crown’s version of Jesus, Friend of Sinners there’s a line that says, “nobody knows what we’re for only what we’re against when we judge the wounded.  What if we put down our signs, crossed over the lines and love like You did?”  Can you imagine what this election would look like?  Can you imagine the conversations that would happen?  Do you see Him there?  He’s the one writing in the sand while others begin to put down their stones and walk away from the one they are judging.  Jesus so graciously, yet truthfully interacts with this woman. Oh my word, I need to put down my signs, even if they have been internal.

o     

o    i'    I'm scared to be offensive. the angry white woman. yet, some things are worth         being                    being angry about.
b

o     

o            How do i have vision for actions or lack of actions that make me angry? To love   well and yet be honest about things that I have remained silent about? I don’t know, but I want to go there with the Father, just like I hope if I or my actions make you angry then you will go there too on my behalf - that we would have God-given vision for one another and what Christ being formed in our lives could look like.

Will you take a minute to listen to the link below?  I’d love to hear where you are in the process of laying down your signs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipwEtvWL_3c