Whispered I Love Yous

That day, the day my dream of becoming a mother came true, was indescribable as the heavens seemed to open and the sweet sound of angels’ singing filled the room where I held her precious 8 pound, 4 ounce body in my arms for the first time. As I spent the next several hours starring into my daughter’s dark eyes, my heart filled with a kind of love I had never known before. I nuzzled my cheek against hers and whispered a million I love yous and things that I would one day want to do with and for her. My heart was full as I relished in my most precious gift, a gift I adored even before I saw her face, a gift I treasured and longed to protect long before I knew her. This is the kind of love that grows, though I didn’t know that all those years ago. It matures with time and the whispered I love yous become the foundation to what looks anything but love to my daughter who is now nearly sixteen. In addition to the tender nuzzles of love, this love also speaks truth into our lives that is often hard to hear. I don’t like this part of my role as a mom. It is hard and honestly breaks my heart.

Being the mother of a teenage daughter has brought with it more challenges than I ever anticipated. This week has been one of those weeks, where I feel we take one step forward only to turn around and take two steps back. Four days in a row I had to have a heart to heart talk with my daughter, showing her the selfishness and pride that seemed to abound from her once humbled and joyful heart, and ask her to look more closely at the condition of her heart. Each night, her tear streaked face showed me she was sorry. Her words, slow and shaky, told me she was earnest in her repentance. However, on night four of dealing with the same behavior and finding myself sitting face to face with this same tear streaked, remorseful face, I found myself not believing her words. I was at my breaking point and I said, “Don’t say you’re sorry, if you don’t mean it. Don’t say you are sorry unless you plan to change the way you go about this situation. Repentance, Abigail, is turning your back on the way you were going and going the exact opposite direction. Are you ready to do that?” No words, no expression could be found in her eyes. I stood and left the room without another word, fearful that I would say something more that would crush her spirit rather than her attitude.

Sleeping on the situation, I woke this morning realizing I very much resemble my own daughter’s attitude in my own walk with the Lord. At times I am selfish, I am prideful, and my thoughts and motives not always pure. When I realize how far off course I have gotten, I fall to my knees, sob a prayer of repentance, and before too long find myself praying the same prayer of repentance…again and again. Confronted by the mirrored image of my daughter’s heart condition, my mind wandered to the words I read earlier in the week of my favorite author, Brennan Manning, “Every change in the quality of a person’s life must grow out of a change in his or her vision of reality”.

Reality is more than merely looking at our current place, position, or situation and believing this is our lot in life, whether we like it or not. Reality is the foundation of who we are, what we believe, and guides us along life’s journey into the arms of Christ…The Christ whose very nature screams out love and forgiveness. “What we think about God is the most important thing about us”. Is He part of our reality? Our answer defines our view of life. If He is indeed the foundation of our reality, our vision changes, we change. We see the world through eyes of one who has been forgiven and know with all that we are… despite our selfishness, pride, impure thoughts, and motives that God’s love continues to carry us, that “He will never leave us or forsake us” (Hebrews 13:5). Without a doubt, the essence of our faith lies in trusting the unfathomable love of God.

So I say to my daughter, do you know that you are utterly loved? Do you know that you were bought with a price? Do you know that your name is branded on the palm of His hands? That He knew you before you were born? That He knows the number of hairs on your head? That you cannot hide from Him, even in the darkest of nights? You are always on His mind and forever in His heart. He loves you with an everlasting love, an unconditional love. He is always on your side, always rooting for you. When the world is against you, He is for you. Attempting to paint a picture of the reality I hold so, so close to my own heart, I lower my head, allow the tears to fall and whisper, “Beloved, He wants your heart. Are you ready to give it to Him? Not just on Sunday mornings, not just in the mix of your Christian friends…but to really relinquish it all to Him?” “Yes”, is her quivered reply. And though I know there will be many, many times in her life as well as in mine that we will have to repent, I know that Abba’s (Daddy, Father God) nature is tender and He will always forgive us.

Starring out my big picture window, repenting once again of my own wrong doings and basking in the sweet tenderness that Christ is for me, I notice a soft breeze whispering through the trees as they gently sway and I swear I hear, “I love you, Beloved”. The whispered I love yous come in a variety of ways, some are so tender, like that of nuzzling a newborn babe and others come through trials, but the point is that they come. What you believe about Christ will impact your view of reality and whether you will embrace the whispered I love yous in its various forms.

“The more a man realizes that he has received a gift that he can never repay…the tenor of his life becomes one of humble, joyful thanksgiving. He simply rejoices in the gifts” and his life sings out, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His kindness endures forever”. (Psalm 107:1)

To my Beloved Abigail…I was given an extravagant blessing when the Lord allowed me to be your mom…a gift I treasure every single day. I love you. I adore you…I excessive love you!

Weakness: Not Such a Bad Word.

As I was driving home the other day I turned on the radio to hear a song that repeated, “You're enough, you're enough, you're enough for me, Lord”. When the song ended, I switched off the radio and spoke into the open air, “Lord, are you really enough for me?” I know the answer in my heart but honestly my actions don’t reflect that knowledge. I wrestle with allowing Him to be enough for me. I keep Him at arm’s length sometimes out of fear, out of selfishness… out of my own self sufficiency. And if I am being honest, I have changed the question to be, “Lord am I enough for you?” Into the same open air, I weep deeply for I know that I have missed the mark. I know I have made my life more about what I can do and give to Him than what He has given and continues to give and do for me. Far too often I live from the place of self-sufficiency, more than I live from the place of gratitude.

I see my weaknesses and convince myself that I am not enough for the Lord. I know it does not work like that-- that Christ loves me unconditionally, without merit, and in my weaknesses --perhaps because of my weaknesses and my utmost need for Him. Still, I struggle with feeling I have to earn it or prove myself worthy on some level of His love. That is the world speaking however, not Christ. I find myself constantly assigning human ways, human thoughts, and having human expectations to the Lord. He tells us that “His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). This wrestling, this inner heart ache, and desire to be defined as a gal that loves the Lord with her whole mind, body, and soul, I have spent time this week reflecting what it looks like to live a life rooted in faith and grace in a world that pressures anything but.

I don’t want to resemble the Pharisees who were virtuous, moral, and lived a life to the letter of the law but were inauthentic. Christ does not want my perfection, my good deeds. He wants my heart. In my weaknesses I am more open to Him and His grace. I want to risk showing my weakness, share my feelings, hurts, and joys with others like that of a child…unabashed, unashamed, and with a joyous heart that knows no bounds. “It was for liberty that Christ freed us”. (Galatians 5:1) I pray with all my heart that I will relish in that liberty and not live from a life of policies and rules, and other’s expectations but from the very heart of God, complete in my weakness so that His glory would be evident in my words and actions.

Weakness is a negative word but it doesn’t have to be. Weakness can be a gift when we recognize all that it brings to our lives and allows us to bring to our relationships. It is the area we are perhaps more ourselves than any place else. It is a place where pride is at bay and our humbleness and need are brought to the forefront of our lives. It causes us to “relate to the people we serve,” it allows us to feel with them the “human condition, the human struggle and darkness and anguish that call out for salvation”. Further, weakness relates us profoundly to God because it provides the arena in which His power can move and reveal itself. When I consider my actions, I realize that I often am communicating to God that I don’t need Him. How this grieves my heart to write these words…to bring light to my inner struggle.

Perhaps you have heard the term “dying to self”. It sounds sacrificial, doesn’t it? It sounds intimidating. It sounds unpleasant, honestly. What it means essentially is that Christ explicitly becomes the center of our lives, not us, not our good ideas, not our good efforts…Christ and Christ alone. When I ask the question, “Lord am I enough for you?”, I am dangerously close to serving myself, making my relationship with Christ more about me, than I am about Him. I am still learning what this looks like practically in this life but I know without a doubt it begins with being rooted in the faith conviction that I am loved, beyond my comprehension, by God as am, not as I should be.


“I will all the more gladly glory in my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecution and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong”. 2 Cor. 12:9-10

Part of the Problem...is Me

Am I “…daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burnt in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how unreal they are”? These words, written by Brennan Manning, have lingered in my mind for several days and this morning as my Pastor asked the congregation what Christians are best known for, “hypocrisy” unanimously filled the air. Though this came as no surprise, it caused a deep weeping in my soul. For I am fully aware that I am not daring enough to be all that different...I proclaim to be a Christian. I often say Christ is my everything, my life, my all. My desire is to know Him more intimately than I do, to adopt His very nature as my own, and to be His hands, feet and, heart to those around me. But to sit there this morning, absorbing the world’s definition of Christian…I find myself realizing I am part of the problem. I resemble the world more than Christ. This is a constant struggle for me and I find that I am constantly fighting to find some happy medium. The thing is, I know I cannot live a life that pleases man AND Christ simultaneously. This is where my hypocrisy lies and perhaps does for many Christians.

I heard someone once ask, ‘if Christians really believe they are “saved”, why don’t they look like it’. And though I have not given this question much thought in several years, it comes rushing back to me today and I find myself asking the same question…truly, if we, as Christians, believe we are saved, have been given the gift, the absolute treasure of Salvation, unconditional love from our Heavenly Father, why don’t our actions match? Faith is more about what we do than about what we think but somewhere along the line, we have made our faith something we keep to ourselves. I attended a memorial service this afternoon and as I sat there my mind kept wondering, what will people remember and treasure most about me? What will my legacy be? Will it simple be that I was a nice girl who smiled on Monday mornings and loved her coffee, books, family, and career? Gosh, as nice as that is, I hope that will be just the beginning…I desire to defined…defined by my faith. Think about that. What would the Christian person look like who was defined by their faith? Does your life look like the picture in your mind? Mine sure doesn’t. But I know the Lord who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion (Philippians 1:6). What that tells me is that though my salvation is complete, my sanctification is not. Thank goodness!

As a Christian, I have a personal responsibility for what I do. I believe in Christ not because I have to but because He has revealed Himself to me in countless ways that are unmistakably Him. I hope not out of ignorance, but because I am confident in my Lord and in His sovereignty. I love not because it is commanded, but because nothing else in all the world brings me more joy. I live expectantly, for I long to see the Lord at work around me. I live intentionally, with purpose, and an eagerness to serve the Lord in all that I do, say, and think. I desperately want my actions to match my words. I desire to put away the ways of the world, be that person that others at my own memorial service will say, “That was one gal who LOVED the Lord with all her mind, body, and soul. Lord, I give you my heart, take it, mold it, and use it for your glory. Let your Word burn in my heart. Let there be no division or compromise in my life, but complete devotion to you and you alone.