The warm water washed over my head and all the negative thoughts and emotions that had besieged me over the last few years came flooding out.  As soothing water fell over me only one thought came to my mind, Freedom.  Lord please set me free.

      It was a cool day and the sky was filled with misty, low clouds. The sound of the ocean filled my ears as I watched the waves gently crash on the shore. My husband and I had been married for a year and we were visiting his family in Southern California. I was being quickly introduced to an entire world that I never thought I would be a part of: surfing.

I spend a lot of my days driving on long, country roads. There isn’t a lot of traffic and the scenery is always the acres and acres of farmland. In the summer, the fields are green and rich with crops growing. Sometimes I’ll see the sunflower fields with their heads facing the sun. Other times the fields are bright yellow like lemons, flowering with canola. I have spent hours on these roads to reach work, church, the kids’ school and running errands. Most of the time I am alone and when I am not in a mindless mode, I look to the fields, sigh, and begin stilling my heart before the Father.

Prayer doesn’t change God’s will, praying changes our will.

I have been hanging around church circles long enough to know that when I hear someone say, “I’ll pray about it” I know that they are trying to work through something or seek an answer from God.  It is definitely what I do in hard situations.  I often come to God in prayer with a self-absorbed expectation that He will do something for me.  In fact, I expect that He will do his most powerful  work to change the person I am praying for, make the phone ring with the good news I’ve been waiting for or He will help me in some way.

Do you ever have days that when you go to pray, you think, “yeah… I’ve got nothin”?

It’s those days that your heart is completely bankrupt that words run dry, the days when the hurt is too deep, the confusion is too thick, the choices are too difficult, the days when the words we put together with our mere 26 letter alphabet don’t even come close to expressing the ache in your heart… those are the days that praying seems almost impossible, even when we know it’s exactly what we need to do, more than absolutely anything else.

Ever feel like a stranger in a strange land?

I have lived in large urban areas my entire life except for the 4 years of college in the corn capital of DeKalb, Illinois. Now for the past 5 years, I have lived among miles and miles of farmland. Our closest Walmart is an hour away and my kids go to a school where the graduating class is about 10 students. We live on a 30 acre “hobby” farm 12 miles from the kid’s school and all around us we are surrounded by large family farms who make their living from what they grow.

Think of the last time you were hopeful.  Was it a hope that something was going to happen?  Confidence in knowing you looked like a complete rock star walking into Target? Were you expectant that when you had to give that presentation at work, and you knew you would blow it out of the water?

Now, think about the last time you were insecure. 

Are memories and instances flooding to your mind?  Do the insecurities seem to outrageously number the moments of confidence? 

Take a deep breath.  Sit with these thoughts for just a second.  Maybe 2 or 3….or 60 seconds.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where is your hope in Jesus?  Does your confidence soar and seem so big when things are going awesome in your life?  Does it drop down to the depths of the earth when difficult situations arise? 

Yesterday, I rolled up my sleeves and scrubbed my house from top to bottom. In my jammies with music blaring until the windows rattled, I danced around freshly polished furniture with a broom in hand; I sang loud enough for an audience of one to hear! Joy had returned. I had rediscovered hope after a slight set back. You could say that it felt like seeing the beauty of a rainbow just after it rains. It was the moment God gave me beauty for ashes.

The prophet Jeremiah was clearly depressed, an emotional state that appears to be an occupational hazard for the classical Hebrew prophets. He bemoans:

“I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.” I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” (Lamentations 3:17-20) NIV.

I remember the moment when I read 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 and knew that I would not be saved from one of the darkest periods I have ever endured as a parent. In that scripture I was given the promise, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.“ My son, my baby boy, was spiraling out of control and the prayers for God to intervene and stop him from going down the path he was headed would not be answered. There would not be the miraculous revelation of my son’s choices at Youth Service in order for him to receive prayer and then chose to turn from them. Our financial situation would not change to have the means to put him in the type of program we thought he needed.

I once attended a church leadership conference that will forever stand out in my mind. I have been to this conference several times before and I always found it inspiring and encouraging. In the past, I gleaned wisdom on vision casting to my volunteers, training and equipping leaders, and setting high goals for the ministry. These talks were all extremely beneficial and applicable. However, the next talk and speaker were altogether different. I knew immediately that God was leading us into a new arena when a petite woman walked onto stage.

“If we are His children, then we are His heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ sharing His spiritual blessing and inheritance, if indeed we share in His suffering so that we may also share in His glory. Romans 8:17 (AMP)

When we look at the modern Church, we see that the topic of suffering is typically on either end of a rather extreme spectrum. You have one side of the church who teaches that life should be rainbows and butterflies when we follow Jesus and another that teaches that God Himself is sending fire down on our lives to suck any glory that He can out of us. (Of course there are the rare few that dare to walk the tightrope down the middle.)

I just signed up for a 6 week gym challenge. I’m still shaking my head and thinking; what did I get myself into? In the next 6 weeks I am going to invite suffering in my life.  I committed to working out 4 days a week, which for me means that I won’t be able to sit down or stand up without pain simply because it’s been far too long since I worked out and I know my muscles won’t hold up to this intensity.  I am going to have to change my priorities to make sure I carve out time to show up. There will be sweat, tears and possibly blood involved.

And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.  But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:17 (NLT)

No one wants to suffer.  It’s not something that I tend to look forward to.  It’s not something that I want to participate in.  Suffering is something that I want to avoid and run away from.  

“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Romans 8:14-16 NASB

            One of the darkest times in our history as a country was when we tolerated and instituted the practice of slavery. Fueled by economic greed and attitudes of entitlement, men sailed across the Atlantic to seize and enslave people of another culture. These men, women, and children were not seen or valued as intrinsically worthy humans.

I have the idea that someone, somewhere, messed up.  I should be royalty.  I’d prefer to be a queen, but I’d settle for a princess.  The closest I have been to living out my make believe royal heritage is being a suedo mafia princess for my birthday.  Being born and raised in Las Vegas, my mom knew some people.  When I turned 5, I had a suite at a hotel all to myself, was able to watch whatever I wanted, and could order whatever food I wanted from room service.  I’m confident that I’d appreciate such a gift much more now than I did when I was 5.  Nonetheless, I realized at that young age that it was a special day, and I was being treated in a special way.  For the day, I felt that I was special. 

Maybe it’s a girl thing...but, I hate being left out! For me that is about the worst feeling in the world. Well, other than something horrible happening to one of my loved ones. It just seems to me that if you really really want to hurt another female just tell her she is not included. Then of course, list ridiculous reasons why she didn’t get invited. Here are a few: we thought you wouldn’t like that sort of thing, because you are not part of our family, we knew you’d be too busy to join us or there weren't enough seats for one more person. Really?