I Will Also Dance

I am so thankful to be part of Bonnie Gray's launch team for her beautiful - inside and out - new book, Whispers of Rest. It just released yesterday!

I've been reading it for close to four weeks* and it's been like I imagine cups of water feel when handed to marathon runners. This devotional has been poetic, practical, and peaceful relief and refreshment on a daily basis during a time when I have desperately needed it.

Jesus has met me through these pages.

In recent days, God has used Bonnie's words to remind me my hope is in Him. Not doctors or teenagers or myself or anyone else. My hope is in Christ and the Holy Spirit IN me and IN God's people. But even so, clinging to my God of Hope lately has felt like a tug-of-war with desperation and anxiety trying mighty hard to defeat me.

Monday this week I tried to count everything as JOY. Ten years ago I wrote a song called "Count It All Joy", and I dug it out so I could remember the words. What amazed me wasn't the song, but ALL of the songs. I found song after song after song after song I had written 3-10 years ago.

Where had my song gone?

I opened this Monday afternoon. Even the chocolate was preaching at me!

I was so sad to see how grief and stress and other problems in recent years had stolen my joy.

I woke up in the middle of the night and cried a bit. Then I woke up yesterday morning and read these words in Whispers of Rest:

God whispered to me that it was time to PLAY. A couple of pages later, I read this:

"Dare to be renewed. Dare to play. Today. ... Make time to play. Be child-like. Laugh, waste some time, SING, dance, try something new. Renew your spirit with joy."

I cried again, but this time touched by the tenderness of the Holy Spirit. I downloaded a song I'd heard on the radio and made it my anthem for the day. I danced and sang in the morning. I exploded marshmallows in the microwave with the kids in the afternoon. I even took pictures of the dishes when I noticed the colors were all matching each other (and the tile and Bonnie's book!) last night.

Ok, so I did have to add some red and purple and black and brown eventually. But the blues and whites and silvers made me smile. :) 

As I wake up today, the worries are threatening to steal my joy again. I'm choosing this time, however, to remember the things I'm worried about may be real and hard and confusing, but they are not the end of the story or the whole story. There is more to life than the difficulties and a good way to deflate my anxiety is to focus my attention on something else. To count my blessings and remember the Blesser.

I will still grieve when I need to grieve and work when I need to work. This marathon is far from over and I have to keep running this race. So, run I will.

But I will also dance.

(You've GOT to hear this song. Dance with me?)

In His Joy,

Melissa

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 *In order to participate in the Whispers of Rest Launch Team and write a review of the book (which I'll do in full once I've finished it in a few weeks), I was given an advance copy of the book. (Yippee!) Whispers of Rest is a 40 day devotional detox designed to help the reader hear God's voice and enter into His rest. It's now available everywhere books are sold! Check out Bonnie's website for more info and free downloads, and join us June 5 for a 6 week online book club. 

Planting Hope

Once a year, Lowell and I wander the garden section at Home Depot or OSH or a local nursery and choose a plant together. We come home and pick a spot for it in our yard and plant it in celebration of our marriage. It's a cherished anniversary tradition and a symbol of hope for the future.

Sweetheart Cherry Tree - Planted April 2017 for our 21st anniversary

Passionfruit Vine - Planted April 2015 for our 19th anniversary

Maybe it's the farmer's blood running through my veins, but I see planting as an act of faith. We never know for certain if what we've planted will survive and thrive and bear fruit or not. We know some things die. Yet hope and faith say to keep digging and weeding and planting anyway.

Even if you don't know if you'll live in the house long enough to ever taste the fruit.

Even though it could die if it freezes in winter.

Even though dogs sometimes do dumb things and dig stuff up that you've just poured your sweat into.

It's still worth hoping and it's worth planting and dreaming. Especially with someone you love.

Since we moved back from Peru, we've celebrated 3 anniversaries in Fresno. Last year, for our 20th anniversary we planted a Hot Chocolate Calla Lily with deep purple flowers. It was gorgeous. 

I was really bummed that it didn't come back up this year after the extra cold, wet winter we had. Even when the Easter lilies were already in full bloom, there was no sign of life from the Hot Chocolate Calla Lily - just an empty patch of dirt, twigs, and dried leaves where we planted it last year.

I sighed, accepted it just didn't make it, and moved on disappointed.

Until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed some little green spikes poking through the earth. It turns out our Hot Chocolate Calla Lily just sleeps longer than it's relatives and is very much alive after all.

Have you given up hope on anything? Is there something God planted in your heart that grew for a while but now you can't find it or it seems to be dead? Have you left a dream behind because there doesn't seem to be a place for it in your here and now? Be encouraged that not everything that seems dead has died. Dreams and gifts and hearts sometimes have to lay dormant for a season. We wait and hope and trust and keep planting new seeds, but sometimes God breathes new life back into the old as well. 

Look for life today, friends. You just might find it where you've stopped expecting it. 

And whatever you do, plant some hope.

Dream new dreams. Say hello to someone new. Learn and read and smile and encourage and weed and exercise or study and work. Plant something! Change another diaper and teach that little one to tie their shoes. Invest in the future even when you don't know what may come of your efforts.

"So we must not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not give up." ~ Galatians 6:9 (NET) 

Lord, open my eyes today to see what You're bringing to life - either after I thought it was dead or for the first time. Let me see the world through eyes of hope and expectancy. Help me to keep planting and tending Hope. In Jesus' Name and by Your Power and with overflowing Thankfulness, Amen.

Whispers of Hope

God has been going out of his way (though really it just is his way!) to speak HOPE to me in the last few days. In books, on walls, in songs, and in Scripture, over and over and over again I keep seeing this word: HOPE.

It is touching my heart in tender, merciful ways. Driving home from Shaver Lake this morning was worshipful. The mountain vistas and rocks and trees and hills seemed to be breaking into song all around. The beauty was stunning. These drought-stricken hills are a brilliant green, for a little while anyway, and I didn't want it to end.

(Can you see the rainbow off in the distance, just over the hill?)

While the green was lovely, I was most captivated by the oak trees. 

It's hard to tell the difference between dormancy and death when you can only see the surface, but there they stood. Survivors of drought and fighters for life, their roots go down DEEP. They aren't afraid of winter seasons that look like death because they know HOPE. They aren't afraid of their true shape being exposed because in dropping their leaves, they let through more light. They lift their bare branches to the heavens in a posture of praise and worship, all the while digging down deeper and deeper so they can keep surviving as long as the drought may last. They are brave, bold and beautiful even in the barest state. At least to me. 

I, too, am still in a winter-like season. I'm not doing any official serving or ministry or leading right now and haven't since we returned from Peru last year. For at least a few more months, I'm allowing God to continue to work on healing hearts and deepening roots, because it's not that kind of fruit-bearing time. Not yet, anyway. We trust with hope, just like the oak trees, that this is truly just a season and that fruit will be grown and shared once more. I hope that as I stand before God with the leaves down that more light will continue to shine and more work will be done where it's needed.

I can't help but compare this season of my heart to the seasons around me and find it intriguing how timely it is. I pass by peach, plum and nectarine orchards several times a week. Like the oak trees, they have stood bare through the winter and recently I have watched the farmers and workers out in the middle of the still bare-branched trees with pruning shears in their hands. It is the season for pruning and shaping. They are removing dead and unnecessary wood so that the best harvest will come a few calendar pages from now. The best time for pruning is now - before the leaves cloud the view. The blossoms are coming, too. Every day I am intently searching for glimpses of the tiny hope-bearers that are about to explode all around me. And they're starting to show up. More evidence of hope.

I will cling to hope, too. Whether it's because the skies inside feel grey or because the pruning shears in the hands of God sting when they expose and thin the dead attitudes and damaging lies that will keep me from bearing fruit in the future, I will hold on to hope. As sure as the oak trees and I are that spring will come, I am sure that someday again bareness will turn to bearing. Fruit and glory bearing will come in due time.

And in the meantime, I have HOPE. And much more. And that's enough.