O, how great Thy loving kindness, vaster, broader than the sea!

November 16, 2017

This is the next line in the hymn that need to write about it if I’m going to continue with the resting series. It’s intimidating for me right now to try and start an entry in something that meant so much to me a year ago, something i thought I knew about, saw direction and purpose in and then, well then the fire happened and upended my entire life. And now it’s a year later. A year where I thought I lost my way so many times, a year that changed me, challenged me and made me face fears I didn’t even know I had. And now I sit at the exact opposite end of the lake, my view 180 degrees different than it was a year ago. I’m closer to the water, I live in a protected little cove where the winds aren’t as strong and we hardly get any waves at all. It’s small and cozy and whatever we have left is here with us, hung up on the walls and placed lovingly on the shelves and in the cabinets. We replaced almost everything we lost. Almost. Everything that was replaceable except the Murano glasses and some clothes. And what wasn’t replaceable, well, those things have left a hole in my heart that I don’t even want to try and fill. I could never fill a Christmas tree again with things that meant as much to me as those ornaments did. Each one was precious, filled with memory and tradition. All of the nonsense ones were discarded, the only ones left were the ones that mattered. The round resin choo-choo with 1976 embossed on it, the little chubby angel with Curtis 1960 written on the back by grandma Jean, the clay pitcher from New Mexico with Nellie’s birthday written in, the silly computer that said “Finding someone fine while dating online” and the teddy bear in a swing that read “Baby’s First Christmas 1984”, my nativity village with so many headless and armless villagers, the Christmas Around the World advent calendar with all the puffy velcro'd people that every child that has ever been a part of my life has played with. So, what now? Because the time is here. It’s now. One week from now we will wash the dishes from our Thanksgiving meal and it will be the season of Christmas, time to put up the tree. But will we? Put up a tree? A real one? I’ve never had a fake one. Should I start now? With nothing to put on it. A theme tree? Pick a color. Fill it with empty glass balls and glitter. Purple and gold. Blue and Silver. SO elegant. SO not me. Or do we skip it? Skip it all. The tree, the wrappings, the myriad of gifts for anyone and everyone. I don’t have it in me this year to do it all. So what DO I do? And what DON’T I do. That’s the question on my heart today. How do I grasp the magnitude of His lovingkindness and its vastness this holiday season? How do I make it different and still embrace the things that really count? How do I find the JOY He wants for us without trying to recreate something I already know I can’t? Vaster, broader than the sea. The sea. Maybe we should go find the sea. And sit, and contemplate His lovingkindness. Just me and Jim. Just us. And God. And the sea. Yes.

And then this happened….baking my banana bread and cleaning up for the holiday fun. Blazing across the sky perfectly in front of my house. I ran. Oh, I ran out in to the rain crying and laughing and praising the God Who is not far off and not too busy to send me hope, to affirm His promise, to me. Yes, to ME. I caught every brilliant color and then it just faded away. It did what it came to do, encourage me, remind me, bless me in a way that only God could, only He knew what I needed. Like heaven just said hello to me. My heart is bursting. I don’t even know what to do next but sit here and cry and laugh some more and thank Him. Thank HIM. His promises are true. And I am right where I’m supposed to be.

And there will be Christmas, here, in this cozy little cottage and I won’t run away to the sea because His lovingkindness lives right here and we will begin again anew and cherish every memory with our family that grows in love and wonder every year. All those cute people that helped decorate my tree will conspire behind my back and hand paint a slew of new ornaments to hang on our tree. And they will ambush me after dinner and watch with love while I open each one, signed on the back by the artist and cry. That’s what will get us through. 

For by Thy transforming power, thou hast made me whole.

I'm not sure how it happened, or when really, but there is no doubt that a transformation is taking place. And not just in me, but in Jim as well. There is this absence of angst, less talk about fear and anxiety, more time spent at peace and in gratitude.  It can only be His power that transforms us because we have seen how everything else is just temporary and even when we are so excited, without Him it just fizzles out and we forget what it was anyway. 

It must be the coming together after the breaking, the wholeness He brings when we rest in Him. Because the journey that brought me here to the Lake has been a breaking open of who I've become and a revealing of what I let go and what I latched on to and it was not at all fun to see. There was unbelief, so much complacency and an unwillingness to rest, to trust. On the one hand, I was settled and happy and content in my marriage but on the other I was panicking and distracted by the uncertainty of where we were going to move and I was only responding to things in the natural. 

Biding my time. 

Sort of passively expecting things to somehow work out while I complained my prayers to God. I exhausted myself with my little lists and spreadsheets and obsessive visits to every imaginable real estate site. And in the end, when I was plum worn out and ready call the Extended Stay America my home, God did what I could not do all by His wonderful, merciful self and gifted us this little miracle. Just.....plop, and there it was. On the exact day before we were originally going to close on the house, so that if I had not worried, and had not stressed out and flitted about, I would STILL have landed right here, ready to move in on the day of the closing. Perfect timing. It could have been. 

If I had let it.

But, God. Who loves me so, "He will hold me fast..." and He did. And then He began to unpack in me what He really wanted to show me, where He wanted me to be, what He wanted to me see. It came through every avenue, once I opened my humbled heart and started to listen. It was a message on fear and one on purpose, it was the breaking of my heart that bowed me down in weeping during the first Mission's Convention sermon, it was the faithful wounding of a friend that gently revealed my cynicism, it was every paragraph in the book I ordered just to be supportive of my favorite author, and it was how He started to let me be the giver of hope and encouragement in the midst of all my new learning. 

Hand in hand...given in and then given out. 

And now it's November, and we are excited. We are the people who remember. We remember to give thanks, to gather together, to open our doors, to show up, to forgive, to commit, to trust. We are becoming trusters. Releasers. Resters. Lovers of Him, of good, of truth. We are becoming WHOLE. 

Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee, and Thy beauty fills my soul

This week away from the Pond has me refocusing my gaze and trying to be present and connected in the midst of busyness and very little rest and quiet. Sometimes I see Him most clearly and accurately in the sky and the mountains and the trees, in the still water and the hush of the kayak pushing through the glass of the lake. This time I saw Him in the blue and sparkling eyes of 2 tender little girls that couldn't get enough of me. First snuggles in the morning and last prayers at night, over play doh and legos and American Girl dolls and Frozen pajamas and “Anna blanks” and Lea’s pocketbook. There weren’t any mountains to see in the Kansas plains, no stillness, no hush. But my soul, my soul is full. It’s spilling out of my eyes right here on this plane next to a sweet, quiet lady and her floral scarved hat. I’m squeezed in so tight but my heart is enlarged and I might just explode. All that love could only come from one place. One great and endless font of blessing that has given me a double portion and more. At every turn there seems to be some new and unexpected thing to add to my list of gratitude. 

I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart...

This is my lesson and charge for the rest of my life. 
How could I even begin to fathom His greatness and heart? It will take me in to eternity, unlocking little secrets and discoveries of His love as the days go by and in to when time stops to matter.
 This is my view today. My little slice, in this brief moment, of the greatness of His love. Yet to me, it's monumental. It holds the key to something I've been missing for many years. It's the picture of a purpose and contentment that I've been chasing my tail looking for and then lamenting its illusiveness. To be honest, most of my searching has been a figment of my imagination, and that's where most of the activity has taken place. I confess I have been a sedentary Christian and my spiritual muscles are pretty weak right now. A truth that is reflected in my physical person as well. But there is joy in the fact that things are changing. It is a welcome, needed thing and I have this crazy peace about how it's going to unfold.
This season is becoming a little parable in the faithfulness of God, as well as a lesson in humility for me, and it's all just perfectly okay. Who could argue with all of this? This is my view. This is the view I plan to take with me wherever I end up when the resting season is over. I sit here every morning. Every morning. And burn this image in my brain and spirit. It must remain. It is my memorial before God. How well He has dealt with me. How His mercy did not give me what I deserved but His grace gave me more than I asked for, much more than I deserved. That is part of the greatness of His loving heart. That is what I am finding out today. 

Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art….

The first month of rest is almost over. So far it doesn’t really feel like rest. There were still so many loose ends to tie up. The season had to change, really change. When we moved in, it was still summer. There were birthdays to celebrate, parties to go to and lots of clinking of glasses. And then, of course, there was the move. Thirty years coming for Jim, and even though we took it in stages, it was still overwhelming to accomplish. 

So. Much. Stuff. 

I’m pretty sure we threw out things that we actually needed and will now have to buy again. We were in a bubble, so overwhelmed by the gift of this new place that none of the stresses of moving seemed to really matter. 

Except maybe the exhausted part. 

Even the closing being moved from the 13th to the 16th to the 23rd didn’t really phase us. I was asked more than once what we would do if they backed out of the deal. For the first time, maybe ever, I choose to really trust God and not panic, I chose to just rest in His faithfulness, knowing that He would make a way for us. Enough with the “what if’s” and losing my peace before there was even cause to do so. “What if” we just trusted God and didn’t freak out over possibilities? That would be a good plan. 

And so we did.      Not freak out. 

Instead we decorated the lake house for fall, we kept celebrating and thanking God, we bought a new kayak, we paddled at sunset and had celebrations with whomever would come over, we took lots of pictures and posted them relentlessly, we went to church and worshipped and we played with little people in the boat and at our park. 

And then the closing happened. 

Without any drama or fanfare and barely a phone call. And then we were free. So we kept on celebrating with a perfect weekend of fun and family on the water and in the kitchen. We fell off the paddle boards and into the water and rearranged all the outdoor furniture and made s’mores even though it was cold. We baked pies and made waffles 2 days in a row and went to bed Sunday night with a sense of contentment and peace that we hadn’t felt in such a long time. And then the rain came and we rested. Rested in the joy. The joy of Who God is…how He loves us. How sure are His promises and how steady is His love. How faithful He is, how He keeps us and blesses us, answers prayers that we sometimes don’t even really pray. How He works in our children when we aren’t even looking. We sit by the fire with our electronic connections and hang out with little people 1200 miles away and feel together. We get quiet and watch the fog roll over the lake and the leaves slowly turning yellow and red. We spend a whole, glorious weekend alone together, just being, learning, paddling, cooking, loving. We get up ridiculously early and start learning the disciplines and how to spell s-t-r-u-c-t-u-r-e. Then we memorialize what we have seen in these last months and we respectfully move the family portraits of the homeowners to the storage room and hang our testimony above the mantle. 

And then it’s October. 

The Hymn...

Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art;

I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart.

Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee, and Thy beauty fills my soul,

For by Thy transforming power, thou hast made me whole.

O, how great Thy loving kindness, vaster, broader than the sea!

O, how marvelous Thy goodness, lavished all on me!

Yes, I rest in Thee, Beloved, know what wealth of grace is Thine,

Know Thy certainty of promise, and have made it mine.

Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus, I behold Thee as Thou art,

And Thy love, so pure, so changeless, satisfies my heart;

Satisfies its deepest longings, meets, supplies its every need,

Compasseth me round with blessings: thine is love indeed!

Ever lift Thy face upon me as I work and wait for Thee;

Resting ’neath Thy smile, Lord Jesus, earth’s dark shadows flee.

Brightness of my Father’s glory, sunshine of my Father’s face,

Keep me ever trusting, resting, fill me with Thy grace.

And so begins the next season. The one where I embrace rest. The one where I look in humility at the reality of where my faith is and is not, and begin again to learn to walk in trust. Where I sit faithfully every morning gazing out at this gift of peace and let my soul start come to a place of rest. How carefully I guard my tongue and correct my thoughts, since they have caused much trouble for my heart these last few years. So the silence is good for me, first the worship and music, and then the silence. Here I listen, to be led again and instructed, sometimes just to be held and assured by the evidence of the presence of Your Spirit that we are growing together again, little by little. 

That’s kind of my favorite. 

There are no words for it, no way to explain it, communicate it or put it in a file. It just undeniably IS, and even without words or affirmation, I know its source.