Seasons of Silence©

I’ve never done very well with silence.  It seems to have its own language, one I’m not very fond of.  Things often get misinterpreted leaving too much room for the imagination.  Hidden insecurities often rise to the surface leaving me to doubt and wonder.  I’ve been known to read a face when words do not escape lips; after all the eyes are the window to the soul.  It’s difficult to do with an unseen God.  I can’t see His eyes to know that the silence might not be all that I believe it to be.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined life to take the twists and turns that have come in these last two years. Often with transformative change there is upheaval, mess and down right weariness.  I have been weary beyond words as the elements of what seemed a cold hard winter invaded my soul.

I knew the words of scripture “I will never leave you or forsake you” yet when the silence falls so hard you begin to wonder.  Where is God anyways?  I couldn’t see Him, I couldn’t feel Him and now He’s gone silent.  It has challenged me in ways I’ve not known.

I have been reminded of the 400 years at the end of the Old Testament, before the new. God never left but He sure was quiet.  In the silence much was going on behind the scenes.  Preparation was being made for the greatest gift that would ever be given, the rescue of the souls of man.  Maybe the silence was an indication that He was busy behind the scenes of my life, preparing the gifts.  One could hope.

As I sit by the window on this cool day in April I see the evidence of Spring creeping its way across these mountains. I ache with the hope that it too has come to me.  I long to feel the winds of the Spirit blowing through me again like the gentle breezes that flow through these trees.

The words came to me again as I contemplated it all. I dared to ask in hopes that this time the sound barrier might be broken.  Maybe this time I would hear the whispers that would make some sense of all this, setting my heart to bloom once again with hope.  ”Why Jesus?”  ”Why has it been so quiet?”  ”Why have you been so absent?”

“I never left, Jewel.”

“Then where have you been?”

“Right beside you, holding you, tight.”  ”It’s been a season of grief.”  ”You needed to be held in this cold, hard winter.” “Words don’t mean much in the midst of grief and death.”  ”It’s the holding close that makes a difference. “I wasn’t absent, Jewel.” “I held you while you wept.”  ”As upheaval has come to your world, as you watched, ached, longed, and have fallen, I have held you.”  ”I have kept you.” “When life threatened to throw you over the cliff, I grabbed you.” “I was the arms that held you.”

As the words washed over me the vision came. There I was agony on my face, the ache of grief hidden in the walls of my heart, the sobs of the deep, and the arms tightly wrapped around; immoveable, invisible, yet there, tightly swaddling.

“This was a season of being held while you suffered loss, so I held you tight, so very tight.”  ”Grief has its season.”  ”It feels like the bleakness of winter, the hardness of the ground where the plants hide away.”  ”But even grief has its perfect work.”  ”You have been hidden amidst the grief as life has been changing around you, and in you.”

“I would never leave you for you are too valuable to Me.”  ”Don’t ever forget that.”

In the twinkling of an eye my heart was opened allowing the gentle breeze of His Spirit to find its way into the depths of my soul.  Suddenly I see what I have not known…..

I have been held by God.

©copyrighted: 2013: Julie L. Todd

 

 

The Compassion of God ©

The truck pulled into the driveway.  The gentleman that stepped out lived up the street.  I had seen him before but had never met him.  He went to the other side of his vehicle to gather my son gently up in his arms.  We walked to the door to greet him seeing his purpose for being there.  Josiah was scraped up pretty bad, abrasions on his face, arms, and legs.  His bicycle had crashed.

We thanked our neighbor, took our son inside and began to assess the damage.

Killer hill is just as it sounds, a steep hill with a long drop.  We’d told our son he could not take his bicycle there.  We knew its dangers.  He would not be able to handle it at his age.  He didn’t listen.

There’s something about being told you cannot do, that makes you want to do.  It was that way with my son that day.  He couldn’t anticipate the pain that awaited him if he crashed.  He wanted to be on his own running after that which he wanted.  It wasn’t until afterwards that the cost became evident to him, as he felt the sting of flesh torn abrasions multiplied on his little body.

As I watched him breathe in and out of the pain I ached.  I took him in my arms and tenderly washed his wounds applying the bandages to help them heal.  I could see the regret on his face as he received the love so freely offered.

I wonder what my son thought when he crashed down that hill?  Did he wonder if he would be in trouble?  Did he expect to be reprimanded?  After all he had done the wrong thing, that which he had been told not to do.  But I didn’t care that he had gone against what I had told him.  All I cared about was somehow, someway easing his pain to make it all better.

As this memory floods my being I am made aware of something that’s been there all along.  This has been the way of God with me.

I haven’t known that for most of my life.  For sin distorts everything I see.  I have felt the shame of my sin and believed He must too.   Oh he would never say that to me but somewhere deep inside at the core of my being, I knew I was a disappointment at best.

For you see, sin changed the way I saw; Me.  I believed what I saw, God saw too.  As I sit here I wonder what it did to His heart to watch me wait to be reprimanded and chastised, unaware of His true love.

I didn’t have eyes to see Him holding me close, cleaning my wounds, dressing them and making it all better.  I was convinced that He had to be disappointed in me.  After all I didn’t follow what I was told to follow.  In my limited understanding I was convinced that He had to be wishing I was something I was not.  It caused me to step on a gerbil wheel to try harder next time, to be better.  Somehow, someway I would strive to become that good little girl I was supposed to be.   The God I was told about saw my imperfections but  somehow found a way in his heart to love me in spite of them.

It’s not the God I’ve now come to know.

The first act of love in the Garden of Eden was to cover the attempts Adam and Eve had made to assuage their sin.  They were naked and ashamed of what they had done.  They gathered fig leaves to hide the rawness of their failures and then they hid. They were afraid of God and what He would do.

But God came after them for He desperately loved them.  He removed their self-imposed coverings and replaced it with His own…  From that day forward Adam and Eve were covered by God.  It’s stunning to realize it all. 

Everyday, on my worst day, I am covered by God with the righteousness of Christ.  On my ugliest days of making wrong choices I am loved with an everlasting love.  He sees me not in my sin but in the newness of who He knows me to be.

The more the religious bindings fall away the more clearly I see this mother heart that dwells within revealing this God I have loved for so long.  Sin distorts everything, yet love covers a multitude of sin.

This life with my own awakens me to the reality of His heart to me.  For my dear ones are loved beyond their wildest dreams.  The love does not change due to the mistakes they make.  They are mine and I am theirs, always and forever.

While I was yet a sinner Christ came for me.  He didn’t see the filth I was covered in.  He saw the one He created to love.

He saw …. Me

©copyrighted:  2012; Julie L. Todd

Our Suffering; His Anguish©

I watch from afar as they go through the hardest days of their lives.   In mid-December my dear friends lost their 10-year-old daughter suddenly.  She’d been sick with the flu, home with family all week while they were out-of-town having medical tests run.  When they returned home she was rushed to the ER.  Within hours she was gone.  Blood poisoning.  Another dear friend lost her 24 year old daughter before Thanksgiving, a week later another friend lost hers too.

What do you say in a time like this?  ”God will work all things for good, you’ll see!” “God’s got a greater glory, a greater lesson to be found in all this.”  It’s the normal cliché that we so often hear in times where we don’t understand.  We want to make sense of it, say something that will make us feel better.  I mean after all how could a good God allow this to happen?  There’s got to be something spiritual and deep to make it have meaning.

It’s true you know.  God does have a plan in all things and He does work it all for good.  But what does He really think about what has just wrecked their world?  Did He do this?

I heard it often taught that everything that happens to us filters through the hands of God.  It can’t touch us without His permission. The reference given was when Satan asked to have his way with Job and God gave permission.

As bad things came into my life I convinced myself that I too was being tested to see what I would do.  It put a picture in my mind of a God who just waited while I suffered to prove something that needed to be proven or grow something that needed to be grown to receive some kind of glory.

How did I really believe all that I now wonder?  How can a God who inflicts pain in order that He might receive glory be a God who loves?  The two don’t mix you know.  I can’t believe it all anymore as I watch things happening around me.

It leaves me contemplating my own thoughts with my own children.

I would never put my children through difficult things to make me look good or to make them grow more as a man or woman.  The truth is I want to shelter them from hard things before it reaches their door step.

My daughter was 12 weeks pregnant when she went to see the first ultrasound of her growing child.  They went in expecting to see a tiny, squirming baby but instead found an empty sac.  My heart broke as I watched her ache in this world where things happen and babies die.  I would never have wished that on her.  I would never choose that for her.

I am a mere reflection of a God who says “my child”.  After all I was created in His image.

He aches too.  For none of this is what He wanted.  This is not the way He set life to be lived on this earth that He created for those He loves.  Sorrow and suffering were never part of the “in the beginning God created”.  When that first bite was taken, of the fruit that was forbidden, paradise became badly broken.

I consider God as I watch my friends grieve from the inside out.  What must it be like to look down on that which you created with a plan for life and watch it slowly die?  What must it be like to watch those you cherish so dear ache so bad? Surely He must weep for me, for you and for them.

There is no way I can believe what I was once taught.  For I am convinced that He anguishes as He watches His beloved live in a broken world that He never had in mind.

God came to heal the broken-hearted, to bind up their wounds.  Jesus said He would release prisoners from their captivity and turn ashes into beauty.

He never mentions lessons to be learned.

He comes with arms that hold tight and a heart that grieves, and somehow, someway weaves the threads of pain into something deeply beautiful.

Where is He in the midst of life that bears the unbearable?

He is where I am when my child suffers.   As Jesus wept for Mary and Martha overcome in their sorrow, He weeps for you, for me and for my dear friends who are so very lost in the depths of their sorrow.  He gathers up their tears and places them in a bottle beside Him.  He bears them up and holds them tight as He whispers constantly…

“Lo, I am with you always.”

©copyrighted:  2013; Julie L. Todd

The Beauty of Belonging…©

The call came through at 5:00AM.  I didn’t hesitate to answer.  ”Momma, I just got sick.”  ”My chest hurts, and I am having trouble breathing.”  ”I think it’s something I ate.” “I’ve been really sick.”

It was my newly married son.

It had been days since I had heard from him.  It was the middle of the night when I was fast asleep..  He’s not one to call up and talk on the phone, just to chat.  He calls me when he needs me, whether to help him find an insurance policy or just to ask for my help.  He doesn’t consider whether he’s met the relationship criteria.  He calls because he knows he is mine and I am his.

I don’t keep track of how many times he’s spoken to me.  I don’t care!  I am not disappointed when days have gone by.  He’s my son.  The moment I hear his voice I am there.

When that phone rang it didn’t make one difference whatsoever that I had not heard from him for those days that had passed.  What mattered was that my son was in need.  I would have dropped everything to be with him.

He kept apologizing for bothering me.  I reassured him that he was my boy and would never bother me.  No matter what time of day he needed me I was there as I loved him in the depths of my being.  He knew it was true.  He thanked me.

I went back to sleep but each time I woke I wondered, “was my boy OK?”  By morning I got the reassurance that he was on the mend.  In those hours I waited, he never left my mind.  It had absolutely nothing to do with how much he pursued me.  It had everything to do with the very fact that he is woven into the very fiber of my being.  He has a part of me in him.

Why is it that I have had such difficulty connecting these dots with God?  Surely if this is my heart towards my son, it is the heart of the Father that beats towards me.

I try to put myself in the shoes of people who walked in times past from time to time.  It seems to help me connect more deeply with the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever.  Were they encumbered with all the “have-to’s” I’ve been encumbered with?  Was it simpler when all they had were the eye witnesses of the death and resurrection.  The Jews had the Torah passed down from one generation to another but what about the Gentiles?  What guided them on their journey?  Did they rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal all things like I am learning to do?

The more I move away from the rules and regulations the more I realize how much they have weighed me down.  I’m tired of hearing what’s wrong with me, what I need to do better.   Who said I had to do all the things I thought I had to do anyways?  I hear the words spoken by a Bible teacher in the years of my youth, “If you want to put God first you must have a quiet time, preferably early in the morning.”  I took it hook, line and sinker.  I strived to prove that God was first.  But who said that?  Was it God?  How could it be?

As I walk in this new season of emptiness I find myself in a place where things are being seen for what they are.  I have felt naked and ashamed in my lack of “doing” all the “how-to’s”.  After all the good Christian “does”.  All the while the light is shining into the cracks of this struggle between law and grace.  Instead I find myself thinking, isn’t it enough to be His?

I consider it all as I remember the phone call in the wee hours of the morning.  I didn’t answer the phone because my son had filled the criteria to have my attention.  I answered because he is one of the great loves of my life.  He is my child, my heir.  Everything I have is his.  All of me is at his disposal regardless of what he brings to the table.

In the simplicity of life, where things are being removed and emptied from me , I am reminded once again.  I am His child, His heir.  He is there for me regardless of what I bring to the table.  For He is woven into the fiber of my being.

I am His and He is mine.  It’s all that is required.

My reality is coming to light.  It is enough to just “be”, His.

“At that moment you will know absolutely that I’m in my Father, and you’re in me, and I’m in you.”  John 14:20  (The Message)

©copyrighted: Julie L. Todd; 2012

The Cleft of the Rock©

The email came through offering an annual report of the life of this blog in 2012.  I knew there wouldn’t be much to see but what I saw revealed more than I realized.   Over 3,100 visits here and I wrote seven times in 2012….. seven times.  In years past the norm for me was writing two maybe three times a week minimum.  The thing is, this “tell all” not only reveals the summary of this blog but aptly portrays the days that have made up my year.

Silence has filled the walls of this place as it has filled the walls of my life.   It has been dark and lonely, the longest winter of my soul. Discouragement has been a frequent visitor.  God has not seemed near.  How could God be at work here?

Is this what it was like in those dark days of silence between the old and new when for 400 years God remained quiet?  What went through the minds of those who waited for Him to show up?  I look to see their story intertwined with mine.  Did they too wonder if He had dropped off the face of the earth?  Surely they wrestled through tears and gnawing of teeth to just put one foot in front of the other.  Surely they felt the disappointments of His absence.  Did they want to throw in the towel?  Were tears frequent visitors; the aches deep and profound; the unanswered questions intensely discouraging.  I want to think they did, for this has been my story on this rough terrain of my journey.

The end of the year left me contemplating the marathon runner.  It was God’s invitation to see beyond my realm of this year into His.

The testing of your faith produces endurance scripture says.  ”Strong’s” translates it like this; “characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose or loyalty to faith by even the greatest trials and struggles.”  ”Websters” says it’s the ability to withstand hardship or adversity; especially :the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity.

Endurance has its perfect work James tells us.   For when your endurance is tested, your faith has a chance to grow.  Is this what growing pains feel like I wonder?

It has been the darkest hour of the darkest night.  I have waited for the dawn to arrive.  The silence has been oppressive making it more difficult.  I have begged Him to let me hear Him….feel Him… and though He has not;  I could not stop believing.  I could not give up on this God I’ve given my heart to.  Did endurance have its perfect work I wondered?

Four hundred years of silence were broken with one statement.  From the depths of the earth the shout went out;”for unto you is born this day a child.”  The glory of the Lord came near as dawn arrived to the darkness of a cold, dark stable, bringing light to the earth’s longing.

Sometimes it is the way of God in our lives.  The glory of God passes in the dark silence of the cleft of the rock.

Moses begged God to allow His glory to pass before Him.  It wasn’t with fanfare and bright lights.  It was in the darkness of the fracture of the rock that God passed before Him. He was allowed only to see His back once He had passed.

Could it be that this darkness has been the hand of God covering me and protecting me with His hand as He passes by?  Could the tremors of upheaval that have swept through my world be the very place where God has shakened what must be shakened to leave only that which is lasting to remain?  After all things that once impeded me lay strewn along the path, no longer needed.

Never have I felt more abandoned.  In spite of it all, something has carried me still, something that didn’t require anything from me, for I couldn’t.  Words escaped me and disciplines could not be mustered up any longer.

As dawn breaks in this new year things are becoming more clear.  Could that be the back of God I see?  Endurance will have its perfect work as that which encumbers us falls away.

The dark clefts of the rock where all seems lost and God seems silent, is the place where glory falls.

“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”           The Message

©copyrighted 2013; Julie L. Todd

Approved by Love©

I’ve longed to come here and write.  The silence has not been by my design.  So often words have escaped me.  I feel them lodged inside some place deep.  At times I wonder if they will flow again.  I know that He has made me to communicate.  Anyone who knows me well can confirm this.  Yet this silence that invades me has often left me wondering.  What has happened to me?

To everything there is a season I remind myself.

Summer has ended in these mountains.  The cool, crisp air has replaced the oppressive humidity accompanied by hot temperatures well into the 100′s.  Now I waken with a chill in the air.  There’s something about this change that brings a level of excitement for me.  Cold days hidden inside a warm house snuggled up on the couch with the one I love and a cup of hot tea allures me.  There’s something about the change of one season to another.

As the year winds down I feel the drain of the demand the days have required. To say there has been transitions in my home is an understatement.  It seems as soon as the news came that my husband had lost his job all hell broke loose or maybe it was that heaven came down.

To everything there is a season.

For many years I prided myself on the knowledge I had attained.  I admittedly did 2 Bible studies at a time.  I would study to show myself approved unto God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed.  Every question would be answered, all homework would be accomplished, every meeting attended.

It’s the last thing I care about now.  Knowledge, after all, gets me no where, other than being puffed up.

It’s funny how a season can change your whole world.  Back in the workforce for the first time in 24 years has brought a different place for my life.  I cannot tell you the last time I picked up my Bible to study it.  Yet the God of the book floods into my soul even so.  For it’s not what I do that brings it all about.

I thought about it all today.  For the better part of 30 years I studied hard to show myself approved yet it’s in these days of stillness that I find the approval rooted deep.  I can recall words written in the pages with ease but it’s not my studying of them that has made the difference.  It’s the surety of His love regardless of what I’ve done in a day.

It had to be this way, you know.  I had to go without to see what was within.

It’s not my studies that take me to that place.  It’s the adoration of this God who indwells me.  It’s been a long time coming.

I am the righteousness of Christ even on my worst day.  He has loved me from the moment He first had me in mind.  I have never had anything to prove.

Some days my children have behaved better than other days throughout their lives.  It doesn’t change the facts.  My love is steadfast for them regardless of what they do or don’t do on any given day.  It is the same for me with Him.

This season has had its challenges yet with the challenges have come the resolution.  I won’t give up on the belief that He adores me even on my worst day because He made me to love.

It’s funny to me as I think about it all.  The years I spent studying always left me uncertain.  ”Is it enough?”  ”Am I approved?”  I never knew the answer.  No matter how much I learned, with the knowledge I attained, I just never knew.

These days of doing nothing have answered the question in ways I never imagined.  Laying down my ruler opened the door to come just as I am into the place where love dwells.

In these months that have passed where pages of those holy words have lain unturned I’ve discovered something brilliant.  I am approved because I am His.

©copyrighted: 2012 Julie L. Todd

 

 

“My Dwelling Place” ©

I used to love the show “Extreme Home Makeover”.  Lives were changed in just seven days.  It started with a story and a huge wrecking ball that came to demolish the old ailing house.  When it was done there was no evidence of a dwelling.

The debris was cleared away and a new foundation was poured.   Exterior walls went up and a roof was laid.  The interior began to take shape and then the decorating began.  At the end of the show the family returned to see a home that was beyond their wildest dreams.  The bus pulled away revealing the work of many hands.  A tour into each room revealed special touches made especially for their family.  At the end of the show keys were placed in hands  as the last words were spoken “welcome home.”

I loved watching things take place in that show. My favorite part was seeing the astonishment on the faces of the families as they realized that all they saw was theirs.  Broken down dwellings were transformed into beautifully decorated brand spanking new residences and all of it belonged to them.  The keys they held opened the door to a new life.

I’m realizing more than ever that this is my story.

I remember the days of study.  I would be the best of the best.  My striving would get me the sanctification I had been told would happen if I cooperated with God.  I’d been taught that at salvation I was justified but that in order to be sanctified I must learn to obey. So help me God I would learn to obey.  I began to try to make the old me better.

I was told that my sanctification would be an ongoing process.  I would continue in it until the day I died.  At some point when I reached heaven I would be complete.

But that’s not really how it is.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t studied so much.  It often makes it harder to see what you really don’t know.  It took me a while to get there but somewhere in these last years God has awakened me to things I knew not of.  Scales are falling off of my eyes now as I find my way into my reality.  Nothing I do will ever make the old me better.

The day I met Jesus the wrecking ball showed up.  The broken down dwelling of my flesh was torn asunder.  It’s what Jesus meant when He said, “it is finished.”  ”The old has gone, the new has come.”  The day I met Jesus a new dwelling was put in place.  A new life began.

His words pierce out in declaration as He hands me the keys to life, “Welcome home, dear Jewel, welcome home.”

The truth is when the Creator of this world invaded my being I was instantly declared righteous, holy, godly and pure.  I was sanctified.  That is my reality.  It’s not an act of behavior which demands obedience, it’s an acceptance of the gift that has been so freely given.

He invites me to dwell in what has been done.   I have been declared righteous even on my worst day.  He invites me to mature into what has been pronounced over me.

Baby steps are made leaving the desire to manage behavior behind causing something to shift inside me.  Sin is losing it’s lure.

The truth is I am astounded when I realize that I am interwoven with Jesus as one.  I want to live that, more than anything, I want it to be known.

Though the God of the ‘suddenly” invades my being, maturing isn’t an easy process.

I remember when my boys were young and the growing pains set in.  They cried out often especially when it came time to sleep.  Their legs ached to the point of great discomfort.  It was all for good yet nothing about it felt good.

I have often felt the layers of flesh being exposed to be peeled away from me.  At times leaving them behind has often felt awkward and wrong.  Yet the old must go.  I am not the same person I was a year ago.  Slowly but surely I am maturing.

Years of striving for something that was already true leave me in awe of the God who does not relent.  Nothing is wasted in His economy yet He would not settle until my heart was free to step into my new dwelling.

I’m learning to live in that new place, moment by moment.  Some days I get lost, other days I feel at home.

His words are my constant in these days as they repeat in my head to tell me their truth.  ”Welcome home, dear Jewel, welcome home.”  I am astonished as I realize this truly is my dwelling place.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty” Ps. 91:1

©copyrighted:  2012; Julie L. Todd