Thoughts on Mercy...

It started in November of last year. 

I felt myself getting more and more angry because of the bad choices our foster son was making.  Everything he did I took as a personal attack on me, and my fuse got shorter and shorter to the point where no matter what he did, I was unforgiving and judgmental.  I stopped listening to his excuses and refused to believe that there was another side to any of the stories he told.  He could no longer do anything right in my eyes, and I had this ugly, unrighteous anger boiling over constantly from the depths of my heart.

My personal relationships suffered the most.  I stopped reading my bible.  My husband and I couldn't agree on what to do about anything that our son was doing, and we started fighting more and more.  Our other son got angry as well, but mostly at us for the abrupt changes in our personalities.   Even the dogs got fussier.

So unhealthy. So unbalanced.  So unfair. 

I felt like a Charlie Brown character with the scribbles in a word balloon over my head, or like the character who has the raincloud that follows them everywhere they go.  The pit I was digging just kept getting deeper and deeper, and I wasn't talking to anyone about it.  Instead I sat at the bottom and stewed about how mad I was, and I got angry - a lot.

That's when I heard it.  Deep in the darkness of that bottomless pit, I heard it.  Over the constant clamoring of my unreasonable angry ranting floated the still, quiet voice of God whispering one word, over and over and over: 

MERCY

But I didn't want to be merciful.  I wanted to be angry.  Angry at this child who had lived with us for 10 months and still didn't follow our rules.  Angry at this boy who had lived in 5 different homes in 6 years, only to be used and discarded like trash again and again by people who said they 'loved' him.  Angry at this man-child who, for 16 years had never truly known the meaning of love or family or self-worth.  This child who had spent all of those years building walls to protect himself, knowing in his heart that we would be just like all the rest of the families that had rejected him.  The families who had given him back because he was a troublemaker and would never be any good.  

I wanted to stay angry because it was the easiest thing to be.  That way, I could give up on him and not feel bad about it, having given it my  'best shot'.

MERCY

Really, it hit me like a Mack truck:  What if God had decided to be angry instead of merciful all of the times I had turned my back on Him, had lied to Him, had done things that had completely gone against His will?  What if He decided I would get what I deserved - where would I be then? 

MERCY

God hasn't given up on me, and I am so unbelievably humbled and grateful for that, because if I were in His shoes, I would have given up on me along time ago, having given it my 'best shot'. 

MERCY

So I'm not giving up on this boy, no matter how hard he pushes me to do so.  Because I know that he pushes me the same way that I push against my Father who refuses to give up on me.  And if I truly want to grow to be like Him, I have to be willing to give mercy, even as I receive it.

My heart feels lighter now that I have let go of the knots of anger that were tied around it.  My relationships are better, and my days seem brighter.  Our son still makes bad decisions, but by showing mercy, I can see the good ones he makes as well.  My eyes are opened wider and the light is back.  I can see what I'm supposed to be learning through this:  to be less judgmental and more forgiving. 

To show mercy.

Merry Christmas To All!

Quick Thoughts On Passionate Living...

"When you reach the point

that you are passionate enough about something

to the point that you would die for it,

shouldn't that change how you live for it?"

~ Pastor Greg Rholinger

Lead Pastor, Palm Valley Church

Good Friday...

No pain, no palm;

no thorns, no throne;

no gall, no glory;

no cross, no crown.

~ William Penn

Transparency...

We had unbelievable sunsets last week. The colors changed minute by minute, causing the clouds to take on an increasingly deeper shades of pink, then purple, and eventually a deep black tinged with gold.

I felt so small in comparison to the wide-openness the sky. In that moment, when the last beams of light were fighting their way through the clouds, I realized that my desire is not only to let God’s light shine in me, but to have His light shine through me.

I want to be transparent.

Not in an “I don’t matter so therefore I don’t want to be seen” way, but in an “I want to be so close to God that you can see who He is because of who I am” way. I want you to know that I am hiding nothing; that what you see is what you get.

I want to be transparent.

I don’t want to hold onto secrets. I don’t want you to think that I have any ulterior motives. I want you to know me, inside and out, as a child of God, living my life for Him.

I want to be transparent.

I want you to know that, good or bad, all that I am belongs to Him, and that He is still working on me, turning me into the person He has created me to be.

I want to be transparent.

I want to love without reservation. I want to see you for who He has created you to be. I want to be merciful, not judgemental. I want to be grateful for the life I have been given and not the life I think I should have. I want to sing with joy. I want to rejoice in the opportunity to change and grow.

I want to be transparent.

I want to throw open my arms, turn my face towards the sky and say without hesitation, “With all of my heart, my mind, my soul and my strength, I am Yours. Use me. Teach me. Love me.”

I want to be transparent.

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Thoughts on Faith...

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about faith. With all that is going on in the world today, faith seems to be the first casualty in our collective efforts to “turn the tide”, so to speak. We want to take charge of our future and storm ahead, making things better and overcoming the insurmountable problems of this world. We have been told “Just do it!”, and we believe we can do it on our own, with a little elbow grease and a lot of willpower – strength in numbers and all that…

On the surface, this sounds just great. We just need to buckle down, work together and weather this bumpy ride, and all will be better in the long run – you’ll see! There is hope: a light at the end of the tunnel. I know it is really dark right now, but if we work hard enough and long enough we’ll make it. Prepare for the worst – hope for the best. Isn’t that how it goes?

Well, maybe not…

We have heard that word “hope” used a lot in the past few months. Entire campaigns were constructed around that one, very powerful word. Hope is a great thing to have, but where is our hope coming from?

A few months ago, I wrote a piece about hope. In it I defined hope like this:

“Hope itself is the sure belief that something better is coming. As simple as that definition sounds, it implies that to have hope, there must be suffering or despair to overcome. It requires the one who is suffering to make a choice between despairing in today’s pain and grief and hoping for the better day that is coming.”

I still believe that this definition is true. The question that arises, then, is “What is this ‘something better’ and where is it coming from?” Good question.

This is where faith comes in. Faith is commonly defined as our belief system – our “religion”. While this may be one definition, the one I prefer is from the book of Hebrews. Paul writes:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

Another translation says it this way:

"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)

In other words: believing in something that we cannot see for ourselves.

That’s a tough one for most of us. We as humans are wired in such a way that we only believe that which we can see, hear, touch and experience for ourselves. Faith, then, goes against every logical bone in our bodies. How are we supposed to have faith in anything but that which we can do for ourselves? It doesn’t make any sense!

So here’s the rub: in order to have faith, we must overcome the innate desire to see, hear, and touch, and make the leap to belief in that which is unseen.

The very essence of faith - the foundation of hope, therefore - is believing in someone or something acting on our behalf even though we don’t know in advance what they are doing or how they are doing it.

OK…so back to the question of where does our hope comes from? The answer is: it all depends on where we place our faith. Not so simple, is it?

So...where do you place your faith?

For me, the answer is simple: “Have faith in God," Jesus answered. Mark 11:22



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