Stuck

“How do you keep going so hard for so long when you can’t even stop to take a breath?,” she asked. I told her this season of life is clearly my [much-needed] boot camp for dying to self, and for coming to hard-core terms that this world will never satisfy. It’s broken. It’s hard. It’s not my Home. Those realities are what keep me hanging on.

But several nights later, the rubber met the road of routine and my soul pounded the pavement in resistance. I just wanted to stop, let my mind soar freely beyond these four walls, and let my soul breathe. But I was called yet again to the same place, at the same time, to do the same thing. And I didn’t want to. There was a temper tantrum raging in my soul, and I wasn’t ready to surrender.

So I stepped out the front door and sat down on the top step, beneath the warm blanket of stars. It was a quiet night. And the only motion in view was the flickering of the street lamp, wavering back and forth just like my soul. What it needed to do, was the very thing it was struggling to do.
And so was I.

And there was that kite. The one stuck in our walnut tree. My son had pointed it out to me from the Dining Room window a few days before. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have ever noticed it.

The breeze that night was enough to border chilly, and enough to entice the kite elsewhere. So I watched that kite. I watched her fight in the darkness against the branch that held her there.
Constantly wrestling to be free.

She’s a kite, afterall. She’s designed to be in motion, to soar high among the roving clouds and endless sky. Not to be stuck stagnant at ground level.
She was clearly out of place. And in essence, useless.

Then I saw what surrounded the kite.

Flower buds.
Quiet whispers of life.
Steady companions anxious to burst declarations of beauty. Declarations of their Creator.
Reminders of His presence.
All in the same place that months ago, held coldness and death.

On top of that, the kite was free to behold the majesty of the night sky.
Because she was stuck.

Had she not been stuck, her nights would have been spent in the sterile darkness of storage. Missing out on the radiance of the moon, and the canvas of constellations.

As she wrestles against the rough branch, He whispers to her in the wind. So she does something different this time. She leans into the branch. And she begins to see things she's never noticed before. 

She sees a young Daddy swing his little girl around and land her on his shoulders.  

She breathes the crisp night air, watching the sky expectantly for shooting stars like a child on Christmas Eve.  

The other day, she watched as a family, 15-year neighbors to the walnut tree, packed up their memories to make new ones in a new home.  

And she's witnessing the sacred courage of a husband and wife as they battle their way through the dark alleys of a cruel disease.

Despite her struggle to break free, she’s beginning to see beauty blossom around more corners than ever before. Even while wrestling lonely in cold, dark nights.

As I write, she remains stuck in my walnut tree.
But maybe she’s not so out of place, after all.

Because apparently, this isn't about the chance to fly again.
This season in the walnut tree IS about the kite breaking free. But it's about her breaking free from something greater. Something that holds her back far more than the heaviest of branches ever could.
It's about discovering strange new sources of joy. And peace.
And surprisingly – freedom.

In fact, it's about redefining freedom.
Finding a freedom she's never known before.
One that soars wild and uninhibited, closer to the Heartbeat of Heaven than even the open skies.
One that finds glimpses of His glory in the small, but sacred, plot of land where He's placed her.
A thrilling liberation to embrace that her worth goes far beyond what she can and cannot DO.

She's finding these freedoms.
In the stuck.

She's beginning to see that we glorify God not just by doing big things, out there, for all to see. But by doing the little things.
Right here.
With nobody watching but Him.
Because He's enough.

She's beginning to trust that the significance of her days isn't defined by her scope or reach.
And that her value isn't secured by grand scenery or a seemingly extraordinary calling.
Because when God's in it, it's all extraordinary.

She's discovering this grand paradox. This freedom in the stuck. This beauty in the tangled mess. Soul rest in the assurance that no matter how useless she feels, or even looks, in her stuck state, she can still partake in the goodness and glory of God.

~ ~ ~

What circumstance has been beyond your control and left you feeling stuck?

My experience on the branch has been an isolating one. How would you describe your experience?

Have you ever considered ways the branch might be a friend in disguise, rather than an all-out enemy?

And I constantly misplace my identity in what I do (or think I should be doing), rather than in Who He is, do you?

Share your thoughts, & share the post!

The One Thing Your Blog Strategy (and your soul) Can’t Do Without

Create titles that hook ‘em, they say.
And they’re right.

Present your content with visual cues to keep them reading, they say.
Yep, I’m a believer!

Find your voice.
I agree. It makes all the difference.

Close with a call to action to invoke a response from the reader.
Marketing 101.

And above all, write, write, and write some more.
Mhmm, Writing 101.

No doubt about it, I have a huge passion for strategic communication. My background is in marketing, so I champion all the above principles. But there’s an ingredient that’s imperative to any blog strategy that I have yet to see in any “top tips for bloggers” articles.
And it trumps them all.

Some of you may have a good rhythm with your blog and don’t tend to second-guess your writing, your strategy, or yourself in the process. But I’m guessing for the majority of you, that’s not the case. Especially after reading posts from blogger friends like this one and this one.

So let me put my arm around your shoulder and be your voice of encouragement today.

This, friend, is what I want you to hear:

It’s okay if you’re titles don’t stop the entire world in its tracks.

And it’s okay if you’re struggling to find your voice.

Yes, it’s even okay if you don’t close with the all-imperative CTA.

It’s okay if you’re inconsistent,
don’t come up with the next big thing,
and don’t write nearly as often as you’d like to.

It’s o-kay.

So why, you ask, is a writer who has a huge passion for marketing communications offering you the freedom to break all the strategic rules she tenaciously champions?
Because I have a greater passion for Grace.

Grace is what trumps all I know about marketing. It’s the glorious freedom that tenderly beckons me to set aside strategy and break the rules. Regularly.
Because I want to know Him more than I want to know success.

But Tanya, you ask, won’t that make my blog ineffective, stagnant, and stale?
Oh, dear friend. Trying to constantly configure the perfect equation for the perfect blog will make your soul ineffective, stagnant, and stale.

That’s far too high a price to pay.

And please don’t mistake me for saying that a highly-visible blog is a bad thing, or that it's equated with a lack of intimacy with God, or that we should suppress our God-given dreams. Not at all.

I want to make an impact on our world as much as you do. And that’s a good thing. What I AM suggesting is that we don't let that desire to make Him known trump our desire to know Him.
Or else we’ll begin to mistake our impact for our identity.

I don’t know about you, but I wrestle with that. A lot. I’ve had a post about my struggle with that percolating for seven months, but for now I’ll leave it to Oswald Chambers to sum up:

“Beware of getting ahead of God by your very longing to do His will.
We run ahead of Him . . .
becoming so burdened with people and problems that we don't worship"

Beware of getting ahead of God by your very longing to do His will, dear blogger . . .

When you can’t find that snappy title that readers will find irresistible,
remember God’s power is made perfect not in competence,
but in weakness.

When you can’t find your voice,
trust His to speak through you.

When you’re banging your head up against a wall to come up with an engaging call to action (not that I’d know . . .ahem),
trust His Spirit to invoke a response in the reader’s soul in ways you or I never could.

And when the only feedback you receive is the sound of crickets chirping instead of comments affirming,
remember Who you’re writing for.
[And that it's also okay to break rules of grammar.] 

Strategic marketing and communications isn’t the end all be all for our blogs, dear blogger.
Your relationship with the One who authors your life story IS.

That relationship with Him is more important than your ministry for Him.
So don’t sacrifice intimacy with Him for the sake of traffic and stats.

Impact is valuable.
But it doesn’t determine your value.

And so, my fellow blogger, fellow life sojourner. Whether your blog strategy is written in a file or simply in your mind, THIS is what He longs for you to engrave in it:

GRACE.

For the imperfect blogger.

~ ~ ~
And now I want to hear from you!

How have you perceived success for your blog?

Do you struggle to embrace grace when you see other bloggers excel?

Do you ever let your personal value get too wrapped up in your blog?

Have you mistaken your impact for your identity?

And why not encourage your favorite bloggers today with this post?
Every blogger struggles with discouragement, at times. And not just us small-scale bloggers. So why not reach out to your favorite bloggers by sending this to them! Tell them how much you appreciate their pouring their heart out on the screen. And remind them of the freedom they have to be imperfect.

Let's cheer one another on toward grace-based blogging!



P.S. My little story of grace in this imperfect post . . .

Out of all the strategic communication tactics I shared, the one I struggle with most is closing my pieces with engaging questions. So several posts ago, I quit banging my head against the wall and decided to be okay without them.  A big part of my blog’s purpose is to be a source of joy for me, not pressure, and my laboring over that tactic was defeating that purpose.

Well, you know the rest of the story, right? As I was finishing up this piece, God brought the above questions to mind. Not just one, several! It was so foreign to have them simply come to mind without laboring over them for days on end that I have to shake my head in wonder and smile. It’s so like Him.

So! Making a cameo appearance here on Truth in Weakness, closing questions! Enjoy them while I have them, folks – Engage away!

Love Finds You

 

As they pulled into the driveway, I could see in his face that his body had just taken a hit. And that was before I spotted the mound of gauze covering his eye. It was a planned surgery, but that didn’t make it any easier to see my gregarious man lacking his usual zeal.

His designated-driver buddy got out of the car first, and joked that my husband “thought” he was coherent, but it sounds like the sedation clearly offered our friend some early-morning entertainment.

Then my husband stepped out of the car. More slowly, and less confidently than usual. With only one eye offering cloudy vision at best, he chuckled as he emerged and half-jokingly said, “I can’t find you.”
And I said, “That’s all right. I’ll find you.”

We embraced, I thanked our friend for getting up at the crack of dawn to go with my husband [since my health hasn’t allowed me to do that], and we made our way inside the house.

~ ~ ~

When we face trauma, even if it happens to be something we choose, don’t we attempt to manage our pain the same way my husband’s doctors did? We tackle it with pain killers from every angle, right? Locally and systemically. We anesthetize the point of pain with a numbness so potent we’ve ensured a total loss of all sensation.  And when the world offers valium promises to make sure we don’t even know we’re hurting, all logic convinces us to accept.
Just give me anything to make me not feel the pain.

As counterfeit comfort flows through our veins, it creates a false sense of reality, our entire system unaware of our gaping gash. Even giddy in the midst of it. (By the way, the side effects of the valium? It compromised his digestion – his body rejecting an essential for survival.)

Between the trauma, itself, and the side effects of our synthetic, self-prescribed coping counter-measures, our souls are crippled. Our thinking seems rational, but when we’re only seeing out of one eye, we perceive the world partially blinded. Our vision gets cloudy, and our equilibrium gets off kilter because we’ve lost our center of gravity.

Sure, on the outside, we look fine. We smile, crack a joke, and keep our incisions concealed under sterile white gauze. Because after all, exposure makes wounds vulnerable, prone to infection. And just like when my husband first stepped out of the car, we get so disoriented in life that we have a hard time focusing, and finding God in the midst of it all.

Yet with floods of grace, our tender Father looks past all our desperate attempts to find comfort everywhere but in Him, and sees our soul countenance with full clarity.

He knows the raw wounds that seep below all the gauze.

And He wants you to know,
“It’s all right. I’ll find you.”

 
"Israel, out looking for a place to rest,
met God out looking for them!"
(Jeremiah 31:3)

Image courtesy of Todd White

Dear Overwhelmed, and Constantly Disappointed in Yourself

What a hard road in life you’re walking right now, friend. Maybe more like crawling. I am so sorry, and I know how weary you are. Many days life feels like it’s spinning out of control, doesn’t it? But I want to tell you something. I see your Father doing something in you, something good.

I know you probably can’t see it, because all you see is what you’re not doing, right? What’s falling through the cracks. That phone call you wanted to make to your friend who’s hurting, the meal you’d planned on providing a long time ago for the one in need, the opportunities to reach out to others that your heart longs to say yes to. I understand. It’s a perpetual struggle for me to see past all that I’m not doing as well.

But here’s what I see in your life. I see God shifting your dependence from yourself to Him. Because each time you fall short, each time you feel like a bad friend, or wife, or mom – those are invitations, sweet soul.
Intimate invitations to cling to the Cross.

Or as William R. Newell puts it:
“To be disappointed with yourself
is to have believed in yourself.”

"Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."
~ Isaiah 43:19

Finding Christ in the Chaos

Today, I have the privilege of writing as a guest author at Dayspring’s beloved (in)courage community. I’m sharing about my search for intimacy with the Lord in the middle of a chaotic Sunday morning. Probably the same desperate search most of us are on every day during the holiday season, right?

Here’s a sneak peek:

“By the time I stepped through the doors and into the worship center, I felt like I had run a marathon. Surrounded by souls engaged in heart-felt praise and worship, I found my seat like a driver going 60mph who had just spotted the stop sign ahead.

Slam on breaks.

Screeching halt.

Worship mode: GO!

Frazzled and exhausted, I knew there was no way I could flip that impossible switch . . .”

Click here to join me for the Rest . . .

And make sure you chime in with a comment! I’m praying that the Lord loves on you through it, so I don't want to miss the opportunity to personally greet you when you walk through the door!!

Letting Go of the Need to Make Sense of the Pain

“Lean not on your own understanding.”
(Proverbs 3:5)

Remember those impenetrable, self-protective walls we talked about recently? You know, the ones we build in an attempt to avoid the uncertain, the uncomfortable, and the painful. Yet the ones that also prevent our souls from breathing cleansing breaths of freedom and joy in the process. (If you're new here, you definitely want to read that post first.)

I’ve thought a lot about why and how I’ve built my walls. Long before I wrote that piece. But when I invited God to tear them down, my longing to fully understand the ins and outs of my walls clearly grew. It only made sense that understanding their construction was the key to their removal.

But one night recently, I picked up a devotional and read this:
“The heart is deceitful above all else. I’ll never be able to understand it.”

I’ve heard that verse. I’ve heard it a thousand times. But I’ve never heard it put that way before – that “I’ll never be able to understand it.” And when I read it that night, it hit me:
I’ve been trying to understand my heart all this time –
but I’ll never be able to!
I simply can’t.

One commentary explains the reality this way:
“It even hides itself from itself;
so that its owner does not know it.”
(Sheesh! Tell me about it!)

Immediately after I read that verse, I opened an entry in My Utmost that warned about bargaining with God, and wanting Him to reveal
before we respond.

“But when you act on the basis of redemption, and stop the disrespectfulness of debating with God . . . “

I couldn’t read any further.
My eyes were stuck on debating . . .
Horrified at the possibility.

And in essence, that's exactly what I've been doing. I’ve been debating with God. Wanting to fully understand these walls to the nth degree before reaching out in love like He calls me to do. Making my response dependent on my finite understanding, rather than dependent on Grace.

Am I saying we should live in blind ignorance or denial? Of course not. Understanding is imperative, oftentimes a springboard for healing. But it isn't our source of healing. And it can't be a prerequisite for choosing to love. I want to walk by faith and not by sight – even in the broken places of my heart.

So as we invite the Lord to tear down our walls,
He beckons us to shift our focus off the wall, and onto Him.
He calls us to prioritize the relationship over the rational understanding.

Because sacrificial love doesn't demand an explanation.
And genuine forgiveness is an extension of Grace, not logic. (It defies logic!)And healing doesn't hinge on human understanding.

"Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army.
For the battle is not yours, but God's."
~ 2 Chronicles 20:15

Disney or Disability?

Which will leave the deepest footprint in your child’s soul?

Every time I see another friend’s pictures from a family trip to Disney, I have to fight a first-world-problem voice – the one that tries to tell me that we’re depriving our son because we haven’t taken him yet. I know it’s a lie, but I want to take him sometime, so that shallow thought never fails to show up with the pictures.

I don’t know if you’ve ever wrestled with feeling like your kids are missing out if they haven’t stood in the gateway to the Magic Kingdom. But let me ask you a seemingly-unrelated question. Have you ever thought about the impact on your children if they’ve never had the opportunity to look in the face of disability?

For lack of better segue, let me simply switch from my mom hat to my little girl hat here. As a child, I had the unique opportunity to walk through life with two families in our church who each had a young adult with special needs. Of course, this was before society was using the term, special needs. But we didn’t need it – because these folks had names, of course. And that was enough.

So while my impressionable view of the world (and the people in it) was forming, I was seeing people around me interact with these folks, hearing the sound of my parents’ voices exchange with theirs, and learning how to build relationships that aren’t based on commonalities, but delighted in differences. Of course I wasn’t consciously observing all this. I didn’t know that those ordinary Sunday morning moments were collecting as memories that would impact me for life.
But I do now.

Because as a result of my family’s regular involvement in those families’ lives, and theirs in ours, these are the precious gifts I was given:
     • A solid understanding of the value that each person on this planet possesses
     • A comfort with spending time with people who are different than I am
     • And the eyes to see that those differences are the very ways that the Lord reveals His glory through them

But I didn’t receive these sacred gifts by hanging out with these families for just a day or two. They came over time, as our families were involved in each other’s lives. Season after season, year after year.

I thought about these childhood experiences last week when I read a blog post by a mom who wrote a letter to the people around her son (who has epilepsy) who didn’t know what to say to him.
So they said nothing.

Folks, if we don’t model the privilege of living life with people who are different from us, we become the ones impaired.
And so do our children.

We desperately need to step out of our relational tunnels to embrace horizons of relational diversity. Might that be uncomfortable? Maybe. But why does that have to matter? Is comfort the goal? Is that the decision-making we want to model to our children?

Instead of letting the prospect of discomfort negatively influence your decisions, lean into the uncomfortable.
Welcome it as a close friend.
Because discomfort is the doorway to Dependence.

If this is unfamiliar territory and the thought’s intimidating, that’s okay. Ask the Lord to open your mind to taking the first step despite the intimidation, and remember that He’s greater than our feeble hearts. If you don’t know where to begin, just ask the Lord. He’ll gladly show you the first step.

Here are a few ideas that come to mind, but I’d love for you to add YOUR ideas in a comment to inspire our other readers!

     • Plug into your church’s special needs ministry. If it doesn’t have one, why not start one? I have a friend who can help you!
     • Initiate a relationship with somebody who’s chronically ill and house-bound. Start with a simple e-mail! (If you need insight or encouragement before you reach out, e-mail me – because I've been there!)
     • Invest time in a local soup kitchen or shelter. (You’ll be surprised how much you actually have in common.)
     • Develop friendships with people who are old and grey like we’ll all be in a few years. (Or if you’re the old and grey one, reach out to a young family – we need your wisdom!)

Place yourself in unfamiliar opportunities where you feel totally inadequate – because that’s where God’s power is made perfect.
And that’s when our eyes are opened to behold God’s glory.

Have you ever read the brief dialogue in John 9? It’s become a favorite of mine. Somebody asked Jesus why a man was born blind. And you know what He said?
So the power of God could be seen in him.

So am I proposing that we shouldn’t take our kids to Disney? Not at all.
Am I proposing that the memories from a trip to Disney pale in comparison to the impact of walking through life with folks who have special needs?
You BET I am.
A million times over.

Because think about it: We’re talkin’ about man-made magic, versus God-breathed glory . . .

Lean into the uncomfortable, my friend, even if you’re afraid.
Let it serve you and your family well. And others, too.
And get ready to experience true glory days.

(Pssst! Wanna hear a secret? The more you broaden your relational horizons, the more your discomfort will fade into a warm sunset of abundant joy. It’s a win-win!)

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___________________________________

A Few of my Favorite Disability-Related Resources

Free eBook: Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God

Blog post: Disability and Dads: Where Desperation Meets Delight

My Good Friend’s Blog: The Works of God Displayed
(a boat-load of posts, info, and answers about special needs ministry in the Church)

The compelling post I read last week: Letter to the Others


Linking up with The Alabaster Jar's Marital Oneness Mondays and The Parent 'Hood