There are two ways to lose your life.

You can lose your life by doing too much, draining out, and then missing out on the fullness of life, or you can lose your life by choosing the selflessness of the cross in order to invest in the eternal.

I’m losing my life in the wrong kind of way, and I’m tired. I’m bored, and selfish, and I forget what it feels like to enjoy my children. I thought I was back in the groove, but it’s the wrong groove. I remember before I started I blogging, I was a pretty good mama. Granted, I only had two at the time, but I really invested in them, and my home, and my husband. I was excited to teach them, and be with them, and cultivate their souls. And now, I’m shallow. I’m overwhelmed with the responsibility of teaching and training my sweet ones, meeting my husbands needs, and making a home. I rely too much on the internet for a source of escape when my children don’t listen, or they fight, or they want too much of me. They don’t even have enough of me. I can’t live like this; I don’t want to wake up in 15 years and regret my life.

I need to live.

I want to keep my life by losing it for the eternal. 

I’m not going to be online in November, because I’m out of control. I’m going to spend my days re-learning how to enjoy my family, make a home, reading in the evenings to my children, baking with my babes, doing Thanksgiving crafts, getting out into the community, having coffee with my in-the-flesh friends, and living. I want to live fully alive for the glory of God. I want the eternal in my home. I want to win my kids hearts. I want to love my man well.

And for whatever reason, I can’t seem to do those things and blog.

I’ve been living in the tension for too long. You all have seen it, I’m so back and forth. I’m sorry for that.

So it is.

See you in December. Maybe.

Resources:

My Allume keynote – Keep Your Life

Leaving The 99 For My One

The Ultimate List of Thanksgiving Freebies & Resources

Thanksgiving Your Way eBook (free)

Thanksgiving Beads

Thanksgiving Tree

Side-note:

My book, Desperate – Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe, comes out January 8th. The book site is up so if you get a chance, check it out. More will be added to it in the coming weeks.

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The secrets that haunt us at night as we’re falling asleep. When we keep it in the dark, it’s power over us grows. But when we expose it to the light, and we let people into our ugly, and we trust people (even when it aches), sin loses it’s power. We let people love us. Grace-light banishes the dark.

And we can be free.

I want that kind of freedom with friends, with community.

So here’s a secret, my friends, my community…

Read the whole article here.

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“Emerging is when you use a platform to come into your own. Merging is when you sacrifice who you are to become part of something else.” -Seth Godin, Merging/Emerging

I’ve been emerging lately, and you’ve been along for the ride.

This space has been a place where I stretch into the new creation God is weaving in me. It is a space where I don’t claim to have figured “it” out, but where I trust Jesus to lead me into a vulnerable place where I can process life and offer grace into the hearts of those who need it (’cause Lord knows I do, every minute of every day).

As I emerge, I recognize the temptation to merge…to sacrifice the nuances of my soul in order to appear put together or doctrinely on point. I am a flawed soul who loves and desperately needs Jesus. And I think needing Him and following Him are enough. It’s what I have…it’s myself (and He chose me!).

The rough edges in my soul are just a part of this gal’s journey towards her creator.

And you know, I really like the idiosyncrasy’s  in a soul. I love when I catch a glimpse of why someone needs Jesus because it reminds me that we all are just tiny. We are small, but significant; messy, but beautiful.

Trust me, that woman that looks like she’s on top of her game, she isn’t. She needs Jesus.

And trust me, that woman who looks like she’s a mess, she is. She needs Jesus.

Don’t merge to be like anyone other than Jesus. Don’t sacrifice your tangled, beautiful, starving soul for anyone…but Jesus. He will make you more beautiful than anyone else ever could…He makes you perfect.

So be perfect, in Him, today. Be you.

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I read this post this morning from Like a Warm Cup of Coffee (I wrote it about a year ago, I think) and it resonated with me still, so I thought I’d bring it here.

Photo: Used with Permission

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“Christianity is the gospel of the failed, of the ungodly, the unable, the unwilling, who simply woke up one day invited to God’s house and went. Period.” John Lynch

A wind has been blowing through my world.

The Spirit, His Spirit, the One wrapped up with mine has been been shaking things up in my heart this week. He has been wooing me back to the heart of the gospel, the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

When He first wooed me I was a little girl. Tucked under covers and teddy bear under my arm, I asked “God” to find my sister. She had been taken by her father, so the story went, and my mom didn’t know where she was.

Read the rest at (in)courage today.

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I am void for words.

For substance.

I feel like I have so much to say, but I can’t articulate anything.

Even though God is revealing me and maturing me, it’s as though I can’t speak about it yet. I’m walled up, I’m stopped, and I’ve got nothing. I have a deep peace and I am in awe of God’s love for me, yet…

I’m plundered.

I’m going to listen for awhile, continue in the revealing, and write when the words come. That might be tomorrow or in a month. I’m not sure.

“I’ve come to believe that there are no together people. Only those who dress better than others.” Andy, Bo’s Cafe 

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My Ella is six years old.

Nearly every night she asks to listen to the Bible as she falls asleep. Her favorite story, currently, is the story of Queen Esther. When I’m with her and she listens to it, we pause here and there so I explain things to her (what’s a signet ring? What’s a decree?). Since Esther is at the forefront of my little ones mind right now, I decided to buy the movie, One Night With The King. Just another medium from which to grasp the story.

I have been observing that when I give her the access (iphone audio bible, movie) to God’s Word in a way that best suits her, she feasts on it.

And God fills the gaps and He is so good and so gracious.

I have not been diligent about tucking the Word into my children’s hearts. I don’t make them memorize scripture and I haven’t been reading it to them as much I want. Yet He finds a way. He hears my prayers. I cuddle up with my babies and I think how I haven’t done enough, and I pray that He would get a hold of their hearts, and that they would follow after Him with all of who they are and for all of their lives. I ask that where I fall short, would He fill the gaps.

It is not excuse for me to falter as I do, but He is so kind to me and my children, and He is faithful even when I’m not.

He is reaching my Ella’s heart through His story, and she brings me in and we have wonderful talks about God and His people and His story…and we tuck His Word into our hearts together. Her joy of His story pushes me to get back on track, and to remember to be intentional with filling their spirits with what truly gives them life.

How do you serve your children His life-giving Word?

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“Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “ I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘ I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? Therefore I also said, ‘ I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’” Judges 2:1-3 NASB (Bold mine)

“You shall consume all the peoples whom the LORD your God will deliver to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.” Deuteronomy 7:16 NASB

I was going to write about selfishness today, but as I went to bed last night I decided to listen to the bible where my daughter had left off. She was in Judges 1, and so I curled up under my covers and listened.

“But Manasseh did not take possession of Beth-shean and its villages, or…so the Canaanites persisted in living in that land. It came about when Israel became strong, that they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely. Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who were living in Gezer; so the Canaanites lived in Gezer among them. Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron…so the Canaanites lived among them and became subject to forced labor.”

And on and on it went as the tribes of Israel did not drive out the Canaanites as the Lord had instructed them to. They disobeyed their God. As a result, the Canaanites lived among God’s people and pulled their hearts away from God.

“Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them” Judges 2:11,12

The Psalmist says this:

They did not destroy the peoples,
as the LORD commanded them,
but they mixed with the nations
and learned to do as they did.
They served their idols,
which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
and the land was polluted with blood.
Thus they became unclean by their acts,
and played the whore in their deeds.
Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,
and he abhorred his heritage;
he gave them into the hand of the nations,
so that those who hated them ruled over them.
Their enemies oppressed them,
and they were brought into subjection under their power.
Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.
(Psalm 106:34-43 ESV)

If I do not listen to God when He tells me to get rid of something or stop something I’m doing, the thing or the direction I’m heading will become a snare to me. It will consume me, and my heart will be led away from God.

We talked about distractions on Monday and so many of you struggle with the computer – Facebook, reading blogs, and social media in general. So do I. These distractions not only take us away from our responsibilities, they also take us away from God.

Back in the fall the Holy Spirit spoke to my spirit and this is what I heard: “If you keep going the way you are going now, you will regret your life in 15 years.” Those words took my breath away and seriously caused me to consider my life and what I was doing where I was headed. I do not want to regret my life. I do not want to follow other “gods”. I want my heart to long for God above all else.

I think you do to. That’s the crummy thing about addictions, they consume you, they break your heart, they make you a slave. We have to run from our addictions. We must.

Because there is only One who we are to choose to be a slave to.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and 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 up for me.” Galatians 2:20 NASB

“Will I give up, will I surrender to Jesus Christ, and make no conditions whatever as to how the break comes? I must be broken from my self-realization, and immediately that point is reached, the reality of the supernatural identification takes place at once, and the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable – “I have been crucified with Christ.”
The passion of Christianity is that I deliberately sign away my own rights and become a bond-slave of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I do not begin to be a saint.”

Oswald Chambers

Recommended Resource: Blogger Behave

Today’s Challenges

Mary Challenge: Is there something you know you need to loosen your grip on or give up all together? Maybe you need to ask God to show you where your heart is being led away (if it is). Pray for the courage to run.

Martha Challenge: I’m still working on my bedroom! Today, see if you can finish up your bedroom – perhaps you need to clean out a jewelry drawer or a night stand drawer. Whatever it is, see if you can accomplish it today.

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Click the above button to link-up your blog and see others who have joined the challenge!

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“Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God…it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 4:1-4 NASB

We were sifting through coats at Target when I saw it, the cutest, most sophisticated little girl coat. I smiled. “Elle, look at this one, isn’t this great! Oh, this is just so cute.” She looked at, half-smiled, and then pointed to the one with the shiny fabric and fur-trim. She liked that one? It was so…gaudy. I had images in my mind of Mary Jane shoes and perfectly pressed pea coats. Faux fur must have been dancing around in her head.

Read the rest over at Mom Heart!

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“You know your grandfather is dead, right?”

That’s how she told me that my grandfather, the one who hung the moon in my world, had died. It was March 7, 1988. I was eight years old. A ball of flames had swallowed my grandfather up when his P51 Mustang “Dolly” crashed in the mountains.

“I know.” I said, but I didn’t really know. I knew he had been missing and my grandmother had been crying, but he was fine. He wasn’t in a thousand pieces on some mountain where he stayed undiscovered for days.

Read the rest at (in)courage.

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