Intro D - Outside my comfort zone

 Maybe a tiny scrap of this is written on my soul by God.

Since young adulthood, I’ve sought out situations “outside my comfort zone”.

To a certain degree at least.

I flew off for a semester in Europe once. Didn’t know a thing. Didn’t know a soul.

I asked for a unique summer experience from my campus pastor. He suggested a summer in south Texas serving at a small church. Didn’t know a thing. Didn’t know a soul. Wasn’t qualified one bit.

Why did I want those things?

Somehow, I knew growth came in those ways.

Somehow, I knew that I’d learn in those places.

I wanted to grow. I wanted to learn.

Growing and learning doesn’t happen nearly as well in a comfortable place where ease is all around and there are no challenges or difficulties.

How did I know that?

Why did I seek that?

Grace, I suppose.

Now, my adult life has been one long experiencing in ‘outside my comfort zone’.

However, comfort has arrived, even here.

I sit in the evenings in my recently new recliner chair. With my warm blanket and my nice slippers and my fresh fruit and a warm drink.

And it’s just soooo, well, COMFORTABLE.

I don’t even leave our home much these days (because COVID) and I spend my time with my children and in my kitchen and I wonder if it’s all too comfortable, too easy.

I think of Ann Voskamp, on a remote farm with her family. I think of the pioneer woman of centuries ago… alone on the frontier with only fields and animals and her small family to gaze upon each day.

They, too, want(ed) an abundant life with God. And they had the same tools I have. A home to keep. A family to care for. A thought-life to tame. A heart to shape.

Maybe we are all the same.

But am I too comfortable?

Intro C - The Gift of the Valley

 This summer, 6 souls drove 7,000 miles out West. It was the road trip of a lifetime. It was a tremendous gift. It was a wonderful joy. (It also had many points of difficulty, obviously… I mean, 4 kids in the back of a minivan for 25 days?!)

As we drove, each day, I read. I read to the four pairs of listening ears in the back. I read to the four precious souls that God has given me to teach.

One thing we read was “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23”. A remarkable book.

The chapter about valleys has stuck to my heart.

When a shephard is taking sheep to the high places for summer grazing… he walks them through the valleys on the sides of the mountain to get there. He doesn’t lead them on the crests of the foothills or on the ridges of the peaks. The best way to get to the rich grazing at the top is THROUGH THE VALLEYS.

He chooses this path.

On purpose.

Well.

When we hear about valleys in our lives of the lives of others, we think of the difficulties of a season that we did not choose, that we would not choose. We beg God to change the circumstances of ‘the valley’ so that we can get out of that miserable place.

But.

What if those walks in valleys is the ONLY WAY to get to the top. What if we could never reach the glory of the rich grazing if we are always avoiding the valley? We won’t make it. Walking in the valley is the best path to take to get higher.

Our human nature tells us to avoid valleys, hardships, difficulties, heartache, pain, and discomfort at all costs.

Our human nature lies.

It is the valleys, hardships, difficulties, heartache, pain, and discomfort that gets us to the higher place (I speak of intimacy with God as being the higher place here, and of greater understanding and revelation of His ways).

Are we able to embrace the valleys then? Can the truth of our wise Shephard God speak to our souls and teach us to somehow embrace the brokenheartedness that comes in the valley… knowing it is the way to abundance?

I don’t know.

My brain can know things that my heart is stony about.

The pull of the flesh is strong. The pull of the world is mighty. My desire for comfort and ease is remarkable.

But comfort and ease is not abundance.

Intro B - Die, self, die

 “Die to pride, die to self, die to agendas, die to comfort, die to ease-and your life explodes with abundant life. Unexpectedly, the secret to abundance is not about self-but about dying to self.” P12

I wrote a blog several years ago about the season I was in as a mother. It was titled, I think… “Die, self, Die!”

My children were all very small. Four children, age 9 and under.

The physical needs that I had to meet each day never ended. All day long I went from meeting one meet to meeting another need… nursing that baby, tying that shoe, finding that lost book, baking that chicken, making that bed, reading that book, kissing that boo-boo, setting up that craft project, helping with that homework, unloading that dishwasher, wiping up that spilled drink, changing that diaper, hanging that laundry, wiping that counter.

It never ended.

And that was just the physical needs of my children.

Nothing to be said of the husband, the friends, the family, the neighbors, and all of the mental and emotional and spiritual strain and tasks I was carrying also.

For a time, I had to repeat to myself, in the midst of the needs “Die, self, die”. And it actually helped.

That is what I needed to do. I hadn’t a moment to think of myself. I couldn’t put my needs before theirs… they were small and young and the small and young need their Mama.

It was in uttering this phrase under my breath in the moments that I felt I could not go on… that I found the perspective needed to go on.

It’s not about me.

Life comes from death.

Joy comes from putting others first.

Serving the small ones is like serving Jesus Himself.

God made me a Mama… He has given me what it takes to complete these tasks.

It worked.

That phrase is just what I needed to get through that season. 

Joy came from the submission to the calling of God on my life.

Growth came out of that difficulty and brokenness and helplessness that I felt.

Perspective came.

Intimacy with God came.

By laying self down.

Intro A - Abundance found in an upsidedown way

 

I hear ‘abundance’ everywhere.

And I cringe.

The word has become popular. Common. Dare I say misleading? I wonder at times if it’s the modern and western replacement for “prosperity”.

At least that’s what it feels like to me.

I haven’t’ known what to do.

I haven’t known what to say.

I just know I haven’t felt comfortable with that word.

However, I sit now, toes warm under the duvet, warm white Christmas lights shimmering on the small white tree on my dresser, ears blocked to the chaos of the Saturday morning happening in the other end of the house… and I pick up careful words from Ann Voskamp. From her fingers typing on her laptop. No, from her heart.

The letters on the front spell out that word… Abundance.

“The Way of Abundance”

I want to shudder as my eyes rest on that word.

But I think this one is different.

She speaks not of taking up ones life. She speaks not of listing goals and running after them to be fulfilled. She speaks not of YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Thank you God that she does not speak of this.

Because I am not enough.

And I never will be.

And neither are you.

And neither will you ever be.

My sin has ruined me.

Your sin has ruined you.

And while we are loved better and deeper than we can imagine by a God that holds all love… we still are not enough.

It is the blood of Jesus that has made us enough I the eyes of God.

And she speaks not of all the ways the world tells us that we can have abundance.

Halleluiah.

For I do not want the world’s abundance.

I want God’s mysterious type of abundance. An eternal kind that if I’m honest… I don’t really understand. But I am fairly sure it doesn’t look anything like what the world would say it does.

It’s a different kind.

And it’s found in a different way.

“These pages are about the wildly abundant life found in wildly unexpected places. These pages are about taking the dare to journey into a deeply meaningful life. The abundant life isn’t found in what’s touted as the good life bought on credit; it’s found in the upside-down life, in broken places, with broken people, being most near the broken-heart of Christ. Abundance is found in the loaves being broken and given, in the seed being broken open to new life, in the stars breaking-then blazing… in all the bits of our broken hearts. Abundance isn’t about having as much as you want-abundance is about having as much of God as you want.” P13