“When you’re young, the future seems limitless, packed with inifinate prospects and choices, B-plans and C-plans in every direction.  It was not so scary to lose back then.  Recklessness is a form of virtue when you’re first inventing your life.  You stand the chance – if you go for broke – of unearthing an authentic existence.  Loss is an afterthought, like death, when you’re young: heartbreaking, but distant and not yet your problem, as you careen through decades of unwrinkled plenty.

“Then one day you wake up and see you’ve been dreaming.  Some tragedy shatters your shell of blind faith and allows paler, more grown-up truths to to seep in, the unavoidable costs of living.  The trance of forever comes to an end.  There’s not always more where that (fill in your own blank) came from.  We begin to perceive, in a gimlet-eyed way, that often there’s a great deal less.  Facing our limits, the coarse truth of endings, what remains becomes more precious to us, the families and lovers, posessions and passions we call our own.  Subtraction is no longer taken so lightly.  Beginning, of course, with the loss of time.” – Mark Matousek

2006 was not the year I thought it would be.  I can think of many people who might secretly feel the same.  There’s been a whole lot of shaking going on.  Things recently grasped in confidence have been torn from our once-sure grip in a fierce wind-storm of purity and pain; both the breath of life and the wind being knocked out of us.  In restrospect, it has been the best of times and the worst of times.  What I have loved to the point of obsession, I have also lost, as God has humbled me and demanded my full attention, for He does not share His glory.

It can be anything, really, that jolts us, makes us realize we no longer possess something we once thought we owned: a friendship, a spouse, position, title, monetary security, respect, reputations, jobs…  I sort of lost a church family and dear friends, a job I loved and my identity – because I had placed trust in the wrong things.  I am old enough, spiritually and chronologically, to have known better.  Yet  this year, I have seen a shaking in ministry reminiscent of the one in the late 80’s as televangelists were exposed in humiliation on shows like Nightline or Larry King.  But this time, it has been close to home, in me and in people who have my deep love and respect.  There is a purifying that hurts, but it is grace.  God asks us, will you humble yourself and repent of your pride (your self-sufficiency)?  If we won’t He will.  He will humble us under His mighty hand. 

For me, I think maybe the loss would not have caused as much agony if I’d gone willingly – answered the call to humble myself instead of waiting for the judgment for resistance.  But it is grace.  He is cutting off in me those branches that are not producing the fruit He created me to produce.  He is pruning the branches that are producing so they will produce even more.  I am older.  I have less time than I did in my brave twenties or strong thirties.  He is shaking everything that can be shaken in me so that that which cannot be shaken will remain, for His Name and glory, for His acclaim in the earth. I am spreading my arms out in the middle of the whirlwind and watching the dead branches fly.

Be encouraged.  God is not through using you.  Blessings, Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Haggai 2.5 NIV “And my Spirit remains among you.  Do not fear.”  This remains.

So, it turns out that when a husband feels shamed or thinks his wife is blaming him for something he really can't control, his body is flooded with cortisol, a stress hormone that has awful side effects – like making you fat and more stressed.  Wives get horrid cortisol rushes if they think their husbands are yelling at them or ignoring them or really doing anything they think is threatening their "love connection."

A cortisol rush is something like the sudden shock of sticking your finger in a socket.  It's followed by a burned out "down time," like the after-sugar-blues crash (imagine eating the entire box of Krispy Kremes: ZOWIE!  Then – ohhhhh…I-cannot-believe-I did-that misery).  A cortisol hangover can last for hours in men and for several days in women.  My husband is probably reading this and thinking – yes, I knew it takes her longer to get over stuff.

There are a couple of choices, then I guess:  treat each other with common kindness and respect.  Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.  Wives, be a woman worthy of respect, trustworthy in everything – including with your husband's heart.  OR treat each other badly and buy a lot of Relacore.

Make love, not fat.  Blessings, Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Remember to tell Dave how much he means to me by my actions, not just my words. 

FREE ADMISSION

I'll be there.  I hope you'll come, too.  There is a team getting ready to go build a playground for the kids there.  Come and help us pray for them as they get ready. 

Blessings, Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Even though I am not going to Venezuela next week, there are things I can do to invest in those little lives so far away. Do them, in Jesus' Name.

Hope you are having a great new year!  Blessings!  Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Call my son, "Rocky" (and yes, Rocky Balboa was the inspiration for this name), and tell him I still think he is a champion!

At Starbucks, people with pens and notebooks always look so intelligent.

Starbucks called to me at about 6 am this morning.  I thought, "Well,  perhaps today I'll pop over there for my 'quiet time.'" Then I remembered – I don't really have "quiet time," at least not in the way that that phrase is used frequently, as a way to describe a Christian's daily devotional time spent with God in His Word and in prayer.

The ordered life.

I heard a guy saying yesterday, "I just love those 20 or 30 minutes of my quiet time with the Lord every day before anyone else gets out of bed, it is my favorite time of day." and he was suggesting that everyone should set their alarm for an earlier time and try it.  It sounded right, very spiritual, like if you'll just do this – the rest of your day might be crap, but for these moments, good times.  I remember as a young wife and mother to a house-full of kids, however, I'd go to a women's conference and hear a perfectly coiffed and beautifully dressed and genteel woman talk about getting up earlier than everyone else to have "quiet time" with the Lord (this said in a very sing-song, and soothing la-de-dah voice).  I would just cry. When you have toddlers and nursing infants, you're not only up earlier, you're up over and over and it isn't necessarily "quiet."

I believe in the quiet!

If you know anything about the year I have had, you'll know that I am absolutely for quiet, for rest, for the Sabbath, for getting my heart and mind and body settled and for receiving the peace promised when our minds are fixed on God.  If we don't learn to withdraw sometimes like Jesus did, if we can't turn off the TV or computer and get away from people and sit and wait and listen, if we can't be quiet enough to know He is God, we will hit a brick wall stunning us into silence for our own good.  I know this from personal experience.

It's a riot!  Just read about David's times with God in the Psalms.

So, if I'd gone to Starbucks, I guess my time would have been quiet.  I couldn't let those intelligent people see the real thing: the reading the Bible out loud with emphasis, as if reading to a Kindergartner (it was the only way when the kids were young!) with lots of starts and stops and "hey, what did that mean?"  So yeah, there is that kind of talk.  There is laughing (yes, with just God and me in the room, He is very funny), there is awe ("Thank-You for that message today, I needed that!"), and there is crying, sometimes with gratefulness and sometimes out of frustration.  Sometimes I talk too much and forget to listen.  Sometimes I don't pay any attention and we have to go back over it again the next day.  But it is interactive.  It is messy.  It is noisy or quiet. It is curled up on the couch or pacing the floor.  It is singing really loud and dancing around or weeping silently. It is life.

What I am learning about time.

Christmas Day was just too fast and crazy for us this year.  It was a delightful morning, with creative and loving gifts being shared by all, but it just whizzed by at breakneck speed.  With married kids needing to be more than one place on the day now, it came and it went and I think I got a glimpse of how God must sometimes feel. When the presents were packed up and the house was quiet, I longed for the days when they didn't go anywhere else, they were just there with me for whatever the day would hold (exciting or not) and love and understanding grew by virtue of time and togetherness. I am starting to understand more about what God wants out of a relationship with me.  I think He just wants the time.  He wants to be in the middle of the laughter.  He wants to to hear our hearts. He wants us to actually seek Him out for a conversation, for hearing His heart.  There are conversations that only come after we have done what we are "suppose to do," after we have dutifully read our daily Bible "assignment," and prayed our obligatory prayer.  When all the pomp and circumstance has died down, or when we have fulfilled our "daily devotional time" with Him, then what?  Will we just stay and hang out anyway, just to please Him, just to be near Him?  Will we hang close just in case today is the day He might reveal something more of Himself to us?  Is that worth my time?  I  am now shouting a resounding YES!  Let it be so! 

Blessings – God's great and gracious blessings on you today! – Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Listen for Him, stay close to Him, watch for the revelation in the unexpected moment.  Get near Him so He'll know I want Him to come near me…