"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways", declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
It's interesting how every time a challenge presents itself in my life, I find myself falling back into a certain "comfort mode". No, it's not food or drinking or any of the "common" things associated with self-soothing. My comfort mode is made up of a combination of the same thinking patterns, habits (yes, cleaning and running are high on this habit list...), and most of all, music and words. Music being Sara Grove's music, and words being the poems of my favorite poet Rose Auslaender and the same Scriptures that bring me peace and reassurance.
Inevitably, my favorite lyrics, poems and scriptures will find some application to the challenge at hand, which leads me to believe they all must have some common denominator, and therefore an inherent lesson for me to grasp and internalize.
Haden cautions me not to "overspiritualize" things, and to a degree, I agree with him. Not everything that happens is a "lesson" or a "wake-up call" from the Lord. Some things just happen - no, not by coincidence, but also not as an admonition from God. While I do try to catch a glimpse of the King of King's involvement in the most minute details of my life and in prayer and just spiritual awareness recognize His blessings and His grace covering my shortcomings, I would miss out on a lot of "living" if that was my sole focus in all things. But - with the big things, or the issues that keep coming up time after time, I feel like I do have the responsibility of looking out for His involvement - be that in the form of a blessing, a provision, an admonision, a challenge, or a call for action.
So as we continue to stumble over obstacles in this seemingly self-explanatory immigration process, I can't help but look at it from a spiritual perspective and ask myself what it is that the Lord has for us in this. I have no doubt His Hand and His Blessings have been upon mine and Haden's relationship from the very minute we met. There have been too many miracles, too many"small" yet fundamental developments that have had the Lord's signature on them, too many answered prayers for me to be doubting to be in His Will. Yet - there continue to be very frustrating and hard-to-understand impediments when it comes to the legal side of things. I have serached myself and the manner in which we have approached and handled the process so far, and just cannot find anything that we could have done differently. So, there has got to be something else.
So while I am finding myself upset and angry and frustrated over the obstacles and restrictions the immigration office is putting on our lives with their seemingly petty reasons for denying my permanent residence and the subsequent threat of deportation, I find my heart weighing heavy with compassion for all those families out there in the same positions. Families, couples, that might not have the same support system, the same resources, language skills, or will to fight as we do - what do they do? They get torn apart - I have read plenty of stories of a dad or a mom being deported and seperated from their partner and kids for months and sometimes years on end - they struggle, they give up, they despair. On the other side of the immigration debate that has the million of illegal immigrants from third-world countries as their figureheads for ever-stricter immigration laws are the people and families who are in it for the purest reasons, expsoing their most private lives to government inspection and still encountering rejection after rejection. I could go on and on over this injustice, but that is not my point, at least not the one I have been thinking about.
Because of my faith and my absolute security in knowing that God is going to make a way for us, I know that our case will be resolved and taken care of. I don't know when or how or how long it will be until I get to see my family in Germany and until they get to see their first grandson and nephew, but I know it's only a matter of time. But what about all the others?
I confess, I am a very self-involved person. I am touched by a lot of tragedies that happen in the world (around me and at large), but at the end of the day, it takes a lot for me to get up and do something about it. So I know that it is the Lord Himself instilling this compassion and willingness to fight this injustice beyond just the benefits for us when I feel a burden on my heart that's not satisfied by a simple prayer. I don't know yet what form that will take on in the future or what it will look like to "fight" the immigration injustice, but it is my fervent prayer that God will make it very clear to me and Haden if and how He wants us to be advocates in this debate.
The burden on my heart is too heavy to just resolve our case and let it be. And I am wondering how much this has to do with being a parent and thinking about the legacy I will leave for my son. Nicole Nordeman has a song called "Brave" that says "So long, status quo, I think I've just let go, You make me wanna be brave. The way it always was is no longer good enough...You make me wanna be brave". It is no longer good enough to see an injustice and do just enough to make it not affect me and my life. I want to leave a legacy that goes beyond self-satisfying justification and touches on self-sacrifice on behalf of others. In small, everyday ways, and in big ones that require me to step out way beyond my comfort zone.
James 1:2-6 says:
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."
Oh, how I pray for God to develop perseverance in me through these trials! To get closes to a wisdom, and a doubtless faith. For myself, my marriage, my friendships, and generations to come.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Prodigal Daugther
Fot the first time in my christian walk, I truly feel like the prodigal daughter. And I am not even sure I am returning. All I know is that I desperately want to return home into the true presence of the Father. Oh, I know He is right here. I know He has been right here beside me while I lived my life for the past 14 months, while I got married, while I became a wife to my husband and a mother to my son. I know just as He ordered each one of my steps, He accompanied, protected, led and encouraged me along the path. Did I always feel His presence? I guess so; or at least some part of me trusted in it. Did I always acknowledge it when I should have? Probably not. And therein lies the problem. Not in the "should-have". God doesn't operate with "shoulds". But I know He rejoices in a fully surrendered heart, and I am not sure I gave that to Him every step of the way for the past 14 months of my life. I was too caught up with being elated, mesmerized, and simply happy with all the indescribably joyous turns my life took in the past year and a half. Do I think the King of Kings didn't rejoice with me? No. I know for a fact He did, for I know He "weeps with those who weep, rejoices with those who rejoice". He operates completely independant of our faithfulness to Him, and oh, what a reassurance that is to me. I know that the God of the Universe danced right beside me and Haden on April 11th, our wedding day. I see Him sitting on the couch in our newly built living room, listening to our conversations about what parenthood was going to be like, and I see Him smiling at our misconceptions about how having a child would change our lives. I see Him get in the car with us each one of those sunday mornings that we went out to visit yet another church, trying to find a place for us to call our "church home", and giving us thumps up or down, directing and leading us to where He determined we would be most blessed for the time being. I am pretty sure there He was, in the delivery room, whispering into Haden's ear:"it'll be alright, just trust in me", when Elias' heartrate dropped incontrollably and I really needed my husband to encourage me and remind me of the Lord's provision. I can see Him sing a song of love when Elias was finally born and our tears were flowing freely to the rythym of our new baby's strong heartbeat. Oh, and how I see glimpses of Him every time my gaze meets my husband's, the love of my life, or every time I look at my little angelboy, whose helplessness and dependence on me makes me feel like the greatest superhero.
And as frustrating as it is to wait for a green light to travel to Germany and finally see my family again, I have no doubt that the Lord of Lords Himself is sitting in that immigration office, saying to the case worker: "not yet".
The parts of me that our awesome Creator created to look beyond the obvious, to understand beyond the explainable, know without the slightest doubt that God has been there every second of every day of my life for the past 14 months.
It's just that....I feel like I haven't always been there. My head and my heart have been preoccupied with such simple bliss and excitement that I have failed to recognize the source of all that bliss and excitement too many times. And you know what? I don't even really believe that God minds so much. Because, like I said earlier, He was there every step of the way, and He rejoiced with me every step of the way. But it was me who missed out. I missed out on so many opportunities to enjoy closeness with my Creator simply because I was too preoccupied to see His Hand in it. That's why I feel like the prodigal daughter. I look at all the almost inconceivable events that have taken place in my life, and I know so clearly how God orchestrated each and every one of them. But when I think back to going through all those events, I see the million opportunities I missed to be in perfect communion with the King of Kings, and I grieve.
So here I am, at the beginning of a new year when things are finally slowing down, and the fairytale life that the Lord has given me is finally starting to feel real - raw, emotional, grateful, and slightly regretful - ready again to enter into an up-close-and-personal relationship with my Creator. Ready to allow Him to enter into aspects of my consciousness again that were closed off to Him by my own choice and hedonism for the past year and beyond. Ready to sacrifice the "My life is great I can do it on my own" attitude for the familiarity of something so much bigger and stronger than me. Am I truly willing to give up my pride, my untouchable happiness, , my pseudo-autonomy for a life-changing, complacency-challenging allience with my King of Kings?
I guess the next few weeks will tell. Here I am Lord - meet me where I am at, and take me to places I have never even imagined before.
And as frustrating as it is to wait for a green light to travel to Germany and finally see my family again, I have no doubt that the Lord of Lords Himself is sitting in that immigration office, saying to the case worker: "not yet".
The parts of me that our awesome Creator created to look beyond the obvious, to understand beyond the explainable, know without the slightest doubt that God has been there every second of every day of my life for the past 14 months.
It's just that....I feel like I haven't always been there. My head and my heart have been preoccupied with such simple bliss and excitement that I have failed to recognize the source of all that bliss and excitement too many times. And you know what? I don't even really believe that God minds so much. Because, like I said earlier, He was there every step of the way, and He rejoiced with me every step of the way. But it was me who missed out. I missed out on so many opportunities to enjoy closeness with my Creator simply because I was too preoccupied to see His Hand in it. That's why I feel like the prodigal daughter. I look at all the almost inconceivable events that have taken place in my life, and I know so clearly how God orchestrated each and every one of them. But when I think back to going through all those events, I see the million opportunities I missed to be in perfect communion with the King of Kings, and I grieve.
So here I am, at the beginning of a new year when things are finally slowing down, and the fairytale life that the Lord has given me is finally starting to feel real - raw, emotional, grateful, and slightly regretful - ready again to enter into an up-close-and-personal relationship with my Creator. Ready to allow Him to enter into aspects of my consciousness again that were closed off to Him by my own choice and hedonism for the past year and beyond. Ready to sacrifice the "My life is great I can do it on my own" attitude for the familiarity of something so much bigger and stronger than me. Am I truly willing to give up my pride, my untouchable happiness, , my pseudo-autonomy for a life-changing, complacency-challenging allience with my King of Kings?
I guess the next few weeks will tell. Here I am Lord - meet me where I am at, and take me to places I have never even imagined before.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
