This Is My True-Truth {...my testimony...}
(Maybe tuck in with a tall glass of iced tea? This one’s a little bit conversational…)
I once heard it said that what most people call “their testimony” is actually their history. And their history is fine, but it is who God is for you right now today that is your testimony.
I don’t want to split hairs, it’s okay by me if you go back many years to tell a story, and you call that your “testimony”. But something in what I heard rang so true for me. I’m happy to tell you my story - but that is what I call it. If I am looking backwards, I am sharing my “story”.
My testimony is very much a “right-this-minute” reality.
Here is my testimony, in this middle-place of my life. These words are, as it were, hot off the presses.
(Out of compassion, I will also say this: if you are in the kind of hard season where good things in someone else’s life feels like a sting, if it makes you feel left out of God’s goodness - I understand. Please stop reading now, and come back when you’ve healed up. I’ve been there. Close down this blog, and put your face in Scripture - not some other lady’s book. Book studies are fine, but no preacher’s wife worth her salt would point you to some book when she can point you to the Living Word. And yes, I can say this - as a writer of books.)
Let’s lead with this, because honestly? This is a big deal for women.
Without a single diet plan, with no restrictive eating other than gentle intermittent fasting, and without harsh exercise, and after menopause, my body is at a happy weight. It is natural for me to say “no” when I feel like saying no - to any kind of food. It is natural for me to say “yes” to more water, to fresh vegetables, and also to cake and ice cream. I said “yes” to a Snickers bar yesterday. I say “yes” to bread. It bloats me, sure. It makes me a little uncomfortable. So I don’t say “yes” to it all the time. But if you set it on my plate? Especially if you made it just for me? I’m all in. Pass the butter.
How am I healthy and at a weight that I’m happy with? Well, Holy Spirit is the consummate teacher.
Not many books have been read, and I absolutely didn’t surf a bunch of blogs. Listening to the Lord, and to my own body became the plan. (Obviously, there are women under very extenuating circumstances - circumstances of life and death, not gas and bloating. If that is you, please do read all the books and blogs you wish. The Lord will lead you to answers!)
It is one thing to do research that is Spirit led. It is another thing to turn to self care as a kind of new, midlife identity. God has given me the gift of health, and yet I haven’t had to pull over (figuratively speaking) every few miles and check under the hood about every little thing.
If you are getting healthy results, and you are doing things differently than I am, or if you are one who loveslovesloves to research all things health because that is part of your original design, and because you’ve heard the Lord about it , then party on, my friend, and I am not at all surprised. Because we are all, each and every one, differently…and fearfully….and wonderfully made.
That marriage, up there in that picture? We fought for it from before day one. We radically receive one another, as Christ as received us. Does this man have faults? Do I?
Nah.
Just kidding. We have glaring faults. With the exception of infidelity, we have faults that other couples would call “deal breakers”. I’ve been a secret spender. I am an INFJ (if you’re into that) which is supposedly the most difficult personality to be married to, because I have ideals, man….I have standards. I’m a deep feeler, and far too quiet sometimes. He is both a team player to a fault, and a strong leader to a fault. If that confuses you, welcome to my world. Home boy is both a pleaser and an alpha male, and I sometimes feel more “herdED” than “heard”.
What does that do to me, and inside me? Well, it makes me decide to be a grown woman who does not expect her spouse to be all things, or a mind reader. It creates inside of my spirit a fabulous opportunity.
What is the fabulous opportunity? I get to think and choose what is important. I get to actually honor my husband, just as God has made him, and just as he happens to be, flaws and strengths. I will never get to have one without the other. And it is not my job to manage his mind.
It is my job to manage my own mind, and give him authentic honor. Sometimes, that looks like pushing back on him!
This is actually closer to Biblical relationship than some of what I’ve heard taught in a few of the buttoned-up, bullet-pointed marriage seminars. Submission does not equal checking my brains or my sense of what is right at the door.
Thankfully, I am married to a guy who not only sometimes makes me have to push back on him (if we were alike, one of us would be unnecessary), he sometimes…eventually….comes around to seeing it my way.
And sometimes not.
C’est La Vie, no? Such is life.
Regardless, in this season of our lives, it is more and more natural for both of us to radically receive one another, regardless. Negative beliefs about each other have no control over us, at any point in our thinking. We are fully confident that the other either is, or eventually will be fully submitted to Christ in key areas, and Christ is the one who gets to manage the other’s mind.
Our passion for one another is alive and quite well. I’m saying that delicately.
Can I just say I think he’s hot? Can I just say that?
The Holy Spirit has taught me that the passion and intimacy in my marriage is equal to the sum total of the quality of my thoughts about this man. Honestly? Passion can be made “new every day”, by applying the simple Gospel to my actual struggles. I am renewed, by hearing God speak over us, and believing what He says.
On to my creative practice. It is normal and natural for me to wake up with fresh eyes. Do I often have to contend for that? Absolutely! But complete victory now comes in minutes. Literally. It is now normal and natural for me to awaken, and instantly…automatically…all negative, sad, or overwhelmed feelings are pushed far, far behind me.
I lost my father in August of last year. What that did to me, was to make me a gratitude ninja. I became so thankful for my friends and my family. Losing the delight of my life (other than Jesus, my husband, kids and grandkids) only served to give me a determination to actually honor his memory by walking in abounding emotional health, and vocal praise.
So I have been surfing all the normal waves of grief since early 2017, when my dad was diagnosed and began to decline in ways that those close to him could tell, but others perhaps could not. Our whole family knew that without a miracle, he only had about 5 years left, at most.
And I still surf the same waves after last summer’s profound loss. Just a week ago, the Preacher and I made a hospital visit to a church member. As we entered the hospital parking lot, tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t figure out the sudden wave of emotion. Truly, I wondered why I felt weepy!
It took me a moment to realize: because of COVID, this was my first visit to a hospital since my father was in the hospital last summer. Grief. We carry it in our neurons, when we have loved well. It’s normal. What isn’t normal is to let grief interfere with your relationships, or with your original design.
See, my people need the version of me that is whole, healed or healing, healthy, and full of hope. Because I love them, turning inward is not an option. Expecting them to emotionally carry me is inappropriate. Because I love them, my own whole, integrated, original design is what I am determined to give them, as much as it depends on me to do it.
These are things Holy Spirit has taught me. And so….there is flourishing, because that’s His will for my life.
(I warned you that this post would be chatty…)
Can we talk about my nest? My home? The creativity I am unleashing inside these walls is at an all time high.
Believe me, I’ve had long, dry creative spells. I could - and probably should - write a book about how that, every time I set my mind to a creative work, the push back was so fierce and so heart rending and so personal as to be terrifying. I have crawled across broken glass, figuratively, to be able to call myself an “artist” today.
How? Leaning into anything and everything God says.
This home of mine is lovely. It is organized and quirky and exudes a presence and a hospitality that friends with much larger, more beautiful, million-dollar-homes have told me is tangible. My dear friend Jeanne Oliver tells me that her overnight visit to our home ranks in her top three times of feeling loved and cared for in her life.
This culdesac is a small colony of heaven to us and others. (I bet your home is, too!) My family lives all around me, and now also my friends Angel and Derrick and Sadie. The Preacher and I often yell to each other, from one of us at one end of the house, to the other at the other end of the house: “WHO EVEN ARE WE?!?”
We don’t even know. It’s above and beyond what we could ask, think, or imagine.
How? How can we live this way, in a somewhat declining, lower middle class neighborhood that others have actually fled?
Well, the Holy Spirit is my coach. He is my mentor. He is a consummate teacher. He told me, years ago: “Love what is, and love what is yours.” And so - I obeyed.
That’s it. You can’t have the results of obedience without obedience. God is still your good, good Father, but obedience sets your life on a certain trajectory that no one can reverse engineer. (Please read that one more time!).
If I have gotten off track, it is only by changing my mind to obey what the Holy Spirit has said, can my life (and heck, let’s be honest - even my dang day) be put back on a trajectory towards its lovely, original design.
Believe me, your original design is what you want. It’s the “you” that your people most need, and it’s the “you” that will flourish, nomatterwhat.
These words? They are my testimony. These pictures? With the exception of our “couple” photo, I have been careful to only pick what’s on my phone from just the past week.
Why allthewords? Why chat with you about these things? Here’s why:
“This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches. But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD, who exercises loving devotion, justice and righteousness on the earth— for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.”
I hope you heard me when I said (and I said it often), “The Holy Spirit is the consummate Teacher.”
I don’t have anything to boast about that’s mine, or comes from me, but I am allowed a certain kind of “boasting” in knowing God. And He is mine. Every good thing in my life, including this season of favor and sweetness, stems from knowing who He is, and refusing what does not line up with His goodness and His gospel. Even grief, though real and wholly normal, has to become something that works for my good and His glory.
Otherwise, I’d act out and act weird and….I’d just act. I’d put on an act. Without a simple faith in a simple Gospel found in one simple Book, I’d have to resort to the interwebs for my identity, and I’d have to depend on worship songs for my theology…
…and I’d have to read other women’s books instead of write my own God-given vision.
On that note, it actually isn’t inconsistent whatsoever to tell you that I’ve also been deeply inspired by this piece of writing by Phylicia Masonheimer, titled “May His Abundance Never Scare You”.
“The lie that suffering is more holy than Sabbath seasons is just that: a lie. Suffering teaches us much; the things I’ve learned through chronic illness, surgery, job loss, false labors and a difficult marriage will be with me forever. The imprint is eternally upon my heart. But I am learning that our abundant seasons, our harvest seasons, are as full of lessons and goodness as the famine was. Refusing to accept them just shortchanges our growth. Refusing to open our hands and hearts to the fullness of God’s abundance helps no one and hurts us.”
May I be one who understands and knows the Living God. May I testify from this place, always.
Holy Week {...and I've been sitting on a big secret...}
I have been sitting on a big secret. I have a story to tell you that you might not believe.
It is a story of perseverance, and connection, and the arts. It is a story that can't be explained by natural terms.
Some years ago, I wrote a piece and titled it, "The Inescapable Laws of Creativity". I worked so hard - persevering through much resistance - to get these thoughts down about it. I published them to my blog…
…to very little response. This didn’t bother me, because I write for the same reasons I make art: to scatter seed.
My personal symbol of creativity (you can ask The Preacher, because I want to get it tattooed on me, but he won't let me) is the dandelion. (Arrows, too, but that’s another metaphor.).
Maybe it is because the mature dandelion and I have the same hair. But more than that, they speak to me of influence. Dandelion seeds float out into the world, and you have no control over where and how they land, take root, and FLOURISH. Like the mustard seed spoken of by Jesus, the dandelion seed is invasive.
Come to find out, that small seed “The Inescapable Laws of Creativity”, floated unbeknownst to me, while this middle aged woman slept and cried and laughed and “grandmother’d” and cooked and ate and made art and prayed and lived my life - that seed floated far and wide and landed in the heart of the unlikeliest person I could have imagined.
A few months ago Mujahid Ur Rehman, a young Muslim man, living in South Africa, a nature photographer, was out walking alone. As he walked, he was pondering his own creative practice. Suddenly, the words "inescapable laws of creativity" kept coming to his mind, over and over.
Those words would not leave him. So he went home and googled them...
...and MY words came up, first in his search!
So he clicked on the link and the link took him to my blog. My piece on "The Inescapable Laws of Creativity" moved him so much, that he contacted me via Instagram to ask if he could use my words for a creative project of his own.
I know, right? Who does that anymore? Well, Muji does. (I can’t tell you how many times I have had my words {word-for-word} ripped off, or concepts that I have worked hard to develop are co-opted by someone else and passed off as their own “special idea” or their new “project”. I have also had my art closely copied. Usually by Christian women.) The level of respect that Muji communicated to me has given me so much hope and even courage.
So, as I said, Muji contacted me via IG’s “messaging” feature. Now. You need to know something about me: I never (as in n e v e r) open a DM from a man I do not know. ha. But for some reason, on this particular early morning, I did. I tapped the notification - and cringed, not knowing what would come up.
Instead of something awful, I read the most respectful, polite request to use my words in a creative project.
I visited Muji's Instagram feed, and right away I saw his gift. He is a very gifted photographer and video story teller. So I anxiously gave him permission, not knowing what would happen.
What has happened has been the beginning of a sweet creative friendship.
And a gorgeous, dramatic creative collaboration.
The result of seeking to walk out our art practice in an ethos of respect and permission and trust has been a greater, deeper, better understanding between a young Muslim man and an old(er) Christian grandmother.
That, all by itself, is an unbelievably good story. But. It gets better!
Muji enlisted his wife Naseema as the actress in this video. Dear, dear reader…watch the video.
I don't know about you, but I feel like can see into her spirit in this video, and it makes me cry every time. What a precious woman. She just so happens to be an ARTIST....and a physician. (Naseema, I am in awe. You are amazing!) And she graciously took time off to help her husband with his project. The two of them (plus someone they paid to work for them) traveled quite a distance to a remote location...
...just to tell this story. Using my words. Using his dramatic ideation. Using Naseema’s delicate, detailed watercolor art.
Please watch, and if you can, tap the "thumbs up" on this video. (Please sign in on YouTube and even start a YouTube account, if you haven't already, JUST to be able to click the "thumbs up" on this one video!)
It is a labor of love - no one has been paid one dime or dollar to create it, except the helper that Muji and his wife Naseema paid, out of their own pocket.
Friends, here is my point: THE LIVING GOD is using the arts to bring people together in ways we cannot imagine.
Hey, you. What have you been sitting on, too afraid of small beginnings, or too afraid to surf the learning curve it takes to start blogging? What have you left unsaid, because you are playing a deadly comparison game, or because you think you can’t stomach the anonymity of pouring your heart out, only to have no one read?
Allow me to show you my early blogging analytics. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and no one read for years. I can give you fifty solid reasons to blog, even if no one reads - but this post is already too long.
If I may challenge you one more time: Put your words out there.
Blow the dandelion. Watch what happens. Your words might just land on the heart of someone on the other side of the world, and gently lift them out of a creative rut.
Sharing your words will for sure get you out of a creative dry place.
Thanks for reading. Thanks for watching. Thanks for SHARING THIS POST. Please share it widely and with great love.
By doing this, you and I and Muji and Naseema can collaborate together - each of us a part of what God is doing in these days!
PS. the art Naseema painted will MOVE you...but it's mine. I am purchasing it from her - so step off. ;)