The Pink She Was Waiting For.

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. “
Robert Louis Stevenson

There are moments in life which seem altogether harder than they should be…like getting a shower… or loading the dishwasher…or making it through a day without my five-year-old child hitting. Finding moments to take a walk with God. And yet these moments are hard.

 I’ve come to see all these minuscule moments in life as this lengthy chain of opportunistic choices which can bead together into something beautiful. Only without the string, each small, daily act falls apart and rolls around aimlessly across the slant of the floor. Some days He works in me to make something of value, and other days I string together my sin. I fail to put my hands to the cord which binds these moments into glory, His glory.

And there are moments when I try. Really hard. And I just don’t see it. I don’t see that it matters, that it helped, or that anything comes from my perseverance. Days when the dishes were just washed and the sink is already full, when the lesson was just taught—and forgotten. There are days when the same prayer has left my mouth so often, pressed in my heart so hard, that I forget all other words—and I wonder if it is heard. Or how long I must wait until my request is granted.

And then I must stop counting the beads, and look only at His working-hands. I must look at the work He has already done, and listen to the words He has already spoken.

He says: ⁶ Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, “At evening you shall know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt. ⁷ And in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord; for He hears your complaints against the Lord. But what are we, that you complain against us?” ⁸ Also Moses said, “This shall be seen when the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening, and in the morning bread to the full; for the Lord hears your complaints which you make against Him. And what are we? Your complaints are not against us but against the Lord.” (Exodus 16)

Recently—well, who am I kidding, for months and months my sweet girl struggled with her temper, and hitting. Each day, the same words poured from my mouth to her ears, and nothing changed. And when I hoped it had, I was informed, “It’s just that nobody made me mad today.” 

 
And then life paused. Pretty and pleasure were lost for a time; the room emptied. Pretty clothes replaced with plain-brown, unembellished. The absence of pink spoke loudest of all. Beauty surrounds when beauty comes from within, when He is within. And though it may seem a simple task, ours was not. After a while, a week of gentle hands, of self-control, after a whole-week-straight, beauty was restored. And flourished with a fresh coat of pink paint (her choice) over the walls, flowers around the windows. For beauty is in the reward of patience. 

And I was never more happy to see it. And since then, her little hands have never hit.


The Lord speaks to us in different ways. For her, he spoke in the absence of beauty. But the life-giving truth is that He does speak. And He listens. And He has heard my cries; He hears yours. 

I am still a beggar at His feet, still very much in need of a miracle. And He’s given me one—for He is sustaining me in my trial. He gave His people bread to the full. And He offers me, offers you, nothing less. He sent the Israelites bread while they wandered in the desert. It wasn't the promised land. 
It was what they needed to make it there. Just like He is what I need. He is the bread from heaven, the bread of life. But we have to gather it.

³² Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6)

May our God speak to and soften the hearts you pray for. May He soften our own. And may we speak expectantly, knowing He hears. And may we listen, knowing He speaks.

Together in Grace,

Amy

Five Stones.

He picked up five stones when one was enough. With one stone David brought down the Raphiam, the giant. But he held four more, one for each of Goliath’s four brothers. David went in to battle prepared. If Goliath’s brothers had shown their faces that day, his victory was secured— not by those four weights resting in the pouch at his side, but by God. My victory is equally secured because of Christ’s victory against sin and death and ultimately pain. But I need faith for the battle. Battle begs me to see that my faith: small, even stone-sized, is enough to defeat giants.

There have been hardships lately. I am not alone in this. And just when I hit the brink of exhaustion: raising, teaching, discipling, and learning the hearts and thoughts of my four children, decision-making, big decision-making (a husband immersed in engineering classes, and for the semester non-existent…) Hardship happens, more hardship happens, stress happens, stomach flu happens, then seizures happen.

I realize that I’ve gone into these battles with one stone, and I needed five, need to gather more. 

David fought the Rapha, the giant, the shades of the earth. These spirits are called the sons of God. (Genesis 6:4) Yet my Jesus is called by demons themselves as the only begotten son. With His word alone, a legion of demons is cast out of a man.

¹⁰ For He healed many, so that as many as had afflictions pressed about Him to touch Him. ¹¹ And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out, saying, “You are the Son of God.” ¹² But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him known… (Mark 3)

And so it isn’t the size of the rocks I hold— it’s the weight of them. And these rocks of faith are just a chip of the Rock: the Alpha and Omega. And to the giant of this day, I have a stone to throw. For I say as David, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty…” (1 Samuel 17)

This name, The LORD Almighty, that is where the power lies. The solution is never more anything of me. The solution is always more of Him. 

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 5)

So when my youngest daughter is crying of a toothache, which is in fact a cavity (I checked), and I’m on the phone with the dentist, and another daughter starts screaming because a younger brother has just smooshed her new snail as she was rescuing it from his dumping a whole container of brand new fish food in the tank, and the husband is moaning from the stomach flu, and now my two year old is screaming too, because he is being taken away from the smooshed snail—and the lady on the line at the dentist is still asking for birth date and address— and had this not been a dental emergency I could of hung up…in these moments, I call for the name of the LORD Almighty, and I reach for faith. And when I show up at 2:30 today and see the receptionist who heard all the kuffaful, probly wonders how great a homeschool mom I could possibly be with my parental dental failure and chaos, and my two year old is likely to give evidence to the assumption, again, I will call on the name of the LORD Almighty.

More of Him. More stones.

Victory.

Together in Grace,

Amy

 

My love sonnet from Him today: a sweet-half numb smile from my girl— the strength He gave both of us to face the giant of this day.