“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in...
The winds of the Kansas plains in our hair.
God is faithful. Life is Bliss.
“Put your life in the hands of the Lord; have faith in him and he will do it.”
- Psalm 37:5
My little brother sent me these lyrics… They are undoubtedly liberating…
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine
Blessed are the poor
Blessed are the weak
Blessed are the ones
Who can barely speak
Blessed in your hurt
Blessed in your pain
Blessed when your teardrops
Are falling down like rain
Blessed when you’re broken
Blessed when you’re blind
Blessed when you’re fragile
When you have lost your mind
Blessed when you’re desperate
Blessed when you’re scared
Blessed when you’re lonely
Blessed when you’ve failed
Blessed when you’re beat up
Blessed when you’re bruised
Blessed when you’re tore down
Blessed when you’re used
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine
Blessed when you’re heartbroke
Blessed when you’re fired
Blessed when you’re choked up
Blessed when you’re tired
Blessed when the plans
That you so carefully laid
End up in the junkyard
With all the trash you made
Blessed when you feel like
Giving up the ghost
Blessed when your loved ones
Are the ones who hurt you most
Blessed when you lose your
Own identity
Then blessed when you find it
And it has been redeemed
Blessed when you see what
Your friends can never be
Blessed with your eyes closed
Then blessed you see Me
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine
Blessed when you’re hungry
Blessed when you thirst
Cause that’s when you will eat of
The bread that matters most
Blessed when you’re put down
Because of me you’re dissed
Because of me you’re kicked out
They take you off their list
You know you’re on the mark
You know you’ve got it right
You are to be my salt
You are to be my light
So bring out all the flavor
In the feast of this My world
And light up all the colors
Let the banner be unfurled
Shout it from the rooftops
Let the trumpets ring
Sing your freaking lungs out
Jesus Christ is King!
Jesus is my Savior
Jesus is divine
Jesus is my answer
Jesus is my life
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words how can they be mine
These are words to build a life on
These are Your words I want them to be mine
Give us ears that we may hear them
voice that we may sing them
life that we may live them
hope that we may give them
hearts that we can feel them
eyes that we can see them
thoughts that we may think them
tongues that we may speak Your wordsTweet
Life can get sour and sometimes it happens quickly. Dreams are broken. Hopes become distant and fading. Desires get dismissed. As much as I’d love to paint you a beautiful picture of the perfection that life could be, it just isn’t. And when life isn’t perfect and we’re facing dead-on the presence of a broken dream, it can be painful.
When I went to buy this domain name a while ago and decided to call it “It’s Okay Now” those are the things that went through my head. Life happens… and how amazing would it be if we could be able to look at the past and say, “it’s okay now…” But the truth is that life happens and when we are in the middle of it… It’s easier said than done. Hope needs to be rekindled and dreams need to be rebuilt… Today I’ve been thinking for a long time as I drove from Texas to Kansas for the holiday, so we’ll see how well I can even convey my thoughts. This is probably a more candid post of my thoughts more than anything.
Wikipedia (quite possibly my most favorite domain on the Internet) says that hope in a theological context is one of the three virtues (faith, hope and love). Hope is not a physical emotion, but a spiritual grace. That is what separates it from positive thinking. I am thankful for hope, because it’s something that I can’t work up on my own. I do believe that it is a spiritual grace, which means that when the emotion depletes, God will restore it… and I know for me, He’s been so faithful to swoop in and restore.
I Will Plant Myself at the Gates of Hope
We choose hope too. And sometimes we have to fight for it. When the doubts come, we sometimes have to find our Truth and declare part 2 of the verse: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12)
God is Faithful. He can’t not be. So on days were the sun seems to be a bit dimmer and the pain a bit stronger, remember the character of our God and plant yourself at the Gate of Hope.
“Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.”
-Sarah Ban Breathnach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of my favorite movies growing up. There is nothing quite like seeing a good kid strike it big and enter into every child’s dreamland… a factory full of everything that I wasn’t allowed to eat. You know the story well, the little boy finds a golden ticket that takes him into his candy wonderland. By the end of the movie, Charlie has gone through challenges to his character. And like every good movie he’s still a hero at the end.
Most of my life I have been looking for my own version of that golden ticket. Have you? When I graduated high school, I needed the fastest ticket out of small town USA. When I graduated college, I needed the fastest answer to “my destiny’s call”. When things started to get hard at work, I wanted the fastest ticket out of my job and into a new one. And when I was tired of whatever “season” of life I found myself in, I needed a golden ticket out. But my golden tickets rarely come…
I love golden tickets… They open doors for you that you’ve been begging to have opened. They give you this amazing high and you can tell that someone’s looking out for you. But the thing is… when you have a golden ticket to a chocolate factory… at the end of the day, you’ve got a stomach ache and things just don’t look like they did at the beginning… Your pants fit a little snugger and you realize that even though it looked good… It was probably not a good idea.
Maybe the whole idea of a golden ticket is a farce. Every time I’ve faced something hard and came out on the other side, I was able to emerge with more joy, more peace, more strength and more faith… Not a bad deal, but definitely no golden ticket in hand.
So maybe the question isn’t, “Where is the golden ticket?” Maybe the real question is, “What is it that I need to learn today, right where I am?”
My cousin, Jacob, posted that. I can’t stop thinking about it. There are so many things that we use to define success: cars, houses, bank accounts, influence, children, job titles… But at the end of the day, no matter what we attain, where is it going to leave us? It’s okay now? What does that even mean? This quote defines the underlying core of everything I strive to attain. Freedom of Heart.
I had a paper route when I was little. I remember riding that route in sixth grade and collecting the money from my “clients” (Are you allowed to call them clients when you’re 12?) One thing I learned at 12 was that people can be mean. I remember being 12 and thinking about how I needed to make sure that I forgave people every time I got a chance, because the bitterness and hardness that I found in some of the elderly people on my block handicapped them more than their physical ailments ever could. There is a distinct difference between adults that have taken care of their heart and those that haven’t. When you don’t there is bitterness, anger, resentment, jealousy, envy and no matter how you try to hide it, the warmth of love leaves and that’s no way to live.
Today as I think on that quote, I am once again challenged, to live with freedom of heart. No matter where success may take us, I think we’d all rather live a low life with the fullness of freedom in my heart, than to be plagued with the unforgiveness of years and the resentment for what life could have been.
Life is what is and it will be full if my heart is free.
What are your thoughts? How do you protect your heart from bitterness, anger and envy?Tweet
It snowed today in Dallas. The big flakes made their entrance this morning, covered the ground, then melted. Watching those flakes fall down and begin to cover the wet ground was an exciting moment, but I couldn’t help but think of how quickly I knew it was going to melt… In fact, it almost ruined the moment for me. Knowing what “could be” almost took away from the beauty that “was”… The flakes were beautiful. They were huge. With the backdrop of the fall leaves falling at the same time, it was an early morning scene that couldn’t be topped. But even in the beauty I found myself annoyed with what it wasn’t.
How often in life I wonder do I do that. Life is what it is and it’s great and fulfilling and wonderful, yet I find myself annoyed with what it is not… after all, I know what it could be. Not really the way I want to live. I remember reading a verse years ago (that I can’t find again for the life of me!) that said something to the affect… “like a man turning an arrow on himself, is the one that sits around and thinks of what he deserves.” In that time of my life, that verse hit me hard. There was so much that I “deserved” at that point in life. However, the more I focused on all that I deserved, the more I lost all of the priceless moments before me.
This morning, looking out at the large snowflakes against the fall colors, it all came back to me again. The chances of snow sticking in Texas are pretty slim… So, maybe I need to learn to just love the 15 minutes of snow with everything in me. And in life to love the moment that I’m in with everything I’ve got.