an ocean of sorrow right under my skin

the pain feels like a hollow in my chest 

and I struggle just to take another step

it really is more like a stone in my stomach

like a weight on my heart, 

like a huge rock that will smash it into pieces.

maybe it already did  

when it feels like an ocean of sorrow right under my skin

and tears fill my eyes every second I am alone

a wave that swells and threatens to drown every little bit of joy

when it feels like no one understands

when there is guilt, 

because, come on,  there is so much to be thankful for 

yet

there is so much pain, 

so many layers, 

too many it seems

but. 

this lonely heart will sing again

these barren lungs will breathe again...

in the palm of His hand

because

there is compassion

HOPE

a place to just hide

no guilt or shame for not being able to move beyond the sadness 

a place to just be 

and cry

 and let it all out 

no need to be strong for anyone anymore 

not now anyways

not here anyways

in the embrace of Him

shoulders can come down,

tensions can leave

and there is 

PEACE

all I know is that He loves me 

and I love Him

nothing else matters 

HOPE

His name is

JESUS

my lonely heart can sing again

my barren lungs can breathe again

He carries my sadness

He lovingly wipes away my tears

He is the breath in my lungs

He alone

just Him

He is

LIGHT 

He illuminates the night 

there is warmth,

love,

belonging,

comfort,

joy,

sorrow and suffering 

cannot drown it out

Praise be to HIM

ALONE

To those who grieve to the broken in need a baby has come

 

HOPE

quite the word

we all want it, need it

sometimes we don't feel there is any

death most definitely puts a big PERIOD behind any hope we could ever come up with, humanly speaking that is.

A little over 2 weeks ago we received a very discouraging piece of information from the nursing home in Germany where my father had been staying.

He had tested positive for COVID 19.... fear wanted to grip our hearts, because, let's face it, a 82 year old man, who had been struggling with Parkinson's for a very long time, who had had triple bypass surgery 19 years ago, and had been declining over the last years mentally and physically, how much hope was there for him to overcome this virus????

But.. he surprised us with never getting any fever or cough, and even testing negative for Covid after 2 weeks.

So Monday morning came with quite the shock. 

The hope for him to beat this lost. 

Peacefully we learned, he had just fallen asleep and taken his last breath.

Hope lost, yes, for more time here on earth with us,  

BUT GOD...

To the hungry and meek

To those who grieve

To the broken, in need

A baby has come 

We have known pain

We’ve felt death’s sting

God, help us believe

This baby has come

The angel appeared

Said do not fear

For peace is here

A baby has come

The advent of life

Let hope arise

We’ve our Savior and Christ

The Baby has come

The proud will be low

The humble will know

They’re valued and loved

For the Baby has come

So fitting that we are just one week away from celebrating the coming of the King, the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who, even though He is God, that day so very long ago took on flesh, humbling Himself by taking on the form of a servant.

He came, and all who recognize their need for a Saviour,  all who believe and confess that He is God's Son and paid the penalty for our sin once and for all, will be called children of God.

We are  given an eternal hope, a hope that will not disappoint, that not even death can take away, a hope that is rooted in who Jesus is and what He has done for us. 

By dying for our sins, by paying the price for our debt, He restored peace with God for us who believe!

This undeserved gift, this grace is what gives us hope, even in death,

Hope is a person.

His name is Jesus.

Do you know Him???

 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, 

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit 

you may abound in hope.

Romans 15:13

...anxiety and a body that hasn't caught up with the peace in my soul....

“Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,

    my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.

I will put my Spirit upon him,

    and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

 He will not quarrel or cry aloud,

    nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets;

 a bruised reed he will not break,

    and a smoldering wick he will not quench,

until he brings justice to victory;

     and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

claimed this promise for myself many years ago..... He said He wouldn't break me .. and I know He won't..

reminded of this passage of scripture by a most wonderful friend today, I have been thinking about it again..

a bruised reed, a weak reed.. a fragile, already quite broken, helpless and vulnerable little reed... that would be me..

looking at some pictures of myself as a little girl yesterday,  I found one of my mother and my siblings and I.. I was about 2... looking quite sad in this picture ( everyone else was laughing ) I asked my mother before how come I looked so sad... she said I seemed to be sad most of the time... ha.......

read an article about trauma and depression and how to handle it as a Christian and this is what this young woman wrote:

"Now I understand that my reactions had nothing to do with whatever it was that scared me and everything to do with neuropaths laid from a childhood household dynamic that left me feeling insecure, fearful, and ready to bolt at all times......."

thinking about my childhood household dynamic I know for a fact that it left me feeling insecure and too afraid to face anything that came my way.. a sad little girl that started to cry when her father talked to her, that was woken up by a sister who couldn’t breath night after night, having to go into the “lion’s den“ to get the mother who could help, risking the violent response of the father , the little girl that had no way of knowing when what seemed like a sunny,peaceful day would suddenly turn into a horrific thunderstorm, caused by the angry outbursts of a father who could never be trusted, a little girl that was just so afraid of EVERYTHING...

thankfully, all along.. the One that God the Father had chosen, the gentle One, who pleases the soul of the Father, the One that treats those the Father has given Him with compassion and love, He, Jesus, was watching over me... giving me hope and strength and grace and since I finally met him 26 years ago, has taken so many of those fears from the past away ..

and when, like the lady said "my body reacts to conflict in ways I can't control"  He, in His gentle power and loving embrace picks me up and looks me in the eye and tells me once again....." a tender reed I will not break... take refuge in my arms, listen to my heartbeat and believe me..... you are safe here, no one can harm you..... I walk with you through all your heartaches and stresses, through the losses and the panic... I will disentangle and rewire the messes those experiences have created in you... and I will not stop until I have done it completely... until I have fully restored you, my beloved child......"

writing this, tears of gratitude and love are rolling down my face... and, in awe, as always at such a love as this... I fling my arms around His neck and bury my tear stained face in the place where it fits so perfectly... right beneath His strong shoulders... feeling His heartbeat I am able to relax... let go... and HOPE....

“Remember not the former things,

    nor consider the things of old.

 Behold, I am doing a new thing;

    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

    and rivers in the desert.

 The wild beasts will honor me,

    the jackals and the ostriches,

for I give water in the wilderness,

    rivers in the desert,

to give drink to my chosen people,

COVID-19 and reading through Job...

It started on March 13, 2020.
The 187th day of my 9 months Bible Reading Challenge #KeeptheFeast

March 13 already didn't start out as such a great day.
I guess it was a Friday.
It also turned out to be the last day we went to our fav Brewery for our usual Friday night date night.
For now, anyways.

It happened to be the weekend church was cancelled for the first time, on account of social distancing, gatherings over 100 people were discouraged ( not quite forbidden but frowned upon for sure.)


I had read through Job before.
I had studied and been greatly encouraged by some passages in Job.
I like quoting verses from Job whenever I talk about my most favourite subject : God's Sovereignty.

So on March 13, when the Bible Reading Challenge plan had me starting to read through Job I first didn't think about it too much.
On day 2 of this undertaking I remember thinking : I don't really want to read this....
I know how it ends, I know the lessons it's teaching, I don't really want to read every little detail of all the heartache, well meaning friends inflicting pain and all that...
I didn't want to have to walk through the muck and yuck of living through heart wrenching suffering for the unforeseeable future of my daily reading...

Right there it dawned on me, that as much as I would like to fast forward through the daily grind of reading this, that's just not what it is.
That's not what life is.
That's not what walking with the Lord is about.
Yes, we  know the outcome.
Yes, we know the final destination and the eternal joy that awaits us.
But here, in this life we have been given to live we have to walk through the daily muck, the daily disappointments, the tough stuff, the fear and the anxiety...

Our Father in Heaven, in His loving and purposeful providence has us trudging through the mud of daily living for a very good reason.
As we have to make our way through the hard stuff we find out that we only can do this as we are leaning more and more into Him.
Looking to Him every time we try and lift one foot out of the miry clay to make another step.
Relying on Him and humbly admitting our dependence on Him, every second of every day....

Many things have drastically changed since March 13.
Today we are under a "Shelter in place" order.
Church on Sunday was a live-streamed event on Facebook, Small group happened via Zoom and many, many new and fearful tidbits of information are assaulting each of us the moment we pick up our phones or turn on our computers or TVs.
Schools are closed and parents have been laid off or are working from home.
Fears of many people dying from this horrible virus and the economy crashing, people losing their livelihoods, are on everyone's mind....
To say all of this is unsettling doesn't quite describe the scope of this.

Today, as prescribed by my plan, I finished reading Job.

Like I said, no surprises, I knew the outcome.
I knew the lessons that are there to learn.
God, He alone is God, He deserves all the glory.
No one and nothing can thwart His plans.
In our suffering, God ordained or permitted by God, God is teaching us about Himself and is refining us, turning the heat up and bringing our sin, our pride, our self -reliance to the surface and skimming it off, making us more like Him.
God faithfully reveals Himself to us, He also shows us what we really believe about Him.
He exposes false beliefs we might have about him, our righteousness and the sin in our lives.

In the end He fully restores Job, makes him even richer than before and blesses him with a new family.

But...and that's what I never want to skip over... in it all, even though God restores him, he still walks out his life with the pain of the losses he sustained through all this.
Somewhere in there then, the fact that he encountered and had it out with God so to speak, must have changed his perspective... somehow by living through the suffering and loss he must have grown in his faith and closeness with God.

I find comfort in that.
Not only did God hear Job, never leave him and answer him, He didn't waste the pain and the hurt Job was going through.

So what does this all have in common with COVID-19?

We don't know what tomorrow holds, we have no control over it.
But of one thing we can be sure :
God is not wasting one second of this for those who love Him.
Those who rather than looking horizontally and responding with fear and panic choose ( and sometimes that very tough to do, and only He can make it happen ) to fix our eyes on Him.
Open our fists that want to hold on to what we want life to be like, and surrender it all to Him.
Trusting Him, keeping our hands open, palms up, ( sometimes that takes a lot out of us, but by His strength we can ) allowing Him to have His way in us.
Like He had in Job.

The outcome is known.
Nothing can separate us from His love.
Not even a pandemic.

....anxiety, fear and a God who paints golden dots on a chrysalis....

in a little less than a week I had two huge God encounters.... so very exciting...
It always blows my mind  how intimately He is involved in every tiny detail of my life...

so, the one thing, last Friday morning, in my sunroom, hanging from a withered milkweed leave, a baby Monarch emerged and it had me shaking...

I did not have such a good attitude when I came home one day a couple weeks ago to this big glass container with a caterpillar in it... I usually kill insects in my house, I don't bring them in....

but the days leading up to the birth of my little butterfly had me getting more and more amazed at what I saw...

I saw who this God, this Creator if the Universe, this Lord of Lord, my Saviour and Shepherd, really is...
I saw His intricate, detailed creation, I saw how He so lavishly, extravagantly paints little golden dots on little chrysalises... how He makes this chrysalis become see through, showing off the beauty of the folded up butterfly wings....

it was a green, yellow and black striped caterpillar, not ugly, but insignificant for sure in my mind, that entered my house.... and here now I was watching a transformation that only God in His power and splendor and might can bring about....

when my butterfly emerged my whole body was shaking, thinking of it again I am tearing up..  again ( so weird to me.... I am NOT excited about those kind of things ) 

My Jesus is in the process to teach me about resting in Him, and so I am not surprised what He showed me through this little, first a little shaky butterfly that trustingly started flying south a day later.....

He came up with this, He made this, He uses His powers to make it happen over and over again,
He also tells me in His Word that I am worth more than the birds and the flowers in the fields...... so, I can rest, no matter what has me all worried and rattled,

This God, His ways are perfect.
His Word proves true.
He is a shield to all those who take refuge in Him
Who trust Him
Who love Him
Who run to Him
Who belong to Him.


HE PAINTS GOLDEN DOTS ON CHRYSALISES

He can work anything and everything out for His Glory and our GOOD

I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.


Trust in the Lord, for He is good, His love endures forever !!!!!!!


Stay tuned for God moment #2.....

..a world of brokenness, depression, anxiety, hurt and the sure and steadfast anchor of hope...

just crawling out of the lap of my Daddy in Heaven, my Jesus, the lover of my soul... having spent time in His embrace, hearing from His Word, words for my soul, meeting a need so deep nothing else can satisfy it...

what a special time it is always is, no appointment necessary...



was reading in Hebrews 6: 17-20

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath,  so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.  We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

this is what He said to me:

A sure and steadfast anchor of my soul.... an anchor that holds me in place, grounded not in my own 

- very feeble - strength but in His... steadfast, unmovable, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow...

not dependent on my performance, my genetic makeup, citizenship, status of employment or bank account... not in my trendiness or ability to speak the language perfectly, nor the absence of wrinkles and compliance with other pressures this world puts on me... no..... only on HIS LOVE for me.....

last week I had the sweet privilege to spend 4 days with my daughter and son-in-law helping them to pack up their old place and start moving some of it into their new home...

it was wonderful to be part of this next step in their lives but mostly I loved having the opportunity to reconnect with my child, who I love so much...

it meant so much more because on Thursday afternoon I heard about a mother who just had to decide to take her 17 year old daughter off life support... a "cry for help" gone terribly wrong had left this mother and her son in a world of darkness and grief so deep, there just are no words to even try to describe the pain they are in....

reading today's passage made it even more clear for me....

without this place to hide for refuge, without finding the encouragement there , this hope, set before us by Christ, no matter the circumstances... 

I too would be tossed around by storms, trials, hurts, confusion, disappointments, by people who hurt and by stuff that's scary and horrible... this world, broken by sin is so full of it..

without this steadfast anchor to my soul, I too would just be another statistic, anxiety and depression, constantly struggling against the urge to run away, or having lost that fight already...

instead I am taking refuge in the inner place, under the wings of my God, because of what Jesus has done, my sins forgiven, my debt paid, I can enter and find the rest, the hope, the peace and even the joy.... no matter how high the waves that are badgering my little boat, no matter how devastating and utterly shocking things around me are... I am not losing hope, because the hope I have does not disappoint, it is in Jesus and in the sure, steadfast and unmovable anchor He is to my soul...

in this life I will have trouble He said, but... He said also, I can be of good cheer, have fulness of joy in His presence, pleasures forever more at His right hand, because, He has indeed overcome the world, when He chose, because of the joy set before Him, to endure the cross and pay the sins of His own.... and guess what? I am one of them...

praying for this mother and her son who are left to deal with this horrific loss, for her friend who told me about it, praying most of all that they too could come to find this anchor... this hope that Jesus offers to all who believe.....

..Deeply satisfied... in HIM

If then you have been raised with Christ, SEEK the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  SET your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is HIDDEN WITH Christ IN God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3: 1-4

this has been my dwelling place for a while now, since I decided to memorize Colossians 3:1-17...

amazing once again, how God does indeed work out every little detail in our lives..

He told me to stay HIDDEN with Him again... in His heart. and so I have dwelt in His presence, hidden WITH Him IN God... delighting in His love and affection, care and concern..

this passage talks about just this....  digging deeper, sinking myself deeper into this, I have discovered yet a much deeper satisfaction than before in seeking Him, His face, His presence, His love, His personality, HIM....... choosing to go to HIM, snuggle in and enjoy this HEAVENLY relationship no matter where my circumstances would have me is becoming more of a habit, something I do right away...

good thing I choose to walk with Him closely... He is always right by my side, so I only have to enter into His embrace and lay down my head where His heart is.. this is and has been my favourite place for almost 9 years, when I first discovered how perfectly my head fits there....

heard something AMAZING ... an add on to the "SOLI DEO GLORIA" all for His glory alone, my reason for being here... not only am I here to bring glory to Him, but also to ENJOY HIM forever .......

He makes me smile, He makes my heart giggle, my soul is radiant, because of His love for me... because of who He is.... because... JUST because.. of HIM...

His presence, seeking it, is not a thing I have to check off each day... it is my hiding place, my place of refuge , but also my most delightful place, my cozy and warm and exciting and exhilarating and fun place to be...... he combines the love we all have longed for from a parent, a child, a lover... and it is all right there... undeserved... unfailing..... eternal....

no matter how long I live, I will never quite be able to figure out the depth and width of His love... that much I already know... oh to one day see His face... until then, I will love Him and seek Him, setting my mind on Him and all things above ... putting my hope in Him and Him alone...

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace