All Things Faithful

 

From the moment I discovered that Relevant was going to be held just 90 minutes from my home this year, I knew I had to go!  I never imagined that kind of opportunity … I mean, sometimes I can’t even get out the door to go buy a gallon of milk …let alone a conference with so many beautifully creative, inspiring, faith-filled coffee-drinking, blogging-fanatic women from all over the country!

I don’t know if I hit the mark or I am even worthy to blog my small thoughts … but I do know I am blessed beyond words, no, beyond tears … so excited and full of anticipation to attend Relevant in Ocotober … if it is truly a community of women gathering to lift each other up for Him, then I know I want to be there and I am only  going to be made better by going!

So, here I am doing a happy HIP HIP HOORAY dance all in honor of snagging a ticket for me a my novice blogging friend … we are gonna go to Relevant…in the meantime, I guess I better get blogging more faithfully.

But for now, I am off to bed.  Rejoicing!

I know I am not the first to talk about Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts.  I am not the first to be touched or to speak to the beauty I found while reading it. Women everywhere are raving about it and I echo all of it – it was truly one of the most beautiful books I have ever read … it touched me in deep soul places that only I know about.

Truth has a way of doing that.

Ann is not a miracle worker … but a woman who allowed God’s truth into her mind and heart so that He could work miracles in her. God gave her a gift and she shares that gift with us.

As I write, I am well aware that books do not change lives.  Even people don’t change lives, if you will.  Truth alone changes lives, when we live it.  God reveals truth to us through His Word and Himself through Jesus Christ, who came not only to give us life eternal but also abundant life, even as we live in this temporal world.

And this truth is what makes Ann’s book all the more touching … she is just like me and you.  As a mother of 6 who homeschools, Ann’s word had such power to touch me because I know she knows.  She lives the life of a mother and wife on a pig farm…with dishes, laundry, bills, bad attitudes and just plain old bad days.  She is not merely speaking truth …she shares her story of living the truth.  Thus, the many women being touched.  Thus, the raving reviews.

Thus, the miracle.

As God was working in Ann’s heart thousands of miles away,  He worked even in mine.

I remember so vividly seeing the words in my Bible:  I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly. (John 10:10b)

The words stuck out to me like they never had before.  I was a mother of, then, 5 children.  The duties of my mundane and tidious life overwhelmed me.  I certainly didn’t feel like I was living an abundant life.  Yet, God says I could.  I asked over and over … “how?”

I’ve continued to ask the same questions that we all ask, everyday.  ”Why?”  Why so much suffering in this world?  Why all the things that do not make sense?  Why do I read the words “abundant” and yet live what seems to be the opposite?  Why can’t I find that power that I am supposed to have?

Why is it so hard?

Why???

I looked at the mysteries in my life and the world around me and questioned them deep for answers.  There must be answers!

I circled around the mysteries in life, asking, wondering, digging … even begging, crying out to God … for answers … there must be reasons!

I’ve been a fair weather friend to these mysteries … sometimes embracing them and later throwing them out with the garbage.  They don’t make sense … these hurting things, these strange things, these trials, these seemingly senseless circumstances … I can’t dwell with them.  I am meant to live with peace and all the good things that God gives.  I can’t open my hands to mysteries that don’t make sense.

I eye them up, try to make sense of them… and then, I walk away.

I don’t see the abundant life there, with these mysteries.  So, I walk away to look for that abundant life somewhere else … I must be looking in the wrong places.

All the while, my own heart blinds me from ever seeing: complaining, entitlement, criticism, begrudging, bitterness, anger, fear …

I am looking and yet I am blind.  I am looking and yet I am not seeing.

Half through Ann’s book … her beautiful words revealing His truth, it hits me.  For the first time ever.

Grief and joy at the same time … I am 35 years old … and can it be that I am just waking up … to truth?

Yes, I’ve been saved for more than half of my life … but the abundant life I have not lived.

I think of my children closing their hands to my gifts … to the hard work and love that I give them.  The sacrifices of my love rejected. I know they don’t understand … they can’t see always why something is best for them … and yet, I continue to work, sacrifice and give of myself to them … gifts.  Sometimes they take, but often they complain and ask for something else. They close their hands and they say “no.”  ”These are not the things I wanted from you … I wanted something else…something better.”

God says children are gifts …and they are.  They help me to see.

To see…Him. His Truth.

My vision is clear.  I look and I see.

Me.

I can’t see the abundant life … the joy … because I keep saying “no!”  I want something else.  Something other than bills, laundry, dishes, messy floors, long days, contentious children, misunderstanding …

“No, not this, Lord … the abundant life, please?”  ”See, you’ve misunderstood my request, Lord.  I was looking for something else, something better…”

And so, I’ve been walking away.  Empty-handed.

The gifts, His gifts,  just sitting, unwrapped, unopened.  Unaccepted.

And so now, 35 years old, waking to truth, and I see.  The way to unwrap the mysteries of life, the things that don’t make sense … the way to  make sense … the way to find abundant life and not… just life …

It is to GIVE THANKS…to accept His gifts, those things He has already given, EVEN the mysteries, to open my hands … behold them, embrace them.  Say “Thank you, Lord.  These are from You, my loving Father, and for me, Your child.  Thank you.”

The mysteries are unwrapped into joy…into abundant life…and the questions no longer seem important.  It is no longer important to know why when I’ve learned to see Who.

And, the “thank-you” – it is not just a list of things or a muttering of words ...it is a way to live.

Living with hands open to His gifts … finding abundant life in what He provides…and even, especially, the mysteries that He allows.

And so, for the first time in my life, I find that abundant life.  I realize the gifts have been there all along; I’ve just been overlooking them.

I can finally unwrap these mysteries, these gifts, and find  joy.

His joy.

My hands wide open.  My eyes seeing.  I give thanks.

Eucharisteo.