When the Thing You Fear Comes Upon You...

Hi Friends,

We just finished up four (count 'em, four!) Haunted Trail events in five days at Wonder Wood Ranch. We had a great time and were able to bring fun and joy to a lot of kids (yay!). It was so fun that I just had to write about it in the chapter I'm working on for Reaching for Wonder. I thought I'd share a little excerpt:

Excerpt:

Every year we do a Haunted Trail event the weekend before Halloween at the charity ranch I run. We do it because in our lives, and in the lives of our guests (disadvantaged kids from all over the city), there are many things to fear. There’s a lot of failure. The trail begins with a sign from the book of Job that reads, “The thing that I fear comes upon me…” (Job 3:25, ESV). It ends with a sign saying “Who will rescue me from this … death?” (Romans 7:24, NIV). The final sign points to a huge wooden cross.

Unlike some, we don’t choose to ignore Halloween. We choose to transform it. Often life is like a haunted trail. The thing we fear comes upon us. Death comes, cobwebs invade, evil scratches at the corners of our lives trying to defeat us. Sometimes we have a child flirting with death and nothing we do helps. Sometimes we have a financial, health, relational, marital, spiritual crisis and all we can see are bones and scary glowing eyes along the path of our lives. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we fear. And that’s the trail we walk. But the trail doesn’t end with a graveyard. It doesn’t end with a skeletal horse and rider. It ends with the cross. It ends with hope. And sometimes, you just have to keep walking. You just have to dare to hope again, believe again. You have to hold to the wisps of faith you have and be honest about the faith you lack.

            So, the question is:  Do you dare to try again? Ask again? Hope again? Do you dare to be honest about the war within?

God does not scorn us in our failure and our desperation. He invites us deeper. He invites us to bring to him not only our faith, but our failures, in all their ignominy. Lay it all out before him, and then be quiet, watch, wait.

Becoming Your True You - Names Matter

Hi Friends,

A good friend (thank you, Joanne!) requested that I post this excerpt from WAITING FOR WONDER, Learning to Live on God's Timeline. 

Excerpt:

You Are Not Moe

            Names matter. Knowing who we truly are matters. I was reminded of this truth not long ago on a Friday night at our local women’s homeless shelter. My daughters and I had gone with a small group of women from our church to play and make crafts with the kids at the shelter, just as we did every month. I was in charge of name tags. I love being in charge of name tags.

            I slapped down a dozen blank tags in front of the kids at the shelter.  “All right, everyone, step right up and tell me your name.” My daughter handed me a purple pen. I motioned to a boy of about eight.

            He hesitated, then came forward. “I’m John.”

            I wrote his name, added a smiley face, and placed the sticker carefully on his shirt.

            Next came Juanita, Miguel, Michael, and Ashley.

            Behind them stood a little girl with big brown eyes and two short pigtails. She stuck her fingers in her mouth.

            “What’s your name, princess?”

            She looked at her toes. She shuffled her feet. She wiped her wet hands on her blouse.

            “You know, if you don’t want to tell me, I can always call you Moe.”

            Her gaze shot up.

            “I call everyone Moe if I don’t know their name.”

            Miguel giggled. “I wouldn’t want to be Moe.”

            Juanita wrinkled her nose. “Me, neither.”

            Ashley checked her name tag and made sure it was stuck tight. “My name is Ashley.”

            They stuck out their chests and pointed to their nametags.

            The little girl tried on a tiny smile. “I’m not Moe.”

            “I didn’t think so.”

            “I’m Victoria.”

            “Ah, Victoria. A much better name than Moe for such a nice little girl.” I wrote it on the tag, drew three hearts, and placed the tag on her shirt.

            She grinned, then poked a soggy finger at my sticker-less shirt. “What’s your name?”

            I fake-gasped. “Oh no!”

            All the kids laughed. “You’re Moe!”

            I chuckled and quickly wrote my name on a tag and stuck it on my shirt. “There, that’s much better.”

            After that, with everyone properly named, we all had a great time making bead necklaces, playing with play dough and plastic dinosaurs, and building little relationships right there under the fluorescent lights and in a place no one called home.

            Real relationships require someone who knows who you really are. They require your true name.

Nobody wants to be Moe. We know who we really are only when God calls us by name. We find our true names, our true selves in walking intimately with him.

In Isaiah 43:1, God says, “Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.” And John 10:3 says of Jesus, “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

            God knows my name. Jesus calls me specifically and leads me. He calls me to walk whole-heartedly with the God who is enough.

            To God, I am not Moe. I am Beloved. I am Daughter. I am Redeemed. I am Precious. He writes my name not on a paper sticker, but on my heart. So, just like Victoria, I don’t need to suck on my fingers and stare at my feet. Instead, I should wear my “name tag” confidently, knowing that only in him will I find who I really am.

            Because I am known by him.

When God Delays to Death

Hi Friends,


I'm currently working on the chapter about Jairus and his daughter for my new book, Reaching for Wonder (pre-order HERE). Here's a snippet of what I've been thinking about as I ponder those times in life when we pray on time, have faith, and trust God ... and yet God delays and death comes anyway.

Here are some thoughts from the book:

I’ve written a whole book on learning to wait well. I wrote it because I’m terrible at waiting, and every single thing I’ve learned about doing it well has been learned the hard way. It’s been learned like Jairus learned, through what seemed like unnecessary pain, through God’s delays, through deaths and resurrections.

         The problem is, death is hard. A subsequent resurrection doesn’t make the pain of hearing “your daughter’s dead” any easier. It hurts. It chokes. It tears through our very souls.

         Wouldn’t it be better if God came sooner, before the excruciating grief? Wouldn’t it be better if Jesus arrived before the daughter died? If he walked faster, started sooner, didn’t stop and turn away to talk to the bleeding woman? Or wouldn’t it have been better if Jesus healed Jairus’ daughter from afar as he did for others in the gospels?

         But he didn’t. He could have. But Jesus let that girl die.

         Apparently, our happiness is not so high on Jesus’ list of priorities. If it were, he would never delay. He wouldn’t tell us “don’t be afraid, just believe,” because he would work before we had reason to fear.

         But sometimes God delays. Sometimes he allows death to come even when we’ve had faith, we’ve prayed, we’ve come to him in time. And in the delay, before the promises, before resurrection, before we know what will happen next, he asks us to “just believe" ... and we are faced with a choice between faith and "why bother."

          It's not an easy choice. It's harder when everything around us says he's come too late. 

          But if we can wait to be overwhelmed, if we can walk past the mourners and the mockers, if we can allow Jesus to “throw them all out,” then we may just discover, with Jairus, the surprising wonder of  “too late.”