heart workings

I've been thinking a lot lately about our "story" (as author, Donald Miller) creatively explains we are all in the midst of.  If you haven't read any of his books, they're great.  (Blue Like Jazz & a Million Miles in a Thousand Years to name two in particular)  And as I think about the story God is writing in my life, I feel like He shows me trailers, at times, seeing snippets of His mighty work, but only He knows the full story.

So the reel keeps playing, and He graciously helps me discover more of Him.

Ken & I were just talking over some questions from the book, "Organized Simplicity" by Tsh Oxenreider, that help us create a family purpose statement.  When we were thinking of words that we think others would use to describe us, the word that came to mind rather glaringly, was stressed.  I crinkle my nose and think, "Ick."

Stressed, though, is honestly accurate.  Stressed to the point where (as I was describing to a friend the other day) made us feel like we were wrapped in cellophane and could hardly breathe.  Right now, it feels more like we're wearing a windbreaker.  There is breathing room.  But boy did stress ever consume us, exhaust us, and yes, it is a joy-robber for sure.  I love several things Ann Voskamp writes about stress in Chapter 8 of her book, "A Thousand Gifts."  She writes, "Stress isn't only a joy stealer.  The way we respond to it can be sin... stress stands in direct opposition to what He directly, tenderly commands:  Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God; trust also in me." (John 14:1)  Trust is the antithesis of stress."  She goes on later to say, "How can I trust when a troubled, joy-shriveled heart has pumped fear through the stiff veins of all my years? ... If I believe, then I must let go and trust.....  because I kid no one:  stress brings no joy."  And then so humbly acknowledges, "I've begun to feel around the outside edges of it, here in crumbling economics, the fretfulness of parenting, the dizziness of the twenty-first-century-spin.  Just begun to realize it and it catches the throat:  If authentic, saving belief is the act of trusting, then to choose stress is an act of disbelief...atheism.  Anything less than gratitude and trust is practical atheism."

Wow.

And the clincher:  "Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt.  Perhaps the opposite of faith is fear.  To lack faith perhaps isn't as much an intellectual disbelief in the existence of God as fear and distrust that there is a good God.  If I don't emotionally believe, practically believe, in the goodness of God, am I a believer?  Don't the believers have to believe?  Don't the saved have to trust the Savior?  For yes, salvation from sins, but this too:  the salvation from fear." ....  "The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust.  Trust is everything.  If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?"

I don't want a small life.  I don't want a boring story.  I prayed this morning that God would give me the eyes to see the countless blessings in the day-to-day, that my clenched hands trying to hold it all together (keeping up on laundry/house chores/making meals/having a happy disposition in front of the kids, training them, raising them...everything)... that He'd help me move away from the common ground of stressing, and move towards trusting Him.  Fully. 

As if this past year wasn't enough overwhelming opportunity to learn trust.  Oh how we have an ever patient and gracious, loving God!  And truly, in humbly reflecting on God's amazing love and miraculous provision, blessing, "bridge-building" through the trials and joys He has taken us through... He is stirring in us, now more than ever I think, to really embrace a life of gratitude and thanksgiving and learn to fully trust as we practically and emotionally believe He is all and everything we really need.

I don't want a life marked by stress and fear. (And I'm hideously a hoarder of both!)  Thank You, Lord, for this new day, for the way You are teaching me and showing us how to trust you by living a life of gratitude.  Help me not to be overwhelmed by how much clutter needs cleaning in my heart, but to simply fix my eyes on You and know your goodness and patient love, and that through You, You will change me."