Come As You Are

I spent much of my life feeling like a disappointment. Even when I felt I had done everything right, I still often felt it wasn't enough. Many times it felt like it would never be enough. And even in my weakness and frustration, there was a lesson. We never are enough, on our own. It is only by Grace that we are saved. It is only through Christ that we are worthy. He takes us where we are, no matter how far away that is. When we turn, He runs to us with open arms, and takes us into the world's greatest hug, just as we are. So the song for this posting is "Come As You Are" by Pocket Full of Rocks. I wish I could have heard these words as a teenager.

He's not mad at you
And He's not disappointed.
His grace is greater still
Than all of your wrong choices.

He is full of mercy
And he is ever kind.
Hear his invitation
His arms are open wide.

You can come as you are with your broken pieces
And all your shameful scars.
The pain you hold in your heart,
Bring it all to Jesus,
You can come as you are.

Louder than the voice
That whispers you're unworthy
Hear the sound of love
That tells a different story.

Shattering your darkness
And pushing through the lies
How tenderly He calls you
His arms are open wide.

You can come as you are with your broken pieces
And all your shameful scars.
The pain you hold in your heart,
Bring it all to Jesus,
You can come as you are.

Healing is Not My Decision

I have been thinking a lot about healing in recent months. Not so much physical healing, but emotional and spiritual healing. The healing that we all must experience when we realize who we are without Christ and allow Him entry into all aspects of our lives, the healing that only He can bring. I'm pretty sure that this is never an easy journey for anyone, but it's definitely harder for some than for others. It's also really difficult to watch people you care about struggle to find their own healing. It's a journey each of us must make, no one can make it for us, no one else can control it. For those of us who like to control, that's frustrating. As a very wise woman (my mom) told me, healing is not our decision, nor is someone else's journey to their own personal healing. We don't get to make the choice of if or when or how. That is in God's hands alone.

So, of course, for me, there's a song. For me, there's always a song. I've heard this song so much on the radio, but last night a new part of the words hit me, and I was compelled to look up the lyrics rather than assuming I knew what they were. They are good. The song is "Healing Begins" by Tenth Avenue North.

So you thought you had to keep this up,
All the work that you do,
So we think that you're good
And you can't believe it's not enough,
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside.

So let 'em fall down.
There's freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We're here now.

This is where the healing begins,
This is where the healing starts,
When you come to where you're broken within,
The light meets the dark.

Afraid to let your secrets out,
Everything that you hide
Can come crashing through the door now,
But too scared to face all your fear
So you hide, but you find
That the shame won't disappear.

So let it fall down.
There's freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground.
We're here now.

This is where the healing begins,
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark.

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don't fight This coming light.
Let this blood come cover us,
His blood can cover us.

This is where the healing begins,
This is where the healing starts,
When you come to where you're broken within,
The light meets the dark.

We all have things we want to hide, tucked away from the rest of the world. We work so hard to keep them hidden that they take us captive. We become obsessed with what others might think if they only knew... But when we release all that baggage to the Ultimate Healer, He doesn't just take it away. He sets us free and buries our garbage at the bottom of the ocean, and covers us in His blood.

We are called to take His light into the darkest places of this world. But it starts within each one of us. The light meets the dark. And overtakes it. And sets us free to shine.

Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

A few weeks ago, on one of the momma pages I'm a fan of on Facebook, the question was raised about how pregnancy and motherhood had influenced your view of your body. I didn't have to think about this long to realize the answer, and yet I hadn't much thought about it before. And I think I was a little bit surprised by my response.

I have never been a big fan of my body. My specific list of issues I had with my body is unimportant, since we all have such a list, and the details are not important. But when I read this question, I realized I didn't much think about the parts of my body I wished I could change anymore.

In addition to putting my body through pregnancy three times, I breastfed all three of my children -- Ryleigh for a year, Ashtyn went a little more than 13 months, and Jaden, at just under 5 months old, is exclusively breastfed. I can't say I love what this has done to my breasts. Large breasts getting much larger, and then when it's over... eh. With all three children, I lost all but ten pounds of my pregnancy weight fairly quickly. The last ten pounds hung on until I stopped nursing.

What is the point of all this? The point is my answer to the initial question. I could bemoan those ten pounds and the larger and later floppier breasts and the extra padding in my thighs. Pregnancy and motherhood do all kinds of crazy things to your body. Some women's feet increase in size during pregnancy. When I heard this while pregnant with my first, I started praying "God, please. I don't care what other side effects you send my way, but please, please don't let my feet get any bigger." I was already a size 10. Guess what? God has a sense of humor. I now wear a size 11 shoe. :)

Despite all this, I am in awe of my body. I remember, during my first pregnancy, when I had the time to think about every little thing that was happening, when I was constantly checking those websites that tell you how big your baby is that particular week, etc. (We called Ryleigh "Lenny" for a while because she was the size of a lentil bean one week.) Psalm 139 took on a whole new meaning, as I was so keenly aware of God's work within my womb as He knit my precious child together over those 41 weeks.

A woman's body changes during pregnancy to perfectly nurture and protect that precious unborn life as best it can. Your baby gets the best of whatever you put into your body. I was simply in awe that my body could sustain another life. And then when I began to feel her move within me... Wow! And then I began to nurse my newborn baby. As an aside, let me just say that, especially with my girls, nursing was no walk in the park for quite some time. But again I was wowed by my body, as it was able to produce the only nourishment my children needed for the first year of their lives, as the milk that was produced within me changed to meet their varying physical needs as they grew during that year. What a masterpiece God has created in the human body!

So, while I may not be particularly happy about certain aspects of my body, pregnancy and motherhood have taught me to appreciate the body God has given me. I know that He knit me together in my mother's womb and prepared my body to then sustain the life of my children. The extra pounds, the cellulite that has been added to my thighs, the larger and saggier breasts, and all the rest... I am proud of them, because those are my marks of motherhood. Some people call them their battle scars. I am able to accept my body for the miraculous way God may it and the way He created me to be a mother. Wow.

His Grace Is Enough

Just a warning, there's a lot going on in this brain, so if there's a sudden flurry of blog entries this week, don't be alarmed. I'm sure it won't continue.

One of the things I've been thinking about these past few days is worth. My worth. What am I worth? Should it depend on who you ask? My answer has changed a lot over the course of my lifetime. So perhaps we'll go back to the beginning...

I don't know if it started sooner, but I know for sure that at age 13, I was very insecure about who I was and what my value was. Actually I know it started a few years prior. It started at that middle school/pre-teen age when you start competing for things, whether it's top grades or roles in school plays. The age when you start believing that certain teachers might have favorites. When I started finding out I wasn't always good enough. Now, in life, this is somewhat unavoidable. We won't always have the highest grade on everything, or be the star of every show, or the MVP of the team (yeah, I know, I was never that), or get the job, or whatever. But there is definitely a more healthy attitude about these competitions than I had. What was probably a normal level of pre-teen struggles with this became much more complicated when we moved to a new, much larger school the summer I turned 13. This issue of knowing early on where true value lies is an area I strive to do right by my children in. We'll see how that turns out.

Lifelong insecurity is no fun. I moved from wondering what my value was to at some points, "knowing' it was non-existent. My self-esteem was frequently quite low during my teens. Dating did not help me at all.

But I don't want to spend this entry telling you about my history of low self-esteem. I want to tell you where I am now. My 30s seem to have brought me to a new place in how I see myself. Maybe it's life experience. But I think it's more of where I am on my spiritual journey. I've heard it said that you can't appreciate the mountaintop experiences if you've lived on the mountaintops your whole life. We need the valleys. So I appreciate where God has brought me, from where He's brought me.

What am I worth? There is only one answer that matters. The truth is, I'm not worthy of anything. On my own. But I am a child of God, the King of Kings. Alone I am worth nothing. I am a failure, a sinner, a disappointment. I've blown it, repeatedly, with my husband, my children, my parents, my siblings, my friends, total strangers. But I am washed in the blood of Christ. The only answer that matters is what I am worth to God. I matter to Him. A lot. The only one who is worthy is the Lamb. But when God looks at me, He sees me through the blood of His Son. I am worth the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross. Because of the Cross, my sins are on the bottom of the ocean, they are as far away as the east is from the west. Because of the Cross, God sees me as worthy through the One who is most worthy. I'm not worthy of much on my own. But with Christ, I am worthy of all the riches of Heaven.

This has nothing to do with what I do. It has everything to do with Grace. Amazing Grace. I love the Chris Tomlin version of this song, with the added verse, "My chains are gone. I've been set free. My God, my Savior has ransomed me!" Somewhere in the last few years, I have developed a new confidence. A confidence in my eternal destiny. I know, with all certainty, that I am worth the blood of the Son to the Father. I know where I will spend eternity. I don't know if I'll ever look in the mirror and think I'm much to look at. I doubt the world, beyond my little circle of influence, will ever know who I am. But I know I have great value to the only One who matters.

Do you understand how much you're worth? How much you're loved? There's only one opinion that matters.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; 
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood. 

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! 
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. 
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; 
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. 

The Mirror of Motherhood

It's time to start blogging again. In a slightly different direction. I am becoming increasingly aware of the importance of transparent living, for a variety of reasons. So it is here that I will attempt to be transparent. That doesn't mean I'm going to detail every disagreement Ryan and I have (admission 1 in being transparent: our marriage is not perfect) or every temper tantrum one of my children throws. But I do have struggles, I definitely do not have it all together, and maybe, just maybe, some of that is worth sharing. I also want to share the victories and the joys. I need to document the journey.

Which brings me back to where the heart of this blog is: my journey. God has me on one incredible journey, and I am doing my best to keep to His path and not the one I might choose for myself. I am finding motherhood to be the mirror by which God shows me that which He wants to change in me. We look in the mirror each morning or before we leave the house or whenever, and we see things we want to change -- hair out of place, dark circles that need some makeup, something stuck between our teeth. God is showing me that my children and being a mother is His mirror for my life. Through them, He is showing me the things He wants to change. Unfortunately, God's changes aren't always as simple or as painless as a hairbrush or a piece of dental floss. But they are far more important. And so I record my journey from who I am toward the woman God wants me to be.

Running on Empty (posted 2/6/2011)

I wrote the following entry nearly a year ago, in March of 2010. It's just been sitting here. I now feel the need to post it for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it is a reminder to me of where we have come from, how far we have journeyed in the past year. We've come a long way, baby! And I need to record what we've been through with Ryleigh and her sleep disorder. Speaking of coming a long way, Ryleigh is no longer on iron drops AND she is sleeping soundly through the night almost every night. We have occasional very minor episodes when she is overtired, but other than that, this seems to be something we can now call part of our history. Things really have changed since I wrote this. Thank you, God!

***********************************************************************************
It's been a hard week. I feel like maybe there have been too many hard weeks over the past two years, but this week has been one of the worst. This is one of those posts that as I sit to write, I know may never see the light of cyberspace. I may just need to get this off my chest. Or maybe I need to release it and ask you to pray over it. *sigh*

I also feel like maybe I need to catch a few people up on what is going on in our world, so you can understand the context. I am 16 weeks pregnant with our third child. I have found this pregnancy to be the most exhausting thus far, probably because I am chasing two little ones around. I have also had a hard time sleeping, which obviously doesn't help. That has definitely been worse this time around.

I also feel like there is no relief, no respite from the day-to-day grind of juggling the girls and this pregnancy. Before we moved back to PA, I had friends who I didn't have to worry about owing something to. If I was ready to lose it, either one of them would bail me out and just take my kids for a few hours, or I could at least take the girls over for a change of scenery. And I would return the favor when it was needed. But no one was keeping score, no one worried about who owed who a few hours of babysitting or whatever. No one worried about whether the house had been cleaned within an hour of the other one coming over. You don't know how much I miss that.

Here in PA, I have really struggled to adapt to this new life of ours. A new life in which I am no longer employed outside the home, even part-time. A life where my day-to-day life is a very solitary one. A life that looks nothing like the one I imagined for myself. A life which seems to take far more from me than it gives back, a life that is draining my tank. I am very aware of where I get energy, and I have struggled to find those places here. Forget struggled, pretty much failed.

We have moved to PA, away from friends and support system, away from church home (although we have finally found a new place to call home), away from stable income, away from a home of our own. Our income is virtually non-existant (just ask Uncle Sam), our friends are few and often busy being connected other places, our church is still new, we have started our own business and are facing all of the uncertainty and emotional struggles that entails, and we are renting a house, which while nice, is far from our own. I think we must rate pretty poorly on the stress level scale.

But here's what made this week especially difficult for me. Our four-year-old daughter has struggled with sleep issues since she was about 18-24 months. We were told repeatedly by doctors that she would outgrow them. They were classified as Confusional Arousal. What this looked like in our world is that several times a week, Ryleigh would scream and cry for hours in the middle of the night, never waking up, but certainly keeping us awake. Sometimes she would thrash about, sometimes get up and walk into our room, but mostly just sit in bed and scream. And most of the time, there was nothing we could do to wake her up. Sometimes, taking her outside or running her feet under cold water helped. I wonder what our neighbors thought of all that screaming! Sometimes we could talk softly to her and rub her arms or legs to help her relax. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes nothing helped. And most of the time, Ryan would sit with her through these episodes. But don't think I was sleeping soundly in the next room.

Last summer, Ryan noticed that Ryleigh would stop breathing in the midst of these episodes. She would scream and cry and then lay down and not breath for 10-15 seconds. Then she would gasp for air, sit up, and start crying again. This time, we told the doctor we were no longer willing to believe she'd just outgrow it. We got an appointment with a specialist for November 2009. He listened and asked great questions, and we felt like we were finally going to get somewhere. He ordered an iron test and found Ryleigh had a ferritin deficiency. This is linked to Restless Leg Syndrome, and the doctor suspected that was triggering the Confusional Arousal. Sure enough, once she was on the iron drops, Ryleigh episodes almost completely disappeared. After three years of sleepless nights, you cannot imagine how good it felt to sleep and have peaceful nights. Perhaps you can imagine that we saw a dramatic improvement in Ryleigh's attitude and behavior, a change in her personality even, once she was no longer sleep-deprived.

We returned to the specialist in February and reported how happy we all were and how much better we were doing. He told us to stop the iron and see if Ryleigh could maintain healthy iron levels. I hesitated to follow orders, but also knew that too much iron is a bad thing. We cut Ryleigh's dosage in half to see how she would respond. She had a few minor episodes, maybe 10 minutes or so, no big deal. But we left it at that.

Back in November, the specialist had ordered a sleep study, but they couldn't schedule us until March. Ugh! A couple of weeks ago, with the sleep study finally approaching, we stopped the iron drops completely, so that we could feel like they'd get the most accurate assessment of what was going on. Boy, did they! This brings us to our week this week...

Ryleigh had horrible nights Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights leading up to the sleep study. I was sure this was not good, because usually, when she has a few bad nights in a row, she will then sleep good for a night or two because she is so worn out. But never fear, the sleep study was worse than I imagined it would be. Ryleigh was wired with more wires glued onto her scalp that I anticipated, sensors all over her face, chin, and legs, bands around her chest and stomach, and tubes in her nose to monitor oxygen and carbon dioxide. They recorded everything with a video camera and a microphone above the bed. And I got to sleep in the bed next to her. If you can call it sleep.

The bed was harder than hard, so pregnant Momma just could not get comfortable. I tossed and turned, even after Ryleigh somehow managed to doze off. Then the screaming started. I wasn't allowed to touch her or talk to her or console her, just lay in bed next to my baby and watch her scream. And with all the glue and wires, and her hair sticking up all over the place, she looked possessed or something. And of course, her fits were worse as she tried to fight all the wires. This just meant that the technicians had to come in repeatedly to untangle her and reconnect whichever sensors she had managed to undo. Sometimes, she just rolled over in her sleep one too many times and wrapped the wires around her neck. Really, I don't think I slept until at least 3 am. I know that after about four separate episodes, maybe more, I don't know, we both finally slept. And they had the nerve to wake us up at 6 am. First off, Ryleigh sleeps until 7:30, sometimes longer. Lately, so do I. When they came in, I just about burst into tears! We had just finally gotten some sleep, and they were kicking us out!

The one bright spot in my week was the next few hours. After we cleaned Ryleigh up as best we could, I took her to IHOP for a treat. I let her order whatever she wanted, which meant hot chocolate with a mountain of whipped cream on top, and the world's largest chocolate chip pancake with more whipped cream and chocolate chips on top of that. She was so happy! We had a sweet breakfast, no pun intended, together. Then we went home and showered. She stood under that water forever! She likes to stay in the shower for ridiculously long periods of time, but I told her she could this time. Every time I checked on her, she was still just standing there, glue suds still running down the drain. I finally told her she had to wash her hair, etc. or there wouldn't be any hot water left for me. After we were feeling a little bit fresher, we went to the mall to do some shopping. Mostly a good time together, but she always tires of shopping faster than I do. Though not by much this time!

My Personal Soundtrack

I've been finalizing my personal soundtrack. Your what??? My soundtrack might be better described as my personal psalms -- they are the songs that best express my heart and the journey it has been on for the past two years or so (or maybe my entire life). Some of them are the prayers that my heart has cried in my most vulnerable moments as God and I have wrestled with where He is leading me. Others are His sweet response whispered to my soul when I most needed to hear from Him. I want to share the list with you. It is my prayer you will find time to listen to some of these and that they will bless you, too!

Fingerprints of God by Steven Curtis Chapman
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing recorded by Chris Joyner & Ben Lashey
Lord Move, Or Move Me by FFH
Your Hands by JJ Heller
Better Is One Day by Matt Redman
He Is by Mark Schultz
How He Loves by the David Crowder Band
What Do I Know of Holy by Addison Road
Fade Me Away by Graham Davis
Everything Glorious by the David Crowder Band
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) by Chris Tomlin
I Will Rise by Chris Tomlin
Blessed Be Your Name by Matt Redman
You're My Little Girl by Go Fish

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts or talk to you about any of my choices. It may seem a strange collection to some people, and some of these songs have better stories than others, but they have all touched me deeply. Blessings to you!

P.S. (Easter 2010) I'm adding another song to this list... The Hammer Holds by Bebo Norman.