“As far as the east is from the west
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12 (NASB)

Ok this blog is going to get real honest….

I remember always being a good little girl. I don’t mean to say I wasn’t stubborn or moody or didn’t fight with my siblings. I did. What I mean to say is when I look back on my childhood, I remember always trying to be good. It was a conscious way of growing up for me. I hated being in trouble.

I moved to Las Vegas almost exactly two years ago. The year before that, I spent my summer here interning for the church that I now work for. I remember the moment that summer the Lord called me to move to Las Vegas; my heart was so full of excitement and hope. Fear wasn't present for that moment. I had caught the heart of Heaven and nothing was gonna slow me down. ...right?

It was my thirty-four-year-old daughter, Emily.  She was six then.  She went on a class trip to the local touch-it/feel-it/now-I-know-it children’s museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  There was a photographer from the local paper and she happened to think Emily looked cute with a construction helmet on while she was pretending to be excavating something important. 

There can be no doubt that becoming a mom to our three children has been the greatest adventure of my life. It has also been the hardest role of my life. I became a mom later in life; I had our oldest, Cosette, when I was 35. Cole followed 2 years later and then, surprise! our Corinne arrived a short 14 months later. So here I was, a woman who had worked only full-time since I graduated college 15 years earlier - now home with 3 children under the age of 3. I loved my children with all my heart and I was finally a mom. Those first three years seemed to happen so fast. I felt the whiplash to find myself in this new, wonderful, yet unknown stage of life.

Broken promises. I can still hear the noise of children playing, all my friends running around the playground, playing hopscotch, skipping rope and swinging on monkey bars. I can almost audibly hear the rhythmic sing-song, “Cross my heart, hope to die... Stick a needle in my eye.” This elementary scene runs through my head whenever I consider how important God’s promises are.

This past month, I received the most devastating news about my home church in Chicago. The senior pastor - the founding leader had been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. I read the online news report the night before it went to print. I immediately thought, “No way”, and dismissed it as a confusing vendetta against him and the church. Over the next several weeks, so much began to be written about him and my beloved church - a place where I’m eternally grateful to for discovering amazing grace, my love for ministry, and the deepest relationships of my life. There were meetings held and posts written - both in defense and in truths against him.

The song “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury has grabbed my heart and won’t let go. It has pushed me to dig deep into passages of scripture that talk about how much God loves us, chases us, and gives sacrificially for us. It has caused me to stop and look at my own life and evaluate if I love others recklessly, with abandon, when loving doesn’t make sense, for this is how God loves me. The song has rocked me to the core in such a way that I finally did something I’ve been wanting to do for about ten years. I got my first tattoo.

I’m on a journey of healing.  It can be something that one thinks is full of rest, becoming better than I was before, no longer dealing with the pain of the past.  But it can also be a difficult and extremely long journey.  When I look at my healing in this light, I think of a hike I did with friends called “Turtle Head Peak.”  It sounded like a cute name for a hike, particularly because I like turtles.  My friends told me it would fun and we would spend the morning conquering it together.

I have the last few years found myself pondering a particular phrase in the 33rd psalm: “The earth is full of his unfailing love.” And you are either learning to see this assertion about God or you are not.

Living in the 21st century, with communication technologies and news gathering services that can inform us of every weather-related catastrophe across the globe, I wonder how volcanoes and hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts exemplify God’s unfailing love. It seems mentally more manageable when they are half a world away—typhoons in the South Pacific seem easier to digest for North Americans.

One of my dearest friends and I have this saying that is kind of a joke, and kind of the real thing. We say, “It’s my world, you just live in it.” God so gently and often not so gently reminds me of just how not true this is. Usually he does this by messing up my timing. Timing is everything. You’ve heard that said and maybe even said it yourself. I know I have.  I’ve experienced it. I’ve been frustrated by it. Timing. I’m frustrated when timing is out of my control. The funny thing is, it always is out of my control. 

The great Jewish rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, observed shortly before his death of the American culture surrounding him,  

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.” 

Life is hard.  Sometimes it is nice to have someone say that, as though to reassure us that we aren’t the only ones that feel this way.  And sometimes, it is can be so annoying to hear that.  Yes.  I know it is hard.  Thank you for stating the obvious.  

I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop on a foggy Friday, sipping the last of my chai tea latte and reflecting on my morning. I sit here with a delightful smile on my face, feeling sound, secured and loved. Friendships have a way of making our souls sing. I had a free Friday morning and decided to meet up with an old girlfriend. Old, I mean like we’ve known each other for about 35 years.   

Easter Sunday.  

Jesus has risen! The miracle of the resurrection is the cornerstone that all of Christianity rest upon. It is the hope telling us that darkness is defeated, and death does not have the last word. On our calendars, we go quickly from the grief of Good Friday to joy of Easter morning. We don’t have to sit in mourning for long, because we know! Jesus has risen! 

I had great parents; I can’t remember once feeling forsaken by them. While they were alive, I never felt like an orphan.

But, certainly, I’ve had many traumatic tremors of forsakenness.

I’m in my mid-60s.  All of the players on the Detroit Tigers are younger than me.  Life insurance salesmen have long ago thrown me into the “old age” bracket.  When auditioning for a play, I’m easily type cast into a “eccentric old-codger” role.  I no longer experience youthful lusts, only old aged lusts.  I never used to read obituaries.

Life is full of plot twists. They’re those moments you think will never come. The moments you never see coming or the ones you hope never will.

In Psalm 27, we see David declaring that in those ‘plot twist’ moments, the Lord is ever present. When his MOTHER and FATHER abandoned him- the Lord took him in. In a moment, totally contrary to what life should hold, the Lord is his Rescuer.

What does it feel like when the whole world is against you and you can’t find any support, no matter where you turn?  What does it feel like to be alone in your loneliness? Desperate? Deserted? I have surely had those moments and I’m sure you have too. King David has also had them. So, we have that in common with a man after God’s own heart!

Meet Bo. Bo is a black lab mix puppy my hubby brought home from work one day. It was dark when he got home and he was carrying a large bag of dog food. We have two other dogs so it wasn’t an unusual scene. The overhead light in our mud room was out but I got a glimpse of a black creature scurrying around my husband’s legs. At first I thought a racoon had snuck inside but then my husband said, “Meet Bo”! A fluffy solid black puppy jumped into the middle of the kitchen much to the joy of my kids and the surprise of myself.

King David was confident in the midst of battle. Even when threatened with death and enemies all around, he sings that his confidence in the Lord, his light and salvation, never falters (Psalm 27: 1-3). 
A lack of confidence can keep us out of some important and necessary battles. It can keep us sitting out a lot of dances. David, it seems, knew the “Lord of the Dance.”

Sometimes the most impactful stories that I grow from aren’t about me. Sometimes they are stories about the women I meet along this journey of faith. Let me tell you a story about a woman whose smile is warm, her heart is full and she seems unbreakable.