Learning to Lament

Ok peeps, I know it’s been awhile but surprise, surprise, married life is BUSY! 🙂 Summer has arrived and we are so thankful to have the kiddos at home more and are filled with lots of summer plans but I thought I’d sneak in a post first. Also, I REALLY don’t want ya’ll to miss this book.

The book I just finished is not your typical one. Most people don’t peruse their shelves and think, “Ya know, I believe I will pick up this one on lamenting today. Sounds like a fun read.” But let me tell you; it is a fantastic book. (Although I will say I had to stop reading it in public because I just cried all the time! Sheesh.)

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy

If you have ever gone through something difficult, you may have noticed that most people don’t know how to respond to sorrow. We don’t do a good job at grieving with each other even though we are commanded to. I have been in both places. Situations where I’m hurting and others try to step in and end up making it worse and other times where I see someone grieving and cry out, “Lord, I don’t know what to say to them!”

In this book, Mark goes through the biblical steps of lamenting using Psalms and Lamentations. It is a highly practical book and even has worksheets in it for personal use. He uses examples from his own life and his church as well.

Towards the beginning he defines lament:

“Every human being has the same opening story. Life begins with tears. It’s simply a part of what it means to be human- to cry is human. But lament is different. The practice of lament- the kind that is biblical, honest, and redemptive- is not natural for us, because every lament is a prayer. A statement of faith. Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.”

People! This book was soooo good! It was biblical and rooted in theology, yet so practical. As I read I found myself still grieving over things I thought I was ‘over’ but I was able to cry out to the Lord through the Psalms. He also talks about corporate lament which was a totally new concept to me (but one I love) and how to deal with ongoing pain biblically when everyone else has seemingly moved on.

I know we tend to shy away from hurt and sorrow but this practice of biblical lament is sorely needed. If you read Scripture, it is ALL over the place and yet we skim over those parts. This book gave me a better perspective on grieving for myself and with others and I’m so thankful I read it!

I’ll leave you with one last quote from it:

“This is where biblical lament is transformative. It not only gives voice to the pain you feel but also anchors your heart to truths you believe- or are trying to believe when dark clouds linger. Something bad may have happened in your life, which is why you are reading this book. Whatever the reason, loss can feel like a wasteland. It’s devastating. But lament helps us to rehearse biblical truth so hope will return. Despite what you see, despite what you feel, despite what you think, lament can be a supply of grace as you affirm that God’s mercies are new every day.”

 

The Impulse Buy

A few weeks back I was on Amazon, the place where miracles happen and temptation occurs. I honestly don’t remember what I was looking for that day. Whatever it was, it must have been small because it didn’t get me to the magical free shipping amount. If you know me, you know I despise paying for shipping. My favorite coupon in the world is free shipping. So I did what any rational person would do and headed to my wish list to find a book to add to get my FREE SHIPPING.

But I didn’t make it there. Amazon popped up a suggested buy and it caught my eye. It was a bright pink book but that’s not why I looked. I looked because the title of the book was You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay.)

I didn’t recognize the author. I only knew one of the reviewers on the back but without even looking into it, that book was in my cart and headed towards my house.

You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal?” Clearly you don’t understand. I don’t impulse buy. I’m a research buyer. I want to read all the reviews and look for the best deals and get all the input before I buy something. And I NEVER buy new books that I’ve never heard of, unless they come highly recommended by someone.

But Amazon caught me this time. It was the phrase. I use that phrase a lot with people. “You’re not enough.” See, it’s only when we get to the point that we realize we aren’t enough, that we can’t do it, that we are inadequate- it’s then that we are able to realize that Christ IS enough. That phrase is true! We are NOT good enough. Christ is! We don’t have the strength. Christ works in our weakness, not strength!

I went into the book highly skeptical. Picture squinty eyes and furrowed brow, ready to be disappointed. I. Am. Shocked. Not only can I recommend this book, I would be willing to give it away as a gift to every girl I know! In it, Stuckey goes through 5 Myths that our culture drills into our hearts and minds daily and she tears them down with biblical truth:

1. You Are Enough
2. You Determine Your Truth
3. You’re Perfect the Way You Are
4. You’re Entitled to Your Dreams
5. You Can’t Love Others Until You Love Yourself

Although I would have been able to tell you all of these are untrue before, I didn’t realize the extent to which our sinful culture has entrenched them in society. The book was clear, biblical, and eye-opening.

But it was not discouraging. Don’t take it the wrong way. The whole point is that YOU are not enough and that’s good news! Once you embrace that fact, you are able to rely on the only One who is enough. Self-reliance is always going to lead you astray and will never satisfy you, but reliance on Christ is where you find life.

 

Read. This. Book.

I love to read. A lot. My Dad used to read to us all the time when we were little and I’m pretty sure he still has The Three Billy Goats Gruff memorized. When we got older my Mom would read aloud to us things like Chronicles of Narnia and King Arthur. And I would fly through books on my own. So when I make this next statement, I don’t say it lightly:

The following book may be the best one I have ever read.
(Bible excluded.)

The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield

I knew it would be good. I read Rosaria’s first book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, earlier this year and loved that one as well. But I didn’t know I was going to find a book that so captured what biblical hospitality is and explained it. I didn’t expect to be so convicted. And I didn’t know there was a book that held the longings of how I want to live my life.

Growing up, my family had an open door policy. I wasn’t even aware of it. There were times when we officially “hosted” but most of our gatherings were laid back and people-focused. We didn’t have a big table but who cares? That’s what the living room floor, the porch, and the yard are for! I specifically remember being a teen and we found this really odd looking key and spent all day trying to figure out what it went to. Finally my Dad got off work and we asked him, “Oh, I think that’s the key to the door!” No joke, people. We lived in town but our door was never locked except at night. We would go to church and have friends say, “Hey I forgot to tell you! I stopped at your house the other day to change my clothes for work. You guys weren’t home but I knew you wouldn’t mind.” And we didn’t. I thought everyone lived that way.

Until I moved to Ohio. My family didn’t grow up with such a thing as protected “family time.” I didn’t quite understand the concept. I didn’t understand why you couldn’t have people over to your house on Sundays after church because that is reserved for family time. What a weird thing. Can’t you have family time with other people? That’s my thinking. I didn’t understand the stress people feel when having people over. They tell me there isn’t enough room. Look at all this room! I knew that a welcoming heart makes the room, not the space around you.

And yet this book stretched even my idea of hospitality. It is Rosaria’s whole life. She views it as a mission field which was almost new to me. Anyone and everyone is welcome in her home at any time. She plans and goes out of her way to invite strangers (the very definition of hospitality.) She and her husband fostered and adopted teens, befriended neighbors that no one else would, had almost daily gatherings at their house, invited college students to live with their family while at school, and did so with the gospel of Christ in mind.

I’ve been told before that I have a crazy view of hospitality but after reading this book, I don’t think my view is CRAZY ENOUGH! What a beautiful picture of the gospel to seek out the lost people in this world and bring them into your family. And you know what, it’s going to be inconvenient, you’re going to get hurt, and it will take time and energy.

But it’s also such a blessing. Psalm 68:6 says that God sets the lonely in families. What a privilege to be a part of that promise. To be a family to someone else.

Read the book, people.

 

Hardworking Pride

I’m going to back track here for a moment. A couple posts back I was re-reading Crazy Busy, right? And then my life got crazy busy and I haven’t posted in a while. But there is another lesson from that book that I wanted to write about because it came up again this week.

As we all know, I may have a tendency to say yes to everyone and everything. Hence the busyness. This week I had a really hard time saying no to people. All good things and all things I love but by the end of the week I was feeling overwhelmed and burdened and I knew it was my own darn fault.

And finally I remembered something from Crazy Busy:

“We are busy because we try to do too many things. We do too many things because we say yes to too many people. We say yes to all these people because we want them to like us and we fear their disapproval. It’s not wrong to be kind. In fact, it’s the mark of a Christian to be a servant. But people pleasing is something else. Doing the cookie drive so you can love others is one thing. Doing the cookie drive so that others might love you is quite another. So much of our busyness comes down to meeting people’s expectations. You may have a reputation for being the nicest person in the world because the operating principle in your heart is to have the reputation for being the nicest person in the world. Not only is that a manifestation of pride and therefore a sin; it also makes our lives miserable (living and dying by the approval of others), and it usually hurts those who are closest to us (who get what’s left over of our time and energy after we try to please everyone else). People often call it low self-esteem, but people-pleasing is actually a form of pride and narcissism.” Crazy Busy pg. 35

So if reading that didn’t kick you down several notches like it did me, then maybe you don’t need to be reading this post at all. As for me, I believe I felt my blood pressure spike as I read a thorough description of myself in a stranger’s book.

Pride can be very sneaky and sometimes imperceptible because it worms itself into our good intentions. I found that while I’ve been busy, so has my prideful spirit. I realized this week that I need to really evaluate and pray over my motivations for why I’m involved in things. I need to go back to my “Before I say Yes” List and make sure I’m using it.

But I’m also thankful that I’m not flying blind by myself here. I have the Holy Spirit living in me to convict and guide. And I have friends who will help hold me accountable. What a blessing those two things are!

 

An “Epic” Review

I recently had the blessing to travel across the country for a good friend’s wedding. And by travel, I mean fly, because if you know me you know that I get carsick pretty easily so if it was a road-trip, the word “blessing” would probably have been dropped from that sentence.

Anywho…I always take a book with me when I fly and sometimes I actually read it and sometimes I just sit like a creeper and people-watch. But this time I brought a book I had actually been saving for my next flight, as weird as that sounds. It’s small, short, and even weirder for me, I have NO IDEA how I got it or it’s study guide! So while you may have been thinking I was being stuck up with my blog title, the title of the book is actually Epic, and I couldn’t resist. 🙂

I got through security for my flight pretty fast (because I’m a good rule-follower) and since it appeared that the people-watching chances were slim, I opened the book right up. Seriously guys, I hadn’t even read the back cover. I was going in blind on this one, which is really new for me. It’s by John Eldredge, who I don’t know much about, except he wrote Wild at Heart, which I’ve never read.

The very first line of the book hooked me because he referenced my favorite movie, Lord of the Rings. I was immediately intrigued. He also had a quote by G.K. Chesterton and I thought, “Gosh, he’s off to a great start!” The book is about telling the gospel with more of an “epic story” perspective. I’ve never read anything that referenced SO many well-known movies and books: Chronicles of Narnia, Little Women, Gladiator, Titanic, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, The Odyssey, Stars Wars, and so many more. It was insane!

It was quite an interesting perspective and while I can’t say I agreed with all the theology (mainly the section on free will), he came at it from an angle that was really different from anything I’ve ever read.

But after a while I started to notice something. It wasn’t quite fitting anymore. Instead of trying to show how the gospel had similar themes to some of our movies, it seemed more like he was trying to make the gospel fit into the movies’ themes. I think he was letting his imagination run away a little bit.

Because while God’s story is incredible, amazing, and (I would even agree, epic,) it’s not one of our movies. It is written by a supreme Creator, not humans. And somehow comparing it to our flawed stories relentlessly gave it less meaning than reading it how it was actually written, in God’s own Words. 

 

 

Theology for Dummies

Have you ever read any of the “For Dummies” books? You know which ones I mean?

 

They are pretty iconic. I mean, most people would recognize them simply by the cover, even if you’ve never read one of the books. They have somewhere around 2,500 titles and over 2 million books in print. Crazy, right? The appeal is that they are easy to read for the average person and present the information in a design where the important stuff is made known so that you can recognize and remember it. I think I read one in high school but I don’t remember what it was.

But to be honest, I kind of stayed away from them because I didn’t like reading stuff written for “Dummies!” (Yeah, pride. I know.) I considered myself a pretty well-read person, for which you can thank my parents. My Dad used to read to us all the time as little kids and he can still recite the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” from memory. In fact, if I were to go home and my Dad was read a book to my younger siblings, I would be in the front row.

When we got older, my Mom read us books like King Arthur, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Canterbury Tales. We read a lot. I love books and reading. I used to get in trouble for reading too much (actually, I used to get in trouble for getting upset when people interrupted my reading…) Old English? No problem. Beowulf? Bring it on. Deep theology? My favorite.

But things are different now. My brain capacity and concentration capacity are different. And although the desire to read deep things is very real, I find myself wishing someone would write a “Theology for Dummies” book. Which sounds like a contradiction, I know. But I simply can’t comprehend the books I used to be able to read- which is SO frustrating! For instance, I’ve had Bonhoeffer’s “The Cost of Discipleship” sitting on my shelf for about a year now. I’ve probably started it 4-5 times and never been able to get past the first chapter because I don’t understand what I’m reading. No matter how many times I read the same sentence, I don’t get it. (Is there a kid’s version of this book??)

I used to be able to read several books at the same time and keep up with all the themes. Don’t believe me? Look what popped up on my Timehop today:

This was what I was reading four years ago. I liked reading more than one book at a time so that if I didn’t feel like reading one book, I had another to turn to.

But not now. It’s been frustrating but also very humbling for me. The person who used to pride herself in reading the great books of the world has been brought down to the level of a child and is thankful that she can read at all! That person who used to have 6 books by her bed that she was reading all at once is now thankful to be able to open her Bible and comprehend one single verse in it. Thankful to find those authors that do write simply. Ultimately thankful that salvation isn’t for the wise or all-knowing people but that you just have to have faith like a child. That it’s simple. Just thankful.

 

But…if you happen to find a “Theology for Dummies”, let me know. 😉

 

Deep Thoughts on Coloring Pages

I am not a creative person. There are probably several people reading this right now who would disagree with that statement but I know a crafty person when I see one and I am definitely NOT one of them. You know those people that look at something on Pinterest and actually MAKE it?! I don’t have those skills unless someone is holding my hand every step of the way.

However, with the ability to read mysteriously gone for now, I’ve had to get a little creative with my devotions and they have taken a mildly crafty turn. I’ve been using coloring books. Yup, you read that right. The person who loves a good theology book is using coloring books for her devotion time. Ironic, no? I’m sure you’ve seen them- the “Adult” coloring books that are supposed to help you relax (unless you are Type A) and these ones have Bible verses on them. So I color a page and meditate on the verse while doing so. It usually takes me at least two days per page because of the detail.

The other day, I finished up this page:

As I looked over the completed page, I chuckled to myself about how much time I had spent on that border versus the words. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a lot of times, that is exactly what we do with the gospel. The gospel is so simple that a child is able to understand it but we try to crowd it with extra stuff sometimes and spend way more time on that when we should just be focused on Christ.

You can find other analogies too. What if that center box represents Scripture and the border is everything else in your life. What do you spend more time and energy on? What is your focus on? Do you allow the busyness of life to crowd out your time spent with the Lord or is it the other way around?

All that to say, I guess you can learn stuff from crafts. Well, I don’t really think I learned it from the coloring book… 🙂

 

 

When Dreams Fall

I always thought that dreams had to be something big. Like a dream job, how you want to change the world, or the perfect marriage. But I’ve recently learned that dreams can come in all shapes and sizes. It doesn’t always have to be something life-altering. Sometimes, a dream can be something that is small but important to you. Actually, I think that is really the key: importance.

How did I come to this conclusion? Hmmm…when I first tried to understand the idea of not working for a while and needing to rest, I hated the thought. Mostly, because I am not very good at resting. I like to be doing stuff and I like to be working so the idea of giving that up frustrated me. But suddenly a wonderful thought popped into my head and slowly a dream started to form. I started to envision all this time that I would have to study God’s Word and do my devotions. I thought about quiet time without time restraints and unlimited hours to read great books and really get closer with the Lord. And I got a little excited. I ordered a few new books and stared at them, waiting for the time to come where I would finally have time to read them.

And the time has come. Do you know what? I can’t read. This has happened before, right when I first started having seizures, but I find myself really unable to read for any length of time. My eyes jump from line to line and the amount of focus it takes to read is so incredible that my head starts to pound and I get worn out very quickly. Everyone tells me to get audio books but I am the worst auditory learner IN. THE. WORLD. It’s like background noise and I just tone it out. (I’m sure some of you are thinking I’m crazy but maybe you don’t like reading at all so picture something else. 🙂 )

In my disappointment, my heart and mind cry out “Lord! How can this be good?! How can it be good for me to not be able to read your Word? I don’t understand!”

And you know what? I will honestly say that I don’t know the answer to that question. But I know that I don’t need to know all the answers and I can also honestly say with Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I read this simple quote the other day and I feel like I should write it down and put it up all over my apartment so I don’t forget it! It said, “And if not, He is still good” Just let that sink in. You can put whatever thoughts you want in there and it won’t matter:

He. is. still. good.

What a beautiful thing to rest in.

 

Book Recommendation

Thanks to a late-night babysitting engagement last night, I finally finished The Answers Book!  So now I have the happy job of writing my two-cents about it.

Over all, it was an amazing book.  Some of the science was a little over my head but even with that, I could still gain the point of each chapter.  I wasn’t even aware of some of the ridiculous arguments people make against the Bible.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to use the information in this book to be better informed and to better articulate and defend the accuracy of the Bible.

I loved the chapter on the dinosaurs.  I laughed at the chapter entitled:  “Could God Really Have Created Everything in Six Days.”  Well, duh, he IS GOD!!

Anyway, it was a great book and would benefit anyone who reads it!

 

Five Things: Rebecca

Five things I love about my little sister Becca!

1. How she devours books. Literally, she reads faster than ME, a 20 year old. At first, I didn’t believe her so I quizzed her on a book and yes, she had read the whole thing.

2. The way she thinks that as soon as she is taller than me she will have something on me. Haha.

3.  The way she tries to be kind to everyone she meets.

4. When she searches through the Bible, attempting to find evidence of aliens. That’s a recent hobby.

5. She is such a momma’s girl. She gets up every morning to go snuggle Mom after Dad leaves for work.