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.

Here

My first 5 Minute Friday post in a while.  (And it's not Friday here yet, no, but it will be by the time my head hits the pillow in a little while. So here goes anyway!)

HERE

I almost don't want to intrude on the thoughts, feelings, peace, gratitude that well up right now when I think of that word. I am here. And I'm good with that. (Grin.) You don't know that it's significant, but I do. You don't know that I have wrestled so much - not with where I am, but with just ME. (Or maybe you're one of the ones that does...) :)  But for the moment - for today - for tonight - I'm at peace.

He's at work. There's no doubt about it. This peace is not from inside me, except for it being from the Spirit inside of me. So thanks, Lord. I know tomorrow is coming - with hormonal insanity and three kids and me and a couple of cans of paint and a new closet thing with its 248 pieces and they call those instructions?... But for tonight there is the God of peace. And He will be with me tomorrow, too.

5 Minute Friday at lisajobaker.com

Resting

This has been a really great week.  We had a nice day off on Monday after a very busy Sunday and yesterday I got to take a partial-day prayer retreat.  

(Ahhhhhh...................)

Here are a few pictures from our Monday...

Brothers playing together while their sister was out clothes shopping WITH HER DAD!

I'm so happy to have this tree in our patio.  We had several of these at our house and I just love them!

Hot, fresh out of the oven bread.

There are so many wasps around this place...  I'm thankful nobody has been stung!

Can you see the pollen on this bee's legs?  Amazing!  And do you know that it's really hard to take pictures of bees?  They are always moving...  (Made me think it's another thing I have in common with honeybees...)

We've had a family of doves nesting above the boys' window.  Fun to watch them, although one of the babies mysteriously disappeared today.  Hoping it had nothing to do with the cat Lowell saw this morning!

Sunflowers from our dessert Sunday night...  It was so wonderful to be with our friends from our home church.  We shared with them, they prayed for us, we ate yummy desserts and we felt loved.

God is good.  I am thankful.

Thank-FULL

**This was originally written and posted in May 2008.  It's a favorite of mine I thought I'd share again.  : ) **

Last weekend we went to Cambria (on the coast of California, a couple of hours away from where we live). And God taught me a lesson about thankfulness. On Saturday afternoon we went to the beach. I had this big plan to build a big sandcastle. We had buckets, shovels… we were set! Except the beach we went to didn’t have great sandcastle-building sand like I remembered. It had pebbles. Lots and lots and lots of pebbles and a little bit of sand. And once we got there and we discovered that Lowell was right and I was wrong, we couldn’t just go somewhere else, because we were waiting for Lowell's brother and his family to meet us there and we didn’t have cell service.

We sat down and tried to build a castle with the little bit of sand that was there, but it collapsed. So we just played in the pebbles and dug holes and fed and chased sea gulls and searched for “gems”. Mikaela had quite a beautiful collection of pretty rocks (her "gems") and by the end of our time there, we were all hunting with her. Well, in the middle of my gem hunting, I found a real treasure: thankfulness.

About a week ago, I was asking God about my tendency toward regret & disappointment. For example, I was really sad when I found out we could have sent Timothy a camera and other gifts when he was referred to us. I wished we had known and was in a small way grieving the loss of pictures we could have had if we had sent something earlier. But God showed me (as I pondered the regret issue) that a big part of the solution is TRUST. I needed to trust Him that it was fine and maybe even good (for whatever reasons) that we hadn’t sent anything before. If it hadn’t been fine or good, He would have done something about it. So I could trust Him, grieve what we had missed and move on.

That day at the beach, after we had been there a while having a very nice time, I was still wishing I would have remembered the beach wasn’t sandy so we could have gone somewhere else. Then God opened my eyes. Toby and Lowell were having fun trying to get the waves to make water go into a hole they had dug. And Mikaela was in paradise!!!!! She loves pretty little things as much as anything in the world and she was surrounded by them! And they were free! And she could collect as many as she wanted! And her mom was helping! And I was on the beach, listening to and watching the waves (one of my favorite things in the world to do). What in the world was I doing still wishing for something else? And that’s where I discovered thankfulness. When I stopped wishing for something else and started being thankful for what I had found instead, the regret and disappointment started to evaporate. And I also realized that thanks-GIVING is really quite easy when you’re thank-FULL to start with.

Y, Melissa

Sabbath

Here is Love... Vast as the Ocean

Last weekend was so amazing... for several reasons. Actually, for one: God is FAITHFUL. And He proved it BIG TIME!!! : ) Before the whole story, though, I (of course) have to give you a little background!

Way back in 2007 when we were working on our adoption paperwork, Lowell's sister and bro-in-law were doing the same thing over in Thailand (where they've lived since 2001). We were all so excited God had been leading both of our families to adopt and that our kids would have a Thai adopted cousin to share their experiences with. In 2008 when we were matched and preparing to travel, they got word that their file/adoption was 95% complete and they couldn't wait to bring home whatever little princess they were matched with - soon! They and their 2 boys (and the grandparents and aunts, uncles and cousins!), however, kept waiting and praying and waiting and praying... for over another year before they were FINALLY matched with an adorable little girl just before this last Thanksgiving. They thought they just might be able to bring her home before Christmas!!! They were so excited! (In case you're wondering, they are adopting directly through the Thai social system, so it's very different than our process was.)

Well, Christmas came and went. So did New Year's. And with every week, the anticipation and anguish and excitement and agony grew. Because they live less than an hour away from Bangkok, they were actually able to go visit their little princess at the orphanage where she has been so lovingly cared for. It was so good for them to get to go see her several times... but so SO hard to keep saying goodbye! After waiting for SO long, the wait just kept going and at times it felt like it would go on forever.

Well.

Friday morning a week ago we woke up to a message on our machine from Lowell's sister saying they were going to get to bring her home that day. HOME.

HOME!!!!!

I was SO HAPPY. Literally dancing with joy! After so long, to finally know she was going home... it was just too much joy and relief to bear quietly. : ) And it was the perfect way to start off my weekend. Just a few hours later I was on my way up the foothills to our church's 4th annual women's retreat where this year I was leading worship. I just couldn't wait to get up there and praise God for His faithfulness!!! I also couldn't wait to see how He was going to meet with us and speak to each of us there. Our theme was "Heart to Heart" and our theme verse was "Love never fails." One of the songs we were singing was "Here Is Love". These are the lyrics to the first stanza:

Here is love, vast as the ocean

Lovingkindness as the flood

When the Prince of Life, our ransom

Shed for us His precious blood

It's a beautiful old hymn that I was looking forward to teaching the ladies at the end of our session Friday night. As our speaker was talking, I was thinking back on the day and my joy about my niece finally going home with her family when it hit me. I love that little girl so much... and I have since I knew she was "ours." If she's on the other side of the ocean, then the love I have for her is "as vast as the ocean" even though I've never touched her and she's never heard my voice... And the love I have for her is NOTHING in comparison to the love that God has for each one of us.

(Isn't she CUTE?????!!!!!)

God was also SO faithful to meet us last weekend. His Presence with us was at times breath-taking. He did stuff in our hearts that needed to be done. He wove our hearts together. He filled us with ridiculous joy. : ) And He reminded me of how much He loved me.

God told me this once... and if you listen, I believe He'll say it to you, too...

I love you wider than the ocean.

Deeper than the grandest canyon.

Higher than the stars that shine up in the sky.

And I love you as long as eternity!

There is no place in the depths where He can lose us. No place in the cosmos where He would not love us. No stretch of eternity when He has not loved us or will not love us. When He has not or will not love me.

Thank You Father, for Your love for me that is as vast as the ocean... I don't know what else to say. (Except that I love you back.)

Me and My Big Mouth : )

Boy. I am amazed at how quickly God answers my prayers sometimes. Remember what I wrote a couple weeks ago time about wanting Him to deal with my ungrateful, whiny attitude? WOW. Did He EVER answer! (It’s always the best when I’m asking for things He’s prompting me to ask for… like He already has something wonderful to give me and He can’t wait for me to think to ask for it on my own – so he helps by making me see I need it, so I’ll want it, so I’ll ask for it, so He can give it to me already!) (Did you get that?) So. The night after I wrote that post I watched the week 6 video session of Believing God by Beth Moore and boy, was she ever fired up!!! She was talking about God's word being alive and active in us and about us needing to USE OUR MOUTHS to speak the truth and tell the mountains in our lives that were in the way of God's will for us to "MOVE IT!" (I wish every one of you would do this study because it is just so powerful and full of truth. God has been speaking to me SO MUCH through it!) As I was listening to her, I just knew God was giving me the answer to my prayers. He was telling me exactly how to break the power of the whining. Not just by praising Him, but by deciding and declaring that with God's strength I WAS GOING TO BE GRATEFUL and telling ungratefulness to get out of the way and out of my heart! I decided I was DONE with complaining and DONE letting it steal so much energy from me. And God agreed. : ) Throughout the next days He showed me verses and truth about how many things were hard for me just because I thought they were hard and about what He really wanted me to be doing with my big mouth. (And in case you don't know me in person, I do have a big mouth. Quite literally!) God also showed me that one of the reasons I was complaining and feeling sorry for myself so much was that I was believing Satan's lies that I was defeated or would never be victorious in certain areas of my life. I had to reject and renounce that lie and start believing and declaring that I was going to be victorious because in 2 Corinthians 2:14, God says so! ("But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.") God and I still have a lot of things to conquer in my life, but I feel like for the first time in a LONG time, I am living in victory over my old bad attitude. I'm continuing to choose to be grateful and refusing to complain and feel sorry for myself. And the most amazing thing has happened. Not only to I feel entirely different, but God is opening doors for me that have been closed for a long time. In the last 2 weeks He has scheduled me for several upcoming opportunities to use my big mouth to share with others at church in worship and teaching. And even though I'm still not sure how exactly I'm going to have time to do it all, God is doing something new in me and I absolutely believe the doors are now open because I have stopped complaining and living in defeat. Here is my new job description. : ) Colossians 3:15-17 says this: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." I could go on and on... but am going to save it for next time and stop before you fall asleep. Or before I do. : ) With a Thankful Heart, Melissa

I Think I'm Back (& I Have a Disease)

Well, I think I'm back... But I'm not making any promises! : ) What I DO know is that I miss blogging and am feeling ready to start talking to you all again! (Even though I'm still not really sure who some of you are... Feel free to delurk anytime!) I do expect there will be some changes around here, though. For one thing, I don't expect to be talking so much about adoption quite so often. While I'm still a HUGE FAN of adoption and how our family has been blessed by being allowed to adopt Timothy, at this point it's not the huge focus of my life that it was a few months ago. As of tomorrow, Timothy will have been home for 2 months (wow!) and in many ways it feels like so much longer. He belongs with us as much as any of the rest of us do. I'm sure I'll still be talking about adoption some, because I definitely do still think about it, BUT I'm hoping that I will be thinking about a lot of other things, too. Especially about God and Truth and the Truths I'm learning from God. For example... Yesterday I determined & declared that I HAVE A DISEASE. I'm still attempting to diagnose it, but I know that the symptoms are: selfishness, self-pity, grumbling & complaining, woe-is-me-ing, whining (OH, the WHINING that goes on in my head!), sighing, depression, blah, blah & blah. Your basic ungratefulness, I suppose. I've tried praising God and counting and thanking Him for all the uncountable blessings in my life. But it doesn't really fix how I'm feeling when I'm feeling bad. It often actually makes me feel worse, because on top of the selfishness, self-pity, etc. (see list above!) I then add GUILT & CONDEMNATION for feeling that way when there are SO many people in the world and even in my neighborhood with REAL problems and not just laundry piles and hungry children and sticky kitchen floors. There are so many people who are really suffering in the world. I AM NOT ONE OF THEM. I HAVE NO EXCUSE. SO. Yesterday, I discovered it was 3 weeks before Thanksgiving and I asked God to PLEASE HELP ME learn how to be thankful and show me what in the world is going on in my heart that is causing me to be so ungrateful. And He has already been showing me that it's even worse than I thought. It's like a cancer that has been effecting decisions I make and how I feel even about having to make decisions (wah!). And you know what? Surprisingly, I am already feeling more thankful and praising God because I've been in places like this before. Often, when I get to a place where I'm feeling the grossness of something in my heart that I hadn't really noticed before, it means 2 things: 1. God is exposing it because, 2. God wants to deal with it and free me from it! Hallelujah! So if you decide to come back and visit me again, hopefully you'll hear more (among other things) about what I'm learning about being thankful. Actually, I'm sure you will. Because God very strongly desires that I be thankful and I know that since I'm asking and it's something He agrees with, HE WILL DO IT. And I'm gonna thank Him when He does!!! See ya again soon. (It's nice to be back.) : ) Y, Melissa

Thank-FULL

Last weekend we went to Cambria (on the coast of California, a couple of hours away from where we live). And God taught me a lesson about thankfulness. On Saturday afternoon we went to the beach. I had this big plan to build a big sandcastle. We had buckets, shovels… we were set! Except the beach we went to didn’t have great sandcastle-building sand like I remembered. It had pebbles. Lots and lots and lots of pebbles and a little bit of sand. And once we got there and we discovered that Lowell was right and I was wrong, we couldn’t just go somewhere else, because we were waiting for Lowell's brother and his family to meet us there and we didn’t have cell service.

We sat down and tried to build a castle with the little bit of sand that was there, but it collapsed. So we just played in the pebbles and dug holes and fed and chased sea gulls and searched for “gems”. Mikaela had quite a beautiful collection of pretty rocks (her "gems") and by the end of our time there, we were all hunting with her. Well, in the middle of my gem hunting, I found a real treasure: thankfulness.

About a week ago, I was asking God about my tendency toward regret & disappointment. For example, I was really sad when I found out we could have sent Kamin a camera and other gifts when he was referred to us. I wished we had known and was in a small way grieving the loss of pictures we could have had if we had sent something earlier. But God showed me (as I pondered the regret issue) that a big part of the solution is TRUST. I needed to trust Him that it was fine and maybe even good (for whatever reasons) that we hadn’t sent anything before. If it hadn’t been fine or good, He would have done something about it. So I could trust Him, grieve what we had missed and move on.

That day at the beach, after we had been there a while having a very nice time, I was still wishing I would have remembered the beach wasn’t sandy so we could have gone somewhere else. Then God opened my eyes. Toby and Lowell were having fun trying to get the waves to make water go into a hole they had dug. And Mikaela was in paradise!!!!! She loves pretty little things as much as anything in the world and she was surrounded by them! And they were free! And she could collect as many as she wanted! And her mom was helping! And I was on the beach, listening to and watching the waves (one of my favorite things in the world to do). What in the world was I doing still wishing for something else? And that’s where I discovered thankfulness. When I stopped wishing for something else and started being thankful for what I had found instead, the regret and disappointment started to evaporate. And I also realized that thanks-GIVING is really quite easy when you’re thank-FULL to start with.

Y, Melissa