Surfacing

I’ve had this sense lately that the stakes to my tent have been moved out a little.

For more than three years (gosh, that’s a long time) I have been in a very interesting season as far as not knowing how to steward every area of my life very well. I know that for the most part I did as well as I could. You can’t do much on hospital bedrest or with two newborns or pregnant with two toddlers or hardly even stop to take a breath with three under three. So in some senses, I did feel the Lord open up my hands and let me know it was okay to relinquish some things that were not top priority. In a lot of senses he did that. Sometimes I fought him and was determined to feel just as bad about my clothes on the floor as I did that I had not yet written a novel as I rocked a baby to sleep and then fall asleep before I even brushed my teeth at 9pm. But Jesus was even more determined to focus my affections on three little beings and the husband and father who helped me by holding all of us.

The things I let go of to instead wash my husband’s workout clothes or change the twelfth diaper that day or clean up my underweight daughter’s endless vomit were things that mattered to me though. A lot times those undone things mattered to me because those were the the little peacemakers in my life – certainly a clean kitchen and bathroom and car and a well written journal entry make you feel like you can kick your feet up at the end of the day. Even though they are nice things, I was grateful to still find that someone who appreciates cleanliness in order to have a quiet time in that same room could still find peaceful stillness because the Lord could order that for me. But of course I had moments they mattered because I didn’t like that they hung over me, pointing at me, saying YOU’RE LAZY. Sleepless and showerless and makeupless and with weary feet and back many days, I still did feel lazy and endlessly failing at all I wanted to do and be.

Thankfully that’s not what the Lord had to say to my heart. Only the lies were saying that to me. The Lord just kept saying that his grace was sufficient for me and that He himself was my strength. I needed nothing but Him. And my faithfulness to the bodies and hearts in my home were all that mattered for now. And he could order the disorder enough for us for now.

So now I’m surfacing. Even if just a little. But it’s a little more of a surfacing than I have felt in over three years. I’m feeling my tent being stretched a little and the Lord showing me little windows into freedoms to serve our family and community more than I have felt I could stretch before. This is simple, friends, and it still doesn’t really still look quite like “freedom” and “calling” and “accomplishment” like many would define it. My life still feels oh so humbly simple, yet don’t mistake me for thinking it’s not profound. Because no one knows more than me that this is extraordinary what the Lord has asked me to take part in. So I’m good with using my freedoms to serve. To put my hands to the things, good but simple things, that I have had to set aside to zero in on literally the basics of loving and giving myself away to my family.

I am sensing the freedom to serve my family with getting the laundry done. To serve my family with a straight linen closet. To serve my family with a picked up floor so Salem doesn’t choke on dustballs. To serve my husband with fresh towels just as much as to serve him by prayer walking over the details of his life in the mornings. To serve my cute little girls with the sweet gift of ponytails carefully swept up as well to take them through the potty process hourly. To serve my little boy with my energy at 6 something in the morning and help him practice walking. To serve my children with creativity in instructing them each day of the week into the things of the Lord and just the things of toddler life. To serve my God by stewarding this body to be healthy for his glory, taking time not just to work out but pour over ideas for putting healthy things into my body. To serve women in my life with the Word, with my mind, with my heart, my time my words and my gifts of discernment and teaching. To serve faithfully in the gift and love of writing. To serve people God has set in my sphere of influence, whether or not I desire relationship with them or not, because my life is not my own and I have been bought with a price to be used and “burned up” for God’s glory.

I have sensed the Lord stretch my tent a little bit and say to my Spirit…

See what I am doing new? I am enabling you for a bit more. You will walk in grace. I will give you grace upon grace upon grace and I AM your Strength. I have set your heart free, so now go and be FREE TO SERVE as I show you. Go no further than I show you or short of what I give you to steward and do. Be free in my graces.

Isn’t that sweet from him? There is no condemnation in Christ. He is patient with us. He calls us to holiness and to greatness in him, but he knows we are utterly weak. And so he strengthens us little by little and enables us for steps we didn’t think we could take. And all along the way, he does not ever call us to feel bad or guilt ourselves endlessly or weigh ourselves down with expectations. Certainly even repentance itself – the confession that we have done wrong continually and even specifically and that we see our need for forgiveness and the ability to change – even repentance is FREEDOM because it is a relief to see that He can do it in us and we need to let go. I just love the gospel. The more I get to know it in my day to day, the more I learn that accepting its truth into my every moment of every day is what Scripture means in Psalm 119 when it says,

“I will run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free!”

I was talking with some other women at Mars Hill Bellevue about our heart for women in our church body and we were burdened for Titus 2 and what we see coming as far as teaching in the coming year. And for me personally I read over that list and see that the Lord is getting our hearts as women back to what is closest to our hearts – the things that we struggle with as women as well as the relationships in our nearest sphere of influence. We are to be inclining our hearts to understanding about…

Loving our husbands
Loving our children
Being self-controlled
Being pure
Working at home/managing our homes
Being kind
Being submissive to our own husbands

Look how close to home (our hearts) as well as home (our physical home and relationships within it) this list inclines our hearts towards. Jesus is turning us homeward. Homeward towards the things we struggle with most as women, as well as homeward to our daily living with our husbands and children and within our homes. These are the things heavy on the Lord’s heart for us as women to press our hearts towards. There are other things and people he will call us to as well, but he starts closest to our hearts where many women do not want to begin – in our home.

All of this feels overwhelming without the gentle leading and teaching of the Holy Spirit. It feels impossible to love our husbands well when X is bugging us, to love our children when X happens over and over. It feels impossible to have self-control over my anger and purity of mind as Satan creatively tempts us with all kinds of deception. It feels impossible to have a heart for our home when we have distracting daydreams apart from the Holy Spirit about small self-centered fantasies of getting out and breaking free from our shackles to go do what we really want to be doing. And even if we embrace our homeward calling, doesn’t it feel impossible at times to enjoy what we’re putting our hands to? And doesn’t it feel impossible to let God lead us into becoming homeward and using our freedoms to serve without also feeling guilty when we fail or don’t live up to our silly to do lists?

There is freedom with the Lord. It is not freedom from him. It is freedom in him and into the things of him. What this means to me in my exact spot in life is that though my calling is great, even to the point of God asking me to be HOLY in everything I do, he reminds me he found ME. He covered ME in the forgiving blood of Christ. He declared me holy positionally in his sight, even as he is practically making me holy in actuality. He enables ME. He makes my hands and feet and heart ready to honor Him. And he is freeing my being to be an instrument for HIS purposes. And even in the littlest, silliest, most minute-ist things in life like being able to have freedom to serve my family with a dinner or clean laundry or another bedtime routine – even in these things the Lord makes me able and most importantly the heart behind all of this is what is pleasing to His sight as I use my freedom to serve him.

And you know something? It is not in saving the world that I am finding a deep satisfying identity. I am finding a depth in my identity in Jesus, who is the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, who upholds the universe by the word of his power”, by doing the tiniest details of my day to day. I never ever ever in my early life expected these kinds of truths about my deepest identity and fulfillment to come from scrubbing dried ketchup off my toddlers’ booster seat trays. But they are. And Jesus has more coming for me. I feel his hand on me to stay faithful. And he will keep entrusting things and life and people to me, but I’ve got to wait on him to stretch my tent. It’s small right now, and that is where my pleasure dwells. And when it doesn’t, I confess that, and he puts my pleasure back there, because that is what delights Him.

Let’s end on a good word, friends. Please listen to the Lord for YOUR heart. Surely it is for you as well as me:

“For YOU were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love SERVE ONE ANOTHER.”

My Spirit cries yes. Not just in agreement and reluctance. But because I rejoice over this goodness for all of us.