This was just a quick cake for Audrey and Ben when they brought Alyssa home from the hospital, strawberry filling and cake at their request. There was absolutely no plan in the decor, just pink and white and whatever happened, happened. Afterwards, I thought it looked a little like an old-fashioned chenille bedspread and was thinking I wish I’d actually applied myself a bit more to that.
It is Father’s Day, a day to honor our dads. And my gift is not yet in the mail. Grrrr…. Hang in there, dad – it’s coming! But in the card I went ahead and sent, I told my dad that I was having a hard time with a gift this year. Nothing seems substantial enough. I can’t think of how to gift him back in anyway close to the way he gifted me this past January. I have brooded over it, attempted to write about it, but I can’t seem to figure out a way to gift him back.
So, maybe my gift is this, dad: to receive the gift you brought to me. Maybe it is to open my heart and take it in freely, to receive all you are and all you do with gladness, without reservation. Perhaps the best I can offer is to receive.
It is Father’s Day. And I have a wonderful father.
My earliest memories are about my dad. I know I remember other things when I was 3 going on 4, but there was something about my dad coming home everyday that caused a high level of anticipation. There was excitement in the air. Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home! My mom led the charge in the preparation. I can’t remember what else happened on regular day during those years, but when dad came home, it was good times.
I can remember sitting across the living room as he settled in each day. He’d drink iced tea and then I’d want iced tea. He’d bite his nails, and then I’d bite my nails. Whatever he did, I wanted to do. And through my growing up years, that remained the same. When he took up coffee drinking when I was a young teen, much to my mother’s dismay, I wanted to as well. When he started eating Bleu Cheese dressing and the rest of the family balked at the smell, I haughtily started loving it, too. Whatever my dad did, from my young years, always seemed the right way to me. I don’t think he even knew how much I wanted to be like him, sometimes trying to win his approval, but like him nonetheless.
But most everyone knows how family can be tricky. And when you’re a child, you don’t realize that the people you love most in the world, the people who seem so perfect and all-powerful to you come with baggage and woundings of their own. And so, the enemy of my soul and the enemy of my dad’s worked to destroy the blind trust of a little girl towards her father. There were years the enemy stole from us. It wasn’t purposeful. My dad worked hard for the church and people, a strict disciplinarian who wanted me to turn out right. And while I wanted intimacy with my dad almost more than any longing I have ever experienced, I allowed my heart to harden towards him at times, even though, I have never, nor will I ever, question his motives of love towards me. I never thought for one second that he didn’t want what was best for me. But things can come between…
So, this past january, my dad came to my house with a gift. God had set me up for it a few days before, which is a whole other story. But my dad came and told me that he knew sometimes he had blown it. He said there were things he’d have done differently. He told me he knew very well that the wounds of a father are real. And he asked me, “What can I do to bring healing?” And all I could think was, There is nothing in me that desires ammending. There is nothing I would do to dishonor this man who is humbling himself before me, admitting that there were bumps in our past shared road. “What can I do,” he was asking me?
And I do not know how to repay the kindness of that gift. I do not know how to respond to show how unbelieveably blown away I am that he offered this to me. He was offering to look back at places of pain and misunderstanding (is there anything worse than understanding between hearts being broken?) and saying, “I am your daddy. I will bear that. You can tell me now what you couldn’t say then.” My dad has given me the gift of being a father who will shoulder my pains and insecurities.
How can I gift my dad back for that in a manner fitting?
All I can think is to receive it. And I do, dad. I receive your gift to me. I receive your love and I am in awe of the humility you’ve shown to me – you, the most powerful man in my life for ever and always, humbled himself to bear my burdens, my woundings, my hurts.
There is nothing you could ever buy for me or do for me that could mean more.
You have set in motion so much freedom and healing for me. You have given me the desire to right past wrongs and the courage to let people off the hook. You have gifted me beyond what I deserve and in a way most people never get to experience. Thank-you, dad.
All my love…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I am the image of my father, and more, I hope, as the days go by.
See Tredessa’s birthday post from last year here.
Blessings on your birthday, Tredessa, mighty warrior and quiet-spirited woman of God. Happy Birthday to my 3rd daughter and child, a glorious baby born on a glorious day. Happy days and blessings on you, holy woman, centered not only in the middle of the family birth order, but in the middle of what God is doing on the earth in these days. I am just so pleased with who you are and the faith-life you lead, Tre. I am so proud of the woman you’ve chosen to be. I am amazed at your giftedness and humility in its presentation. I love the song of your heart and your commitment to really see people where they are and speak life into their woundings and brokenness. I am in awe at how you see into the hearts around you when others are oblivious.
Here you are in full-time ministry, supported by people who believe in your call. That is a precarious place to be, but you trust God and press in to acknowledge and know Him more and more. Can He be as pleased to see that as I am? Yes, I’m thinking.
These are the gifts I am offering as prayer, the things so true I hope you will receive and open today:
I am praying for you a year of wonderful, fresh and energizing friendships. You are such a loyal and true friend. You work tirelessly for the Kingdom, pouring time and life into inner city kids, and the destitute in other nations. You administrate big dreams and huge projects for visionaries and still have time to speak life into hearts, one-on-one. You’re a caring and honoring daughter and a deeply loving sister. You are instilling spiritual legacy into your nieces and nephews. You watch and speak and pray and teach. And I am just asking God to place you smack-dab in the middle of people who will pour life back, who will speak blessing over you, watch over you and be the kind of friend you are to everyone else. I am praying you will reap everything you have sown and that it will be magnificently life-giving!
I am praying for your Jim-from-The-Office, your Mr. Darcy, your Boaz. He is out there, my beautiful. You possess so many of Ruth’s attributes: she was devoted to God and to her family, she was humble and teachable, she was focused on her responsibilities – all the while trusting God to provide, and she was a woman of her word. And so God sent her Boaz – a man devoted to God and successful in his business, a proven man, undistracted from his responsibilities, a man of his word and a man who jumped through all the necessary hoops to win Ruth for himself, thereby exemplifying the redemptive work of Christ.
And while the Bible does say God is your husband, I am still praying for the flesh-and-blood husband/lover who’ll do your heavy lifting, mow the lawn and change the oil in your car. I am praying for that man who will go to great lengths to win you to himself, for the one who will pay the price for a wife like you, even if he leaves his socks on the bathroom floor. I am praying for your Boaz.
I pray you will come to understand the beauty of who you are. I pray you will see what others see: you are a woman who is worthy of trust, beautiful inside and out. I pray you can appreciate the girl in you who is sometimes silly and zany and embrace your wildly romantic and passionate nature for the gift it will be to your future husband. I am hoping you can grasp the amazing anointing you have to administrate and organize and “put legs on” vision and operate in it with joy as it flows from who you were created to be, but not become bogged in the details of it, laying aside all the things God has spoken to your heart. I pray that you will learn to trust yourself-with abandon and a sense of the carefree – just like the rest of us know we can. You can trust you, Tredessa.
I pray you’ll know the intensity of the strength you have added to the minstry work going on at Confluence, and through Get the Word Out! and Leaving a Legacy. I hope you can understand the gift you have been to Worship and the Word and Heaven Fest. You are not a shadow on the wall just because you’ve chosen to be a servant of all. When you walk in the room, everyone else is stronger for it. There is a sense that a quiet wisdom and element of the power of God has just entered, not with the persuasive words of man’s wisdom, but with the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2.4 NIV).
Oh, my middlest of children-we’re the lucky ones. “Blessed,” I know, but I am singing the Amy Grant song in my heart in honor of you today (http://youtube.com/watch?v=yE6MGGuxpa4). It describes so well how anyone who knows you knows: they are the lucky ones! How did God know, I wonder, how much I would need a Tredessa in my life? Does He know, I wonder, how honored I am that I got to be “Tredessa’s mom” ( a title I accept with joy)? Thank-you for your love of the Word of God and of the life of worship to Him you lead. You’re the kind, when you love you love with all your might.. .
Happiest Birthday, sweet Dessa. Oh baby, we’re the lucky ones…Mom
NOTE TO SELF: It is apparent that Tre is always the one behind the camera, our designated family photographer. Take pictures of HER, now!
pictured: Tredessa in Kindergarten and this past Easter at church
This has been called “the fatherless generation,” and we usually think of that for people who grew up without a father or who were separated from him by divorce or death. But the spirit of being an orphan can overtake even the person who had a father nearby. They are only human, after all. Feeling orphaned emotionally can be debilitating. You can feel like you have no real inheritance, no one to protect you, intense lonliness and fear that no one really cares how life turns out for you in the end. Providing sperm does not a father make, at least not in the heart sense.
There is a Father who is true (did you recently read His love letter to you here?). The Father heart of God towards you is consistently loving and unconditional, as portrayed in Jesus’ parable about the returning prodigal son and the father who ran to the road to welcome him home. Father God pays close attention, He listens and responds. He is available and close, encouraging us and giving us hope. Father instructs us and redirects through discipline, always there for us, a very present help in time of trouble. He protects His own, stands up for us, then releases us in freedom – empowering us to be all He created us to be and to do all He created us to do. Father loves you.
Just in time for Father’s Day – I have a prayer for those of you who need one…
Father, I pray for a revelation of Your perfect love – for You are the Father we have been looking for! Today I pray for those who pull away from You when they think of You as a father. I pray that you will show Yourself a true Father to them and that they can receive Your kindness, Your patience, Your strength and Your powerful love, the truth of who you are for them. Just like a young father bends down tenderly to communicate with his little child, You keep pursuing us, smiling on us, drawing close. You want us to know You as Father.
So, Father, I pray that You would reveal to us the truth, that we would finally and totally choose to see past our distortions of who You are. And, Father God, if our dads and fathers fell short in any way in how you’d have had them father us, or in reflecting Your love – whether through absence or pre-occupation with work, or their anger, critical words or abuse – where perhaps these wounds have caused us to live with an orphaned spirit, stuck in fearfulness and rejection, please come, Father. Comfort us. Don’t leave us in this state. Unlock the parts of our hearts that are frozen by fear. And Father God, where perhaps our dads acted from their own anger or pain and it has caused injury or woundedness to our hearts, we choose to reach out for the healing You provided for us in Your great love. He was wounded for our transgressions…by His stripes we are healed…
And as Father’s Day approaches, would you minister to those who had no father at all, especially to those who haven’t yet recognized the void and loss of that?
Lord, show us how we have expected you to fail us because of our own human dads. You have promised to never leave nor forsake us. You have said You will be a Father to us. Would You help us learn to trust? Would You give a gift of trust so we can enjoy You with childlike abandon?
Come, Father, into the undeveloped areas where we have not been fully fathered. We need You to Father us. Thank-You for calling us by name. Thank-You for being pleased with us. Thank-You for rejoicing over us with singing. Thank-You that You won’t leave us feeling as orphans, but You come to us.
We receive the blessing from Your Father heart to ours.
Prayer adapted.
Image from a wonderful website: www.afathertoyou.com
We are in crisis as a nation: tomatoes have been pulled from the grocer’s shelves, restaurants are not serving them (http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZHY_enUS243US244&hl=en&tab=wn&q=tomato.
This is my official statement: We all know the devil tries to destroy the divine. He will not succeed.
And I don’t know why my so-called-friend, Bryan, is joining Satan’s efforts to thwart what I know is heaven-on-earth (I have written about tomatoes a few times: here and here and here, or just search the word ‘tomato’ on this site to see how truly devoted I am!!). See Bryan’s dastardly efforts here: http://bryanyounger.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/i-hate-to-tell-you-i-told-you-so-but/
I am off to attend my private tomato vineyard…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Pray and pray hard that the source of the salmonella is found and the sacred can be restored to us…
image from google…look how angry that scientist looks – could this be a nasty set-up of the tomato???
http://heavenfest.com/prayer/prayer_cd.php
Downloadable, Mp3. Scriptures to pray over Heaven Fest. If you think about it, would you? 44 days…
When I was telling my firstborn that it has been so much fun and surprising recently that I have re-discovered old friends and relatives via the blog (I “found” Jr. High friends a couple of weeks ago; just yesterday a sister-in-law from Oregon I haven’t seen in almost a year left a comment and earlier this week a cousin I haven’t seen in over 30 years “stopped by” as if no time has passed), Tara said, “Yes-blogs are like the ultimate really long Christmas letter – everyone can just go there and catch up.”
After all my years making fun of those long, newsy and not-usually-very enthralling Christmas letters, I just found out I am writing the ultimate one.
Aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhhh…….
There is a most wonderful website: www.fathersloveletter.com. It is full of wonderful written, audio and video resources all concerning the beauty of God’s Father heart towards us. It is a “Happy Father’s Day” card to you from Father! Enjoy the beauty of the message of God’s love for you through these scripture paraphrases ~ He is the Father who is waiting for you!
From the website:
The words you are about to read are true. They will change your life if you let them. For they come to you from the heart of God. He loves you. And He is the Father you have been looking for all your life. This is His love letter to you.
You may not know me, but I know everything about you. Psalm 139:1
I know when you sit down and when you rise up. Psalm 139:2
I am familiar with all your ways. Psalm 139:3
Even the very hairs on your head are numbered. Matthew 10:29-31
For you were made in my image. Genesis 1:27
In me you live and move and have your being. Acts 17:28
For you are my offspring. Acts 17:28
I knew you even before you were conceived. Jeremiah 1:4-5
I chose you when I planned creation. Ephesians 1:11-12
You were not a mistake, for all your days are written in my book. Psalm 139:15-16
I determined the exact time of your birth and where you would live. Acts 17:26
You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14
I knit you together in your mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13
And brought you forth on the day you were born. Psalm 71:6
I have been misrepresented by those who don’t know me. John 8:41-44
I am not distant and angry, but am the complete expression of love. 1 John 4:16
And it is my desire to lavish my love on you. 1 John 3:1
Simply because you are my child and I am your Father. 1 John 3:1
I offer you more than your earthly father ever could. Matthew 7:11
For I am the perfect father. Matthew 5:48
Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand. James 1:17
For I am your provider and I meet all your needs. Matthew 6:31-33
My plan for your future has always been filled with hope. Jeremiah 29:11
Because I love you with an everlasting love. Jeremiah 31:3
My thoughts toward you are countless as the sand on the seashore. Psalms 139:17-18
And I rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17
I will never stop doing good to you. Jeremiah 32:40
For you are my treasured possession. Exodus 19:5
I desire to establish you with all my heart and all my soul. Jeremiah 32:41
And I want to show you great and marvelous things. Jeremiah 33:3
If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me. Deuteronomy 4:29
Delight in me and I will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
For it is I who gave you those desires. Philippians 2:13
I am able to do more for you than you could possibly imagine. Ephesians 3:20
For I am your greatest encourager. 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
I am also the Father who comforts you in all your troubles. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
When you are brokenhearted, I am close to you. Psalm 34:18
As a shepherd carries a lamb, I have carried you close to my heart. Isaiah 40:11
One day I will wipe away every tear from your eyes. Revelation 21:3-4
And I’ll take away all the pain you have suffered on this earth. Revelation 21:3-4
I am your Father, and I love you even as I love my son, Jesus. John 17:23
For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed. John 17:26
He is the exact representation of my being. Hebrews 1:3
He came to demonstrate that I am for you, not against you. Romans 8:31
And to tell you that I am not counting your sins. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
His death was the ultimate expression of my love for you. 1 John 4:10
I gave up everything I loved that I might gain your love. Romans 8:31-32
If you receive the gift of my son Jesus, you receive me. 1 John 2:23
And nothing will ever separate you from my love again. Romans 8:38-39
Come home and I’ll throw the biggest party heaven has ever seen. Luke 15:7
I have always been Father, and will always be Father. Ephesians 3:14-15
My question is…Will you be my child? John 1:12-13
This has been reprinted by permission. Copyright information: “Father’s Love Letter” used by permission. Father Heart Communications Copyright 1999-2008. www.fathersloveletter.com
Here is something more from my personal ”Grace from the Garden,” – messages I get from God while I am digging around in the dirt.
Grace note: The most lush and fruitful growth shows up where the pruning last took place. The spiritual implications of this are almost frightening.
I have a love-hate relationship with what we call “shrubbery.” I love it because it creates easy-care interest in the garden and landscape, and I hate, not the bushes, really, but the fact that we must “tame” them for suburbia. I have 2 purple-leafed Sand Cherries (prunes x cistena) flanking a Weigela and have not-so-carefully tended and watched their growth over the past six years. They have become, truly, almost an embarassment, full and fat (average-growth-4-to-6-foot-width-my-posterior), large and tall (biggest kids on the block). My “method” has been to let them be what they were created to be, and not shave them back to little boxy geometric sculptures like some of the neighbors have done. The Sand Cherries have rewarded me, in turn, by being a cool reprieve guarding our home as the hot sun is setting in the west. They have created a beautiful frame to the mountain view out my living room window and added rich, deep, purplish-burgandy leaf interest to a mainly green outdoor vista. They are one of the first prophetic trumpet-calls that winter is over every year when they burst and sway under the weight of thousands and thousands of tiny pink blooms each spring.
In short, I like them as they are, but I must prune them and keep them in check for the neighbors’ sake. And so the homeowner’s-association-nazis don’t send me a letter.
I ventured out this morning with pruning shears in hand to bushes bowing in the heaviness of growth. And what did I find? That the “offending” branches, the ones reaching to places they don’t belong and obstructing the Weigela’s view, the branches threatening to cover the entrance to the house entirely – they were all growing directly from the branches that I pruned last summer. They were, without apology, shooting in every direction from something that I had put a stop to, a place where I’d cut. They had multiplied and become fruitful! For every one cut last year, 6, 8 even 12 branches had formed in defiance, an ingrained will to live, live like God intended!
So, I pruned a little less lightly than I had intentioned, because I think those bushes are out to defy me, anyway. And I thought about the concept of growth where the wounding took place.
I am always asking God to make me like Him. I am constantly reaching toward what it means to be filled with the fullness of God. I pray, “May Jesus Christ be formed in me.” Then I cry and freak out at the pain of the pruning. The pain of the cut has often been severe, almost cruel, it seemed. I’ve mourned to see my “fruitfulness,” the giftings and talents and abilities I’d so carefully and proudly presented – chopped off, thrown into the trash pile.
But in truth, the places where I have been pruned – right there next to the wounded and healed stump of the cut, that is where my greatest joy and most lush growth has come. That is the place of fullness, freedom and delight, the place of my greatest faith. There is life in those places now, abundant.
I don’t like the thought of going through it again, yet, with regularity, the child God loves, He disciplines. Jesus said, “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” John 15.2 NIV
I once heard Joyce Meyer say it like this: If you don’t bear fruit, God will prune you. If you do bear fruit, He’ll prune you so you bear more. So the way I see it is, you’re pruned if you do and pruned if you don’t, so you might as well go ahead and submit yourself to the pruning.
Here is what I know, at least as often as I need to prune my purple-leafed Sand Cherries, God is probably going to have to prune me. Maybe more.
Thinned out and leaking a little bit of sap today…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Stay in the process. Let God finish His work in me.
“…don’t shrug off God’s discipline, but don’t be crushed by it, either. It’s the child He loves that He disciplines; the child He embraces, He also corrects. God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children…” Hebrews 12.4 The Message
pictures from Google images (just because I was too lazy to take any)
No, not THAT kind of thong – I am talking about the the old-fashioned kind – the flat, very open and backless rubber sandal held onto the foot by a loose y-shaped aparatus that goes between your first two toes. Now they call them flip flops, but when I was a little girl, they were “thongs.”
I just bought 2 pairs at Target for $2.99 each.
And as I slipped a pair on to do some gardening the other day, I realized that the design has not changed one iota , except for the name change, since I was 4, because the first shoes I remember owning, the very first pair I can recall putting on and looking at admiringly after my mom purchased them for 47-cents at the five-and-dime, were little red thongs. The dye wasn’t like now, though, so the color was muted, like all polaroid photos from the early 60s are. And I wore the life right out of those things, a humble pair of cheap thongs.
Of all the shoes I’ve owned and those yet to come, will any ever be so sweet? Maybe. I am pretty fond of my Danskos now.
Remembering where the shoe love-affair began…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: find a pair of muted red, buy
NOTE TO THE CONCERNED: Fear not, I only call them flip-flops now.
pictured: a google image…I wouldn’t allow Dave to wear those
