Category: Hopes and dreams

Beautiful Things

I rugged myself up with an embarrassing amount of layers to sit outside on the deck for some air and a wee pray this afternoon. It was a brisk 7 degrees (Celsius – don’t worry my Fahrenheit friends, I’m not that hardcore), and as I sat there looking at the sky and the trees, and breathed in the gloriously fresh air, an old Gungor song that I used to love came to mind. I started singing quietly:

You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us

Then I found the song online, and as I listened, tears sprung to my eyes as I felt an overwhelming surge of hope.

This time in humanity could be called many things – stressful, political, fraught, volatile, wearying…but I reckon ‘dust’ does a pretty good job of describing how things feel right about now. Like so many things have blown up and burnt down, and we’re sitting exhausted in the ashes, just waiting to see what else is going to catch fire.

And even in my own life, there’s definitely what could be summed-up as a dusty vibe going on (and that’s not just referring to the situation happening in the master bathroom). I find myself in a ‘what next’, survival frame of mind, on the defensive against the ‘rona, and the conspiracy theorists, and emails that let me know that my kiddo’s gotta quarantine from preschool, thereby stealing the few precious hours I had to work in peace this week.

And for many of you, it’s even worse. It’s family members who no longer feel able communicate in a civil manner with each other, it’s church families split down the centre, it’s marriages and families pushed to the edge with the added stress of loss of income or childcare.

And then there’s the weight of global warming, natural disasters, food shortage in poorer nations, and on and on it goes. It gets so heavy, and it’s so easy to find myself in a downward spiral of thinking that nothing’s ever going to get better.

But if I believe in redemption – which I really do, it’s my favourite word of all time – there is so much hope. Not that everything will turn out the way that I hoped and planned, but that out of this very dusty, very broken, very barren and wasted place, the Redeemer has plans to create a masterpiece.

The messy state of the world right now is not overwhelming or too much for Jesus (although heart-breaking, I’m sure) – He’s in amongst it all, like a faithful gardener, planting exquisitely beautiful seeds in the fertiliser made from our broken dreams.

You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust.
You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us.

Love you friends,
Deb xx

A Battle Weary Soldier

There’s something about the past several years that has caused a callus to form around my heart; I miss the me that was more trusting, less cynical, and softer. I miss the me that expected the best from strangers, and was surprised at, rather than resigned to rudeness or aggression.

In the naivety of my youth, I carried in my heart such hope. My rose-tinted view of the future gave me something to look forward to, even in the gloomiest of seasons. I was going to marry a MOG (man-of-God – insert eye-roll here), become a minor, or dare I hope, major, Christian celebrity, travel regularly, and have a general air of importance.

In reality, I married a very good man, had two really schnoopsie, but delightful kiddos, and ended up getting a counselling degree and writing for a self-awareness app – a profoundly fulfilling job. But somewhere in the midst of this existence, which I may add is genuinely better than anything I could have dreamed up for myself, the reality of life has seeped in.

The kind of reality that is so often ignored in Pentecostalism, where the message presented seems to suggest that if you just plug your ears and hum a worship song loudly, the pain of life will eventually disappear.

The kind of reality that comes home to roost when your husband gets impaled when you’re seven weeks pregnant. Or when you watch a beloved family member struggle with debilitating mental illness for years and years and years on end. Or when you finally fall pregnant after several miscarriages only to get a beautiful baby boy, but with a side of chronic migraine that doesn’t go away. That kind of reality.

And added to this, along with general pandemic related stressors, I have felt a genuine angst about people of faith throughout this season. There was a time when I would assume that Sister Mildred, who always sits in the third row, believed pretty much the same things that I did regarding the outworking of faith and the Kingdom of God. But if this virus has highlighted anything to me, it’s that there is a massive disparity in the way that I understand what it means to be a disciple of Christ, and the way that some others understand it.

I say this not to point the finger at any particular points of theology, doctrine, or faith, but more to highlight the despair and confusion it has wrought within me to see certain people that profess faith, acting in a way that I just cannot align with my understanding of the way of Jesus.

All of these things, plus some I’m sure, have caused a defensive shell to form around my heart – it’s a spikey and sad fence, designed to keep me safe, but all it seems to have done is eat at the glow within me.

And I want it gone. I want the slightly naïve girl back – but perhaps with a side more wisdom.

I don’t know how to do this. But I do sense the soft presence of Jesus starting to warm my heart, and I am convinced that he is the key.  So, I’ll sit, and wait, and accept his warming presence, and pray that my battle-hardened shell would slowly begin to get absorbed by love.

Deb xx

Crawling out from Under a Rock for a Second…

It’s been a minute since I wrote anything for anything other than work. To be honest, I’ve never felt less qualified to share wisdom/insight/anything in my whole life. Why? Because I’m 100% NOT rocking this COVID home-school, work from home, social distancing life. (Ok, yes, I am rocking the social distancing – it may surprise you to learn that I am, in fact, an introvert, and this time has given me a golden opportunity to polish my inner hermit).

I always said, even long before I had children, that home-schooling was my idea of a nightmare. Even so, I kind of thought, somewhere in the back of my hopeatorium, that actually I would discover a natural aptitude for it and find out that it’s surprisingly rewarding. Well that bubble has been well and truly popped. I hate it. I actually hate it. There’s not many things I hate – that awful yawn-sigh people do, reggae music, loud eating noises (I should probably just get permanent earplugs) – but home-schooling is right up there.

The thing that’s so difficult, is that because those of us here in our part of the States have had the kiddos home for a solid 8 months now, my margins are paper thin. I normally gird my loins for the 3-month summer break, and begin to morph into Harriet the Haggard by the end. And this is 2.5 summers, with no clear end in sight.

When we have no margins is when issues that we are able to keep below the surface with rest, regular moments of respite, relaxation, socialisation etc. rear their ugly heads. For me, this means that I revert to my inner child a lot of the time.

The little girl that wanted to please the teacher and gain her constant approval, is now the parent of a kiddo whose schooling she is overseeing, and she really wants her kid to do well in order to appease her quest for affirmation.

The little girl that learned it was desperately important to get things done within a self-imposed timeframe, is now trying to force a seven-year-old to finish up his schoolwork within the same arbitrary window of time.

With the constant stress and pressure of life here in US right now, it feels like every unhealed part of my soul and every unchallenged erroneous belief is simultaneously running the show and beating me up.

So friends, if you’re feeling like me right now – and I know so many of you are, let’s join hands and start to do the things we need to get through this very challenging phase. For some of us, we really need to ease up on ourselves and our kiddos. For others of us, we need to choose a daily rhythm at this time that allows for a lot of extra space. Maybe we need to call a friend just to tell them that we’re not okay. Maybe we need to choose a regular meditation/prayer practice. Maybe we need to go for a walk around the block every day. Maybe we need to stop and realise that although no-one (except maybe the tech gods) are winning in the shit-show that is 2020, we are learning lessons and facing trials that have the potential to forge gold within us.

So, to all the other fellow humans in the trenches right now (even those with their masks under their noses), I give you my biggest smize, and raise my arm in a weary salute to you. You are loved, you are not alone, and you’re going to get through this. And so will I – albeit with a new cavernous depth to the frown lines between my eyebrows.

Love you friends,

Deb xx

Dreams, Dreams, Dreams

Dreams

(Originally posted on Sheology.co)

If I’m to be honest, I have an ambivalent relationship with dreams. Second only to my dream of being the sixth, only female (and spectacularly mulleted) member of New Kids on the Block, my very greatest childhood dream was to be locked in the local Foodtown Supermarket overnight. While other kiddos were counting sheep, I would lie in bed at night and plot my route from the choccy biscuits, chips, pick’n’mix, fizzy drinks and chocolate bars. Needless to say, neither of these dreams was ever realised, and my childish dreams gave way to the more realistic dreams that maturity brings.

The most heartfelt dream I ever possessed was that of being married. My mum got married at 20, and for some reason I had my heart set on also getting married at 20 (Spoiler alert – I did meet the love of my life and got married one month shy of my 29th birthday). I remember a preacher once saying that the gap between expectation and reality is tension – and each year that passed my ideal age of marriage, the tension and sadness within me grew.

The problem was that my dream had turned from the proverbial dangling carrot – something providing hope and motivation, to a whip that taunted me with reminders of my inadequacies, failures, and inability to control factors which were outside of my control. I got my priorities out of order, and gave my dream the power to make or break me. In many ways, my dream became an idol and sat in the place in my heart reserved for Jesus.

We live in a cultural climate where oftentimes our hopes and dreams are given the same sort of gravity as the quest for the Holy Grail. In some circumstances it is even considered noble to sacrifice everything – our relationships, obligations and moral code, in the pursuit of our aspirations. Yet, when we allow the pursuit of our dreams to surpass our pursuit of Jesus, they become the breeding ground for dissatisfaction and blind us to the joys of the present. I could kick myself now for allowing myself to waste so many of my child-free, care-free, responsibility-light, and time-rich years wallowing in the misery of my singleness.

Taking a moment to get a little curious about what is driving the pursuit of our dreams is an excellent way to ensure they stay in healthy perspective. The answer to the following question can bring us huge insight: “When this dream has finally been realised, I will feel ____________.” Because when it comes down to it, a lot of the time that we are chasing ‘dreams’, we’re actually chasing a feeling. We want to feel accomplished, vindicated, satisfied, secure, loved, smart, acknowledged, happy, settled, or any combination of a million different feelings. It’s not bad to want these feelings, heck, I certainly do! We just run into trouble when we look for any of these feelings from a source other than the complete love and contentment that is offered to us in Jesus.

The feelings that come to us when a dream is fulfilled are lovely, but ultimately temporary. When we see a dream realised, we enjoy the feelings for a while, but the underlying need in our soul is only temporarily satiated, and it gets hungry again – so off we go in search of a differing feeling/dream in the hope that we will find a more permanent satisfaction.

The beauty of putting our quest for Jesus above our quest for anything else is that He has the resources, ability and desire to meet our deepest needs. When Jesus is meeting the cry of our heart, our dreams are free to become a life-giving, motivating, colourful and enchanting part of our story.

And in fact, I have discovered that when I am chasing first Jesus and His Kingdom, he provides me with the fulfilment of dreams that I never even knew that I had. One beautiful example of this is my job writing for a counselling app – not only would I never have dreamed that a job like that even existed, I also get to work from home, helping people from my kitchen table, while earning enough to pay for lovely little luxuries (like holidays to New Zealand) for my wee family. Jesus, in his kindness, knows better than I do what will feed my soul and light up my life.

It’s best to remember that our dreams are there to serve us, not enslave us. So, friends, let’s put our dreams in the correct place in our priorities, and allow them to put the icing on the cake of our lives of pursuit of Jesus. Because he will never leave us empty, or dissatisfied – He will fill us with the contentment, satisfaction and joy that we are seeking.

Love you friends,

Deb xx