I have kept a journal for as long as I can remember. I would start one and write feverishly for a week or two (that’s about as long as my consistency lasted) and then it would dwindle down to every once in a while for a vomiting venting session between my pen and I.
The thing was, whenever I would go back and read what I wrote, my cheeks burned with embarrassment. I would rip the pages out and start over. But the same thing kept happening.
I threw a lot of garbage away. So I would quit journalling, but then I would start up again and the same cycle would continue. I would write nonsense about the weather and the weeds growing and doing the dishes and my angst with people and my insecurities and it would turn into another vomit/venting session. Time would pass and I would take a trip down memory lane and flush with embarrassment as I considered my words. I would either hide the evidence or rip the pages out and start again.
Until one day I started thinking: ‘Do I want my kids reading this garbage when I am dead?’ The answer was a resounding ‘no!’ I didn’t want my kids to just know about the ugliness in my heart. I wanted them to know how my garbage met Jesus and changed me for the better.
How could I turn my rambling journal thoughts about the messiness of my heart into an honest portrayal of a woman bent on living and loving and serving God while staying true about my struggles, but not staying in the struggle?
This became my quest.
I decided to be a ‘life-giver journaller’. I wasn’t sure what that looked like, but I wanted to be able to leave my journals as a life-giving gift to my lovelies after I died. So I bought a pretty journal because beauty inspires me. It was lavender pseudo-suede that I found on the end-cap of a discount store. I dated it and the blank page sat there, staring at me, mocking me, daring me to fall into the same ugly writing habit.
That blank page turned into a fledgling attempt at turning all my garbage and brokenness into an offering of praise. I would write verses that spoke to me and then an application for my life in my present season.
Yes, I wrote about the ugliness of my heart and the garbage would spill out, but this time I laid God’s word over my words and saw things through his lens. I said my truth and then I covered it with his Truth.
And for the first time, my words became life-giving.
I wrote as a gift to my kids, but I also wrote to myself.
Encouraging my heart. Examining my heart. Exercising my heart.
Now, when I take a walk down memory lane, I see remembrances of the evidence of God in my life. I see how he showed up in my ugliness and messiness and insecurities and emotional brokenness and brought healing and life. Through his word in my words.
I don’t hide my journals anymore. I have one on a bookshelf, a couple others are kept on a side table by my favorite chair. They are there for me to leaf through and be encouraged. The current one is with my bible and comes out each time I open God’s word.
I write about the nitty-gritty stuff of my heart and life. I also write about the joys and triumphs. I write quotes from books that affect my heart. But mostly I write those books to be a gift to my lovelies to give life to their hearts and for them to see into their flawed mama’s heart as she struggled along loving them well.
Proverbs 16:24: ‘Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.’
How do you use your words to bring life? Is this an area you struggle in? If you are a journaller, do you have hidden journals that need to see the truth of God laid over them?
But my attempts fail. If I am not visible to my lovelies, then their voice seeks me out: ‘Mom?’ Mo-o-o-mmm?’ ‘Where are you?‘ Someday I might be able to go to the bathroom without having to announce my plans. Maybe someday I won’t have to check in with someone (probably not).
My favorite hideaway that I visit in my day dreams involves mountains and a lake and a small cabin at water’s edge. It is green. It smells of the northwest. I have my coffee in one hand, a stack of books in the other and the sound of birds filling my ears. My heart sighs and I am at peace.
Then I wake to reality. I may not be able to physically hide, but I am learning where I can hide myself.
‘You are my hiding place, you will protect me from trouble, you surround me with songs of deliverance.’ Psalm 32 :7
What does hiding in the Lord look like?
I think of hiding places as being calm and still and secret, but how does this work in my everyday life? My everyday life is not calm, still and secret. It’s messy and noisy and involves a lot of people. In my everyday life, I am tired. In my everyday life, I sometimes forget to pay attention to life as it’s passing by.
How in the world do I tuck myself into Jesus while at the same time reaching out and ministering to my family? Practically speaking I cannot literally hide. I could tell my lovelies that we are going to play hide and forget the seek, but that won’t work. The seeking is where the fun is! There are too many things that require my attention and time. So what does hiding in Jesus look like?
It must, it needs to be a spiritual act. We live on two planes. What our spirits are engaged in and what our physical selves are doing. The soul – our mind, will, and emotions – is the tie between the two parts.
What are the thoughts running through my mind? The verses in 2 Cor. 10: 3-5 instruct me to take every thought captive and bring it under the authority of Jesus. My spirit must be engaged with what my soul is thinking and feeling.
Living in awareness of where our thoughts take us is one key to staying hidden in Christ.
So I tell myself: Think about Christ. Think about his love and promises. Practice living peace, love, joy, patience, goodness, self-control, kindness, faithfulness and gentleness.
Live aware.
The fight between lies and truth take place in the battlefield of my mind. The renegade thoughts attempt to disrupt the peace of God in my heart and to push me out of the hiding place. The truth of who Christ is and who I am and whose I am, keep me in the hiding place. Could taking my thoughts captive be another way of saying that I am hidden in Christ?
Hiding places bring to mind small, dark, narrow places, but really, what if, by just changing our mindset of what hiding places are, we find the spacious place of rest in Jesus?
He is light and in him there is no darkness. So, imagine his hiding place as being filledwith the most wonderful, warm light and everywhere else is darkness. Where would you rather be?
In the light.
The world outside of the light is dark and scary and it is hard to find the way. That place, the darkness, is just a step away from the light. One step and I can be plunged into the darkness. One step back and I find the light of his hiding place.
He is my hiding place. He is my protector. My anxious heart is soothed by songs of deliverance. And I have found my hiding place in Him.
‘You are my hiding place, you protect me from trouble, you surround me with songs of deliverance’.
May we rest in him and hide ourself in the light of his goodness and trust.
We can say we believe, but do we? When the way grows rough and the storm looms close do we believe as much as we did when the way was smooth and the skies clear? When it feels like you cannot catch your breath because the waves are crashing with increasing ferocity, do you believe with the same amount of fervor as when the water was as smooth as glass?
This question comes up to haunt me in the night. It hounds me when I am trapped in shame. It challenges my desperation. It ramrods my pride.
Yet, belief was the key to the sick woman and the synagogue ruler. It was their belief that fueled their desperation. It was their belief that prompted their seeking Jesus. Belief fueled their reception of their personal miracle.
Belief.
There were those in the synagogue leader’s and the woman’s life that did not believe that healing could come. Think of the woman: she spent all she had searching for health through the hands of mere men and instead of getting better she grew worse. She was probably written off as a lost cause and there was no one left to believe that she would be restored. Think of Jairus: his daughter was still alive when he fell at Jesus’ feet begging for Jesus to come and heal his daughter, yet, when Jesus finally arrived, Jairus’ daughter was dead. There was no hope because there was no life.
There have been and probably always will be those folks in my life who challenge my belief in my Jesus. There will be those that will tell me to stop bothering Jesus with the request that obviously is dead. I have those kind of latent dreams that I wonder if they will ever happen in this world. But the dreams persist and I hear Jesus tell me, just as he told Jairus: ‘Don’t be afraid, just believe.’
In that statement, Jairus had to choose who he was going to believe. Would he believe his friends and family or would he believe Jesus? Can you imagine the single-mindedness of Jairus as he walked those last, long, short steps to his home? Can you imagine the battle within his heart and what his mind was telling him? His heart is telling him to believe and reverberating through his mind is the news that his daughter is dead. Whose voice will be louder? Jesus or the crowd?
This is the challenge that I face. Will I let Jesus’ voice be louder in my mind and heart or will I let the crowd of doubt and logic drown it?
It wasn’t logical that by just one touch of Jesus’ hem would the woman be healed. It wasn’t logical that a child could be raised from the dead. There is no human logic that could explain or support a healing touch.
But what part of Jesus follows our human logic? I have experienced a peace that makes no sense when I look at the circumstances in my life. I have experienced the courage to take the next step to tear down idols that prevent the people I serve from growing in their worship experience. I have experienced freedom from the approval seeking junkie I once was.
These things are unexplainable outside the power of the touch of Jesus in my life.Will you believe? Will you be desperate? Will you seek out the presence of Jesus in your life? If you can, if you will to, you might experience miracles in your life that defy our human logic as well. And that is a very exciting place to be.
