Day 32 of Lent, and Spring's Brief and Beautiful Ache

I’m trying to figure out what it was about this that made me ache. It made me ache in that familiar way, like when snow falls or babies are born. There’s something about beauty mixed with ugly mixed with cracks mixed with gold. There’s something about loveliness that can’t possibly last.

So I am an enneagram 5, but my 4 wing has a really big butt and she takes up a lot of room inside me. (And if you think I take those numbers seriously, we must be complete strangers…)

So the “enneagram 4 wing force” is strong with me, and I apologize in advance. Bradford pear blossoms on a cracked and dirty tray make me verklempt. If that sort of emoting troubles you, I beg you, look away.

Maybe it’s the loss of my father, last year. Maybe it’s a dozen other smaller losses combined, but the ache is making…has made…me wiser, softer, and sillier. I am more ready to risk - and that is saying a lot, because risky is already basically my middle name.

I know. I know, you look at me and see someone so careful. But look deeper. Deeper, still. The part of me that willingly stood beside my husband when he quit his full-time job with benefits to pastor full-time? The part of me that threw caution and workbooks to the wind to educate her children with mostly whole books and life experiences? She’s still there. The part of me that has refused, at great risk, to let myself feel beholden to those who did much to try to make me be? She’s still alive and alert. She hasn’t even taken a nap in 30 years.

Every beautiful thing God has done in me and for me, the meticulously gorgeous design of my family and my life, and the glory of the weighty calling that is on us - is not because anyone supported us, though so many have and do and will.

But they have, and they do, and they will because Living God has bathed us in favor. That’s true for you, too. You can risk, without fear of man. The only problem is, I cannot believe this for you. And I’m telling you, it is not easy to walk in simple faith in God’s goodness.

It is risky business to know these things for sure. To live like I believe it invites misunderstanding.

Spring’s brief and beautiful ache makes me even more willing to “fail, having dared greatly”.

I told you to look away!

“It is not

the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Day 30 of Lent {and a conversation with a friend}

I hope you have women in your life who have a walk in the Spirit.

Have you ever had relationships in your life where your perspective was muddled? Where your thinking goes this way and that, and your view of yourself within the context of that muddled relationship just isn’t true to your design? There exist people in this world who, though not maliciously and not by conscious design, are subversive. They prefer you to be muddled. Because then they can attempt to insert their agenda onto your calling, and distract you from your highest work with their relational shenanigans. And those people will often want to draw near to a person with a clear calling. They want inside your inner circle, but if and when they get there, they act out when things don’t go their way.

Anyhoo.

In one hour flat, I had a conversation with a friend and she cut straight to the chase and dispensed with chit chat and also honored the living daylights out of me, and let me know in the clearest terms possible that she could sense that there had been women in my past who maybe started out in friendship and honor but allowed a spiritual enemy or other people to influence their perspective, and those relationships ended up being something I was meant to leave.

I knew that part already. That was not anything I have not already learned. BUT.

But not just leave. I was meant to learn a lesson.

I’m meant to have an ability to discern when these things are in play, and never make time for it again.

My Lord. (That’s no euphemism. I’m talking to Him, right now, right here!)

I marveled at the clarity that cut through some fog I’d been under concerning some very present issues (not in my church, hallelujah…these issues are completely, totally outside my church) and I hung up the phone with an uncomplicated, precise plan of action that came to me of its own accord. My friend didn’t script it, whatsoever.

That’s what relationships with women who have a walk in the Spirit should look like.

She’s a new friend, and without knowing a single detail about my past, told me explicitly that those women in my past who failed to honor the relationship have lost out on something of immense value. And she considers their loss to be her gain, and thinks herself to have inherited their blessing, and she’s thrilled to take it.

It was the sort of conversation that, even though I am completely healed of every bit of trauma from this past season, when we were done talking, I had to wash my face.

I’m telling you, God has been utterly faithful to bring women like this, young and old, out of nowhere. Out of the woodwork. At least six of them (interestingly, DOUBLE the number of my loss….wow….) Some of these fire-breathing women are local to me, some within my church who have just stepped up to speak life to me constantly, some of them in other parts of the USA, and a few in the nations of the world.

Lest you think everything in this conversation was all rainbows and butterflies and honoring of me, you need to know, I also got off the phone with a crystal clear idea of exactly where I needed to repent and change my mind.

And now, I have a phone call to make, myself.

Oh, I hope you have friends who are filled with the Holy Ghost!