Sacred Building

Stepping across the threshold, even as we chatted amongst ourselves and searched for seats, there was just something expectant about that place, something that waited in the wings, the moment that we had marked on our calendars weeks ago in pen, that we had agreed to when we received the invitation, that we had placed as a reminder on our phones lest we forget.

That we would gather together, that we would come from our homes and our jobs, in faded jeans and professional attire, that we would come from children that needed feeding and homework left unfinished, that we would set aside the outside world and step into the sanctuary for one purpose..... to pray.

There is something beautiful, something special and soothing about candlelight. About sitting in the central glow of that meeting place even though the pews stretched far to the left and the right, and women of all ages and stages of life pulled themselves away from the desire to have a space solely theirs and instead huddled in the middle of that large room to align our hearts to one purpose ....to pray.

It's a wonder we don't desire to do it more often, to embrace the beauty of a gathering of women talking to the Almighty as a unified body, to grab hold of the rarity that is found in leaving all competition and comparison at the door and simply coming as daughters of the King, each beloved, each treasured and each one asking that Father hear our cries as we.....pray.

September 14th, just a typical late summer/ early fall Monday, not found to have any special notation of holiday celebration in my day planner, and yet marked with a passion and desire that spread across the states, across the continents and into countries far and near to come together, in Nehemiah like fashion.....to pray.

And it was beautiful.

The sacred building of the wall that has been torn down by the enemy. Sitting in the rubble, knowing full well that we have left our homes, our cities, our country exposed to attack. And so, while we sleep and while we go about our days, he slides across the dusty bricks and through the cracks and holes and goes about injuring our lives and our families. Injured and bleeding, overwhelmed by what we are facing we weep and mourn what has been lost, but it seems to try and rebuild may just be too much for the one, there is no fathomable way we could do it alone.

So, in that place of worship, we gathered together and we planted our knees on holy ground and lifted our hands and joined together to build once more with our words whispered and hearts fervently beating and heads bowed in prayer.

Indwelt

Arriving in the midst of colorful spring blossoms, tucked away in one of my daily devotionals, without any grand fanfare or warning has been my most recent bout of reprogramming my thinking.

Have you ever had those moments? 

The light switch flicks on and you see truth for what it is, and yet to accept that truth, to truly embrace it, to let it take root in your life means you have to grab the eraser and furiously try and clear the board of what you had once thought, chalking in this new piece of information even though you can still see the faintest shadow of your past ideas stained on the chalkboard surface. 

There really isn't anyone to blame, as I think it only natural that I felt that there is a big "G" God and He is the main one in command and so therefore, on most days, I seem to forget that there are three equal parts to the trinity - God is God, Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. And, I don't dare begin to try and explain that one much further, because I can get confused in trying to read text on the subject, forcing my eyes to go back over the same lines again and again trying to make sense of it all. 

Yet, when I started reading Francis Chan's "Forgotten God," and he said something about step one being that you have to stop thinking about the Holy Spirit as an "it" and start thinking of Him as God, then my wheels started to spin. And while they may slow down or take a break, they are still caught in motion because I'm still trying to remind myself that the Holy Spirit is not this come and go presence, or a well meaning guidance counselor somewhat confused with my conscience, but He is indeed God. I'm so consumed with big "G" God that I have indeed forgotten, downsized, devalued this piece of the trinity. 

And running along this line of thinking that has spanned over days and weeks, and having scripture repetitiously hit me from different sources with the same verses, I am once again forced to rethink my thoughts on my body being a temple.

"Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" 1 Corinthians 3:16

The answer is, no, I don't think I've truly known the depths of that question. I always got caught up in this verse as some sort of weapon that people who felt the need to pick apart your life placed in their arsenal. 

Are you sure you want to eat that cake, don't you know your body is a temple?

You should stop smoking because you know, your body is a temple.

Those lines of ink forever pushed into the layers of skin on your body, what would God say about you tattooing His temple?

I must confess, I've always just breezed past the mentions of my body being a temple because I'd already gotten more than a few pointed comments regarding said scripture and I didn't feel I needed any more criticism. 

Then the light switch was thrown, and that corner of my mind that had heard the Word of God, the scriptures written down by mere men, realized I had missed the biggest picture of all. 

The Holy Spirit dwells in me.

God dwells in me.

I am the temple, the vessel, the sanctuary, the girl who heard the word of truth and was sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 1:13)

And all of a sudden, with this rush of awareness, becomes this frantic dash to try and clean house. Under full blown wattage of exposure, I realize that the temple is dirty, but it's less about cigarettes and junk food, it's about greed and lust and anger and envy and hate and bitterness and lack of self-control and, oh my goodness, this temple is a wreck! The carnage of sin that I have paid little attention to is crowding up the corners and collecting dust on shelving. 

There is this ache that has formed just underneath the edge of my rib cage and with eyes wet with tears of mourning because this, this temple suddenly seems uninhabitable, with cracks in the wall gaping and this is no sanctuary for the Most High, this is a hovel. It became overwhelming, my less than state and I thought, how can it be that the Holy Spirit has not insisted that He be allowed to pack up and move out, how can God be so patient to stay with me and not abandon me as a lost cause? 

With soothing waves of calm, in the midst of my despair did God remind me of His Word, "For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." John 1:16

Does grace ever stop being sweet? Or, as one may often hear, amazing?  Will there ever be a ceasing of moments when I will need another layer, another helping of grace, another reminder that grace is abundant and forgiveness is available and with clarity comes repentance and grace once more? I think not. And with freshly renewed thankfulness, I cling to the promise that it will always be there because without it I am lost.  

-C

A New Age

I was sort of waiting for the panic to set in.

When the calendar turned to reveal August the 1^st, the countdown was on, the big 4-0 was just 31 days away. This is it people, the last month in my thirties. The day before my birthday, I was reminded it was the last Sunday of my 30's during the last weekend in my 30's, and that night on Facebook, it was the last two hours of my 30's. It humorously felt like I was on some sort of prison sentence countdown. Doesn’t matter how much you wish or hope or dream, the minutes keep ticking away and there is no grabbing hold of that 3 and refusing to let go. Cue panic, chaos, and living it up because once you reach August 31st, the decade begins that starts with the number 4! 

But honestly, I woke up Sunday and felt like me, and when I woke up Monday morning, I felt like….well me. Looking in the mirror, 39-year-old me and 40-year-old me could pass as twins. Same red hair with several white strands mixed in as artful highlights by the Master Creator. Same teeth, all mine. Pretty sure my freckles numbered the same yesterday as they do today but when you own 469,232 of them, you tend to forget if that one about an inch and a half below your right elbow was there last week or you got it at the park on Sunday.

It’s amazing is it not, that as a child, you keep daydreaming forward in your mind. You want to hit 10 so you can claim double digits finally, you want to be 16 so you can finally learn how to drive, 18 marks graduation and being an “adult,’ and 21 lets you hand over your I.D. at the bar for an overpriced bottle of lousy beer.

There's always a better birthday that you're waiting for. I can’t wait to get to the next milestone! To be older! To do more things! Freedom lies just around the bend if you could only make the years go faster, you could reach the destination sooner! Ugh, come on time!

And then with an ear piercing squeal of slamming breaks and the smell of rubber burning, we hit 30 and birthdays turn into the never ending 29^th birthday joke. It's your birthday? You must be turning 29. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* Could someone explain what was so great about 29? Honestly, it had its high points and low points, but I’m not begging to revisit any time soon.

Nevertheless, it feels like 30 is the magic number that we begin looking back at wistfully, trying to return to where we used to be. As if we missed the guideline on aging in the manual on life that said rush to this point then firmly plant your roots and hold on for dear life because you don’t want to age anymore! Getting older equals body pain, wrinkly skin, complaining about whatever suits your mood and all your meals get moved up around 3 hours. 

I don’t know, maybe I’ll get to a point in my life where I say, “it was so much better when I was younger,” but I’m hoping it isn’t 40. True, I have zero clue as to why God found fit to allow women my age to grow random hairs in the middle of the night that stick out of your neck and you just cannot be at peace until you’ve located the tweezers and eradicated the hairy invader, but I like “40” me a whole lot more than “20” me.

20-year-old me wasn’t real happy with God, had pretty much decided she had better things to do and set out on achieving the things everyone wants – money, job advancement, fun, stuff, etc. She spent years putting that first and wound up with much of nothing. We moved and the job ended. The stuff equated to debt that required years to get rid of, and when I moved, the shallow friendships built primarily on crazy girl nights fizzled out. The me of the past may have had what she thought was “fun” at the time, but it was really a space in time that consisted of short highs of personal pleasure that didn’t last and had little substance.

Fast forward to 40-year-old me. It is true that over the years since turning 20, I’ve lost both my mother and father, and it is also true that I’ve watched my husband lose his job twice. I opened my home to my father-in-law who stayed with us until he died of cancer. My husband was diagnosed with a never ending illness, kids struggled in school, and a host of other moments that still bring tears to my eyes when I think back on them.

But…

I’ve also traveled across the globe to love on the sweetest people you’ll ever meet and I've had the joy of listening to children’s laughter mixed in with words of a foreign tongue. I’ve got friends in different time zones who amaze me with the way they serve God. I’m surrounded by men and woman who inspire and challenge me to live each and every day intentionally, not wanting to press the fast forward button, but content to sit right here in this moment. I realize the value of having a husband of 21 years who lays beside me in bed and talks about life and who still gives me back rubs. I’ve got an 18-year-old who is pulling away from my nest, and yet, there’s a beauty to being able to let go of some of the smothering and just being able to enjoy time with him. His younger brother crossed the threshold into high school this year and his younger sister isn’t far behind. There’s a tiny redhead who calls me Nana that watches cartoons with me on Saturday afternoons, snuggled under her Frozen blanket and we take the best naps together. And somewhere out there are a few more faces who I’ll hopefully call son or daughter that I haven’t even met yet.

Is my body not quite what it used to be? Well yeah, it’s been living 40 years. That’s 14,600 days or 350,400 hours. It’s put in the time, it’s allowed to sag and creak a little. Grace, 40-year-old body, I didn’t take care of you quite like I should, but you still give good hugs and you get me where I need to go. We’re doing just fine.

In the middle of all the wonderful things in my life, are there still moments when the money runs short, the test results are scary, someone in my house makes a poor decision, or the phone call means that it’s time to say goodbye to another loved one? Of course there are. Age doesn't equal a magic get out of tough moments free pass. But 40-year-old me has a support network that will pray and love and comfort that 20-year-old me just didn’t have that.  

God’s a whole lot bigger than I thought He was all those years ago. He really is in control and He’s really seen all my days, no surprises for Him. He knows I’m going to mess up but forgiveness is in endless supply, and He really does love me enough to want good for me even when it feels painfully bad.

So, the whole big birthday thing? Well, I can’t say I’ve really gotten used to carrying the mantle of the number 40. Like a jacket that seems a little large, I still feel like I did last Thursday when I was still 39 and I just don't quite fit into this new piece of my identity. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that thirties are gone and for the next ten years I will be a 40-something.

But God has this thing about changing a person. He isn’t one to leave you stagnant, frozen in a moment, a finished product just waiting for the end to come to pass. So, who knows what changes the 40-somethings will hold. It’s kind of exciting and hopeful, getting past the yuck of the past and walking towards the better. (Not to mention the 40th birthday party was fantastic! Goes down as one of my best days ever. Who knows, maybe the 50th one will be even better!)