Kind and Generous

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This could be a worship song…

“Kind & Generous”

You’ve been so kind and generous
I don’t know how you keep on giving
For your kindness I’m in debt to you
For your selflessness, my admiration
And for everything you’ve done

You know I’m bound…
I’m bound to thank you for it

You’ve been so kind and generous
I don’t know how you keep on giving
For your kindness I’m in debt to you
And I never could have come this far without you
So for everything you’ve done

You know I’m bound…
I’m bound to thank you for it

I want to thank you
For so many gifts
You gave with love and tenderness
I want to thank you

I want to thank you
For your generosity
The love and the honesty
That you gave me

I want to thank you
Show my gratitude
My love and my respect for you
I want to thank you

I want to…

Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

(by Natalie Merchant)

I listened to this song today and though I’ve heard it before I’ve never really paid attention to the lyrics.  It’s a great song!

Posted in Faith, Misc, Personal || No Comments

Letting Go - Thoughts on Grieving

November 1st, 2009 by Carol

Two friends of mine have experienced death lately. One lost her father, the other her husband. As I’ve been praying for them, I’ve been revisiting the process of grieving. Of death and life.

“I will hold on to the hand of my Savior, And I will hold on with all my might, I will hold loosely to things that are fleeting, And hold onto Jesus, I will hold onto Jesus for life” (“Hold onto Jesus” by Steven Curtis Chapman). This could have been my theme song when I was a widow. I didn’t know why my husband had died suddenly at the age of 29, but I knew God still loved me and that He had not allowed this for the purpose of causing me pain. So I clung to God with everything I had in me. He was the only ‘life’ I had left.

And yes, I had derived a great deal of my ‘life’ from my first husband. He was the first person that I felt loved me for who I was with no strings attached. My sense of worth and acceptance came from him. Subconsiously I knew a large part of my ‘life’ came from my husband because my greatest fear is that he would die and I would be left alone. My husband had health issues (nothing life-threatening) and I would tell him offhandedly, “Don’t you dare die on me.”, but it was a real fear deep down inside.

I think any kind of traumatic event forces a person to choose a side. Either you run TO God or you run AWAY from God; there is no sitting on the fence when it comes to facing death.

Letting go is important. It reminds me of when I gave birth to my first child. I was induced which means that labour is more intense, and I was waiting for the epidural (which would not come for 2 ½ hours). I did not know how long this process would last before I actually gave birth. It was excrutiatingly painful. I accepted this and focused on breathing through the pain. I did not fight what was happening inside me and that made it much better than if I had fought against it.

It’s like when you get drunk and the room starts to spin. Trying to fight off that spinning feeling will only get you to the porcelain throne faster. By accepting it and not fighting, the feeling will pass, and you won’t necessarily get sick.

When my husband died, I did not wallow in guilt and run through all the ‘what ifs’ - I believe this was a gift from God because anyone who knows me know that I blame myself for a great many things both large and small. I should have been absolutely crushed under suffocating guilt that I should have done more, acted faster, that somehow I should have been able to save my husband’s life. But I didn’t go down that road (miraculously). I accepted that my husband’s death happened for a reason, and that it was beyond my control. As painful as it was, I believe the grieving process would have been even more painful if I not done this.

My life is not my own. Another gift from God. Just as God gives us the faith to believe, He gives us other gifts as well. As the paramedics were trying to revive my husband and I was pleading desperately with God to bring him back, there was a moment where time seemed to stand still. It was like I was in the eye of the storm where everything became still and calm. And in that moment I gave my life and the lives of my children into God’s hand. I said to God “You are God and I place EVERYTHING in Your hands.” I laid my life down and accepted whatever was going to happen (whether it was what I wanted or not). I believe God supernaturally enabled me to say those words. And it was different that just saying something but not really meaning it, still holding on to some hope of getting my way. This was letting go of MY will for my life and surrendering completely to God’s will for my life in what would happen to my husband and what would happen to us as a result.

My life is not my own. When we can lay down our lives God can do so much more than we would ever expect. But it takes a whole lot of faith and a whole lot of trust to do that when everything seems to be so horribly wrong.

At the point in my life when my husband passed away, I was at a place where I could trust God more than I had ever done before. Previously I had walked through some things where I wrestled with God and my faith was tested. Through that wrestling, I grew closer to God. My understanding of who He is deepened. And things that I believed that were false were exposed and I was able to believe more of the Truth.

The summer of 1993. I was 20 years old. My boyfriend (who would become my first husband) was in B.C. working for the entire summer. The church in the city I was attending closed down. This was the first church where I felt like I belonged to a ‘family’; I felt a part of a group, not just an outsider lurking on the fringe. And that ‘family’ was gone. After I left home for college, I had vowed (yes, vowed) that I would never live with my parents again. And here I was, stuck living at home for the summer, working at a job I didn’t enjoy (a restaurant in the next town over), with my boyfriend and church family out of the picture – isolated and feeling very alone. I threw a temper tantrum at God that summer. My soul screamed out, “If You really love me, prove it!” I felt like God was punishing me for what, I didn’t know. I did not feel His love, I did not know His love, but I desperately wanted to know that what the Bible said about Him was true – that God loves me.

On a side note, I think it’s perfectly ok to have temper tantrums at God – if you’re expressing what you’re really thinking and feeling. I think God wants our honesty more than us trying to act like what we’ve been told a Christian is supposed to act like. We’re all weak human beings. If we don’t ‘let out’ our true feelings and thoughts to God, He can never bring healing and freedom in those areas (because we pretend like they’re not there). That’s what I’ve experienced anyways.

Back to my story – I threw a temper tantrum at God. After the summer was over, I was mentored by a friend who challenged me to face the unforgiveness in my life. When I chose to forgive, God was able to reveal His love for me. I experienced it; I understood God’s love in a way I had never been able to before.

Fast-forward to 1998. Our first son was 2, I was working at a gym, and my husband was taking courses to become a computer network administrator. I had my life all planned out. My husband would complete his course, get a great-paying job, and I would stay at home and raise our children. But that didn’t happen. My husband did not complete his course – school was always difficult for him and he couldn’t pass the course. Which meant I would have to keep working. My husband had no post-secondary schooling and holding down a job was not easy for him. I would not be able to stay at home to raise our children. This was very hard for me to process because I believed God had created all mothers to stay at home and raise their kids. That’s what I desired. Wasn’t that a good desire? Why was God doing this to us? Why would He give me a desire for something and then make it impossible for that desire to be fulfilled? Did He hate us? Was He a mean, nasty ogre, who would punish a person as soon as they took one step off the path? Was He mad at us? I couldn’t understand why this was happening. It didn’t fit in the framework of who I believed God was.

It was a very dark time for me. My faith was rocked and my foundation was cracked. There was a period of time when in church or care group, the people would be singing in worship and I would not sing. I told God that I couldn’t sing. It was so opposite to how I was feeling. I couldn’t praise Him when I didn’t even know who He was. I couldn’t pretend everything was ok, because it wasn’t!

I don’t know how God brought me out of that dark time, but He did. I came to accept that God still loves me even though everything seems to be going wrong. That the bad things that happen in life are not because God is cruel or mean. That even though I can’t understand the circumstance, I can still know that God loves me and has good intentions for me.

This brings me to 2002 when my husband passed away. I knew that his death was not the result of a cruel God. And I knew that God loved me and because He loved me I could trust Him to take care of me and my children. As hard as walking the path of loss and grief was, I have experienced so much blessing and spiritual growth in my life coming out of it.

It is true that God brings life out of death – if we let Him. It goes back to the surrendering piece. I believe that God was able to bring about more blessing in my life because I surrendered my life to Him instead of ‘fighting’ the bad circumstances in my life. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24). If we try to ‘save’ what we expect our lives to be, it’s not going to work. And when bad circumstances come our way, we’ll be left disillusioned and angry. But if we ‘lose’ our lives and accept what God has for us, we will gain ‘life’ and healing from our pain.

I still have much to learn and surrender and there are many areas where I am weak and fall down. As I watch people in their pain, I struggle because I want to help but I don’t know what I can do. I realize everyone’s journey is different, but I’ve shared my thoughts about what I’ve experienced. Perhaps it will bring some comfort and hope.

Posted in Faith, Personal || 1 Comment

Bible Jedi Mind Trick

June 17th, 2009 by Carol

Just read this this morning…

2 Kings 6:18-19 (New Living Translation)

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A psalm of Carol

May 17th, 2009 by Carol

My heart is a fortress.  Within its bowels are kept

     my darkest thoughts; within its battlements my pain, my agony,

          my guilt. 

Hard as rock, impenetrable.  No one enters and

     nothing escapes.  I stand outside and am numb.  I feel nothing.

A hard heart, believing that nothing will touch me here,

     safe inside my fortress. 

A deceived heart, feeling all the pain but

     never looking it in the eye. 

And so I pretend.  Everything is ‘fine’.

 

Love… love given, with rejection and abuse

     flung back in return. 

It is too painful to love!  Calloused in order to survive. 

     I cannot receive nor can I give.  What a wretched soul am I! 

You, Oh God, have blasted my defenses.  You have cracked my battlements. 

     The pain is creeping up from the depths and now I must face what’s inside.

Dark thoughts swirl across my mind.  There is no hope.  There is no strength. 

     Sadness, deep sadness consumes me. 

This life is too hard.  I cannot bear it.

 

Must I walk this dark path alone?  Where despair lurks

     in the shadows and fear stalks my footsteps. 

Where are you God?  Sorrow and guilt are my companions. 

     Alone with my thoughts, I will be destroyed.

 

Remember…remember.  The Lord is faithful and true. 

     He will not abandon me to the darkness of my soul. 

          He leads me into the Light. 

     Though I am blinded by it, I will be healed. 

My soul is flooded with light and I

     shrink from its revealing power.  Afraid…afraid of being exposed. 

          I am naked before you, God, and I am afraid.

Yet I will remember your mercy and love for me. 

     Though I am afraid I will trust.  I will not shrink

          from the Light. 

I will believe your love is greater than

     my despair.  You, Oh God, will lead me. 

I will bask in the radiance of your love

     and will radiate your love to others. 

I will be

     ’song of joy’

          once again.

Posted in Faith, Personal || No Comments

Flight of the Dragonfly

August 8th, 2008 by Carol

I just finished reading the book “Flight of the Dragonfly” by Melissa Hawach. It’s the true story/autobiography of a mother whose husband (they were seperated at the time) kidnapped their two daughters and ended up taking them to Lebanon during the summer war with Israel in the summer of 2006. It was 6 months before she was actually re-united with her girls and it was two months after that that she was able to get out and get herself and the children home.

Its an incredible story. The thing that made it even more interesting is that Melissa Hawach grew up throughout Saskatchewan, finally ending up living in Saskatoon for her primary and high school years. She listed off places like Yorkton, Prince Albert, Moose Jaw, and she went to high school at Bishop Mahoney. This isn’t the true story of someone who lives in some big city in the U.S. or someone in a country overseas. This is someone who lived in my city. You just don’t think things like this happen to people who live here.

It is a very good book. I would recommend it to anyone. It was heart-breaking, uplifting, and challenging. It amazes me everything this mother went through to get her children back. And it forced me to ask myself if I would have been that determined. Or would I have succumbed to defeat and given up? (not that I have any worries about dealing with a parental abduction of my kids, but there are other forms of child abduction not involving a parent). I hope I could say ‘yes’ to those questions, but I’ve come to realize that you don’t know how you will react until you’re faced with the crisis. And I also know that God prepares us for whatever comes across our path. And He knows what is coming so he is the best equipped to prepare us in advance (although we may not know we’re being prepared for whats’s to come).

Posted in Faith, Family, Personal || No Comments

Updates…

July 21st, 2008 by Carol

It feels like I shouldn’t even consider myself a ‘blogger’ since I’ve been posting so sporadically.  I really haven’t felt like posting anything lately.  But here’s an update:

• our family road trip was not all I had expected it to be - more stress than fun (although there was some of that), plus our videocamera/camera was stolen.  Poopie!!!
• I was watching our 20 month old daughter a few days ago - she was trying to do ‘rock-paper-scissors’ because as I’ve posted recently, this is our ultimate decision-making tool.  She was so excited to try to do it - her little hand was balled up into a fist and she was shaking it up and down.  She couldn’t figure out how to change it to scissors or paper, but she’d giggle each time we did it.  The thought came to me: “why can’t I be like her? - she takes delight in simply trying and doesn’t get upset if she doesn’t get it right the first time.”  I, on the other hand, expect to get everything right the first time and I get upset and think its the end of the world when I don’t.  Why am I like that?  I want to be like my daughter.
• Recently I saw what decades of insecurity can do to a person.  I realized our insecurities are very damaging, not only to ourselves, but to others.  Our insecurities take the focus off of what it should be and onto our insecure selves.  Why?  Because our self-worth is at stake and we desperately try to maintain that level of self-worth.  In this state, we are unable to focus on others or show them care, concern, love.  I admitted to myself that although I can identify areas of insecurity within myself, I’ve largely come to accept them - not that I don’t want God to work on them, but I didn’t feel any sense of urgency to have them dealt with.  I didn’t think they were as big of deal as I’m coming to realize they are.  I don’t want to go through life hanging onto my insecurities.  I want my worth to be found in God and nothing else.
• I’m putting together a Partylite order (cause I want free stuff) so if anyone wants some candles, let me know (plus reed diffusers are on for $25 for the month of July - that’s 1/2 off) - Ok, there’s my shameful sales pitch.  I’ll move on…
• I’m reading “Flight of the Dragonfly” - its a true story of 2 girls that were kidnapped by their father and their mother’s journey to find them and bring them home - its really good so far

Posted in Faith, Family, Personal || 1 Comment

the Good News

May 4th, 2008 by Carol

What is the Good News?

We are a broken people.  We live in a broken world.  And despite this, God loves us.  He accepts us exactly as we are - as broken people.  Even after we have chosen to follow Him, there are many parts of us that continue to be broken - and God loves us anyways.  This means we can accept our brokenness and allow Jesus to pour His life into the dark places of our souls.  He heals those places and gives us life where there was death.

Posted in Faith || 1 Comment

Thoughts on why people leave the church

March 30th, 2008 by Carol

A couple of weeks ago, a friend wrote this blog post and it got me thinking. I have a somewhat different take on why people ‘deviate from the truth they once knew’ as she puts it. Let me preface this with a little bit of my journey. Over two years ago, I found something new happening to me as I would sit in church. As I would listen to the sermon, this question kept coming back to me: ‘What is the message of the cross?’ I found myself listening to the words spoken and wondering if this truly was the message of the cross. Or were so many other things being added to the message that the true message had been lost?

You may wonder what I’m talking about. Here’s one example: we say the message of the cross is that Jesus died for our sins so we could be free; we don’t have to strive to be ‘good enough’ to be a part of God’s kingdom. Yet how do we measure whether or not someone is a faithful Christian? They need to read their Bible every day, attend church regularly (meaning Sunday morning service), pray, tell others about Jesus, volunteer in a church program… the list could go on and on. Although we say there is freedom in Christ, the relationship we have with Him can become a bunch of rules to follow. Where is the freedom in that?

People may argue that there is a part the individual has to play in this relationship. God does not do everything. While I agree that a relationship takes two, so much of what I see does not really focus on the relationship but rather on the ‘list’ of things we should do to be a ‘good’ Christian. The relationship part seems to take a back seat to everything else.

I believe the church has ‘tacked on’ so many other things to the message of the cross that the true essence of the Gospel has been lost.

So here’s my question concerning those people who walk away from the truth: did they ever really know the Truth in the first place?… Did they experience the reality of the message of grace? Or were they promised one thing, but received something quite different?

This leads to my theory of why people leave the church (meaning they stop attending church on Sunday morning). I see two reasons:

1. They believe there is more to life in Christ than what they’ve experienced in ‘regular’ church and they leave seeking more depth in their relationship with God and with others. These people don’t necessarily stop meeting with other followers of Christ; they just don’t do it in the Sunday morning church context.

2. They are disillusioned by the disconnect between what Christianity promises and their own church experience. They cannot reconcile the two and so give up on the whole thing. They abandon Christianity (or at least their understanding of it).

In this last case, I’m not saying these people were never Christians. I consider myself a Christian and yet I admit that I don’t have a clear understanding of God’s grace, which I believe is key to the message of the cross. But this also begs the question, “Why don’t I understand? What have I been taught to hinder my understanding of this fundamental truth? If my life does not reflect the belief that I am truly saved by God’s grace (which is what we as Christians say we are), why is that?” I can see why people would become disillusioned. Being saved by grace sounds appealing, but its not the reality I see in the lives of a lot of Christians. Is there something horribly wrong with the salvation message we speak of?

In her blog post, my friend said she didn’t suppose it was up to her to decipher the whys and whats behind people’s reasons to leave. I disagree. I believe it is very important to examine the reasons behind the exodus from the church. If the reason has to do with a skewed presentation of the Gospel, then the church is at least partially responsible for the reason why so many are leaving. This should be a warning for us to re-examine what we believe and ask God to reveal whether what we say we believe - is the Truth or an altered version of the Truth (which in reality is no truth at all).

Posted in Church, Faith || 17 Comments

I should blog more often

February 10th, 2008 by Carol

My husband said today, “You should blog more often”. I agree.

I asked, “What should I blog about?”. He said, “Life.”

It’s easy enough to blog about the everyday things happening in my life (although it seems awfully boring to me at times). Life seems to be about going to work during the week, resting on the weekend and getting back at it on Monday morning. I’m still enjoying my job although this week was particularly hard. Tuesday was the first day I had the thought, “I wish I wasn’t the ‘manager’ today.”

There are some shining lights - my wonderful husband, who never ceases to communicate his love for me; my daughter, who is so much fun with her quirky personality at almost 15 months; our house church, which always offers a richness in discerning the word of God together.

My friendships, which I had more time for while on maternity leave, are requiring a more conscious effort on my part since going back to work. And I haven’t been very ‘conscious’ a lot of the time. It seems too long between visits, but the visits and chats are cherished all the same. I wish I had days where I could go hang out for the afternoon.

I think the most significant thing that has been happening to me over the past few months is a re-examining of my view of God. This is a more difficult thing to talk about. I don’t have everything figured out. In deconstructing some of my beliefs, the alternative to those misconceptions about God almost seem heretical to me. I find myself questioning commonly assumed beliefs wondering if those beliefs are truly consistent with the word of God. Does God ’send’ people to hell? Or is it that people ‘choose’ darkness instead of light and in so doing THEY are the ones that separate themselves from God, not the other way around.

John 3:17-20 says, “17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”

Doesn’t this sound more like people hiding themselves from the Light rather than the Light hiding itself from them? I’ve fought this concept for a while but I find it appealing to me. It demostrates God’s great love for the whole world. The Bible also talks about the ‘day of Judgement’. But what does that really mean? Do we assume to know how God is going to judge even though His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts? What is the overriding message of Jesus’ ministry, His death, and resurrection? Is it not the passionate love of God? Is that the theme of God’s message to His people: LOVE? Paul said that three would remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13).

I realize I have put more weight on God’s judgement of sin than on His love. As a result I find it very difficult to accept His grace because I don’t deserve it. I deserve judgement and that is how I treat myself most of the time. What if there are subtle lies in my thinking that at first seem biblical, but when God digs deeper I realize go against who God really is? I suspect there is much more freedom in Christ available to me if I understood more of the nature of who He is and who God the Father is.

Like I said, I don’t have this all figured out. But I find it liberating to be examining my beliefs and testing to see if they truly represent the heart of God or if the concepts are just assumed to be found in the Bible because I’ve heard them so many times before.

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Profound statement

January 16th, 2008 by Carol

I just started reading a book called “Furious Pursuit: Why God Will Never Let You Go” by Tim King & Frank Martin and I ran across this passage that really made me stop and think:

“What would happen if you woke up tomorrow morning and flipped on the news only to learn that God had just announced that everyone on earth was saved?…

“If you knew for certain that no one would end up in hell, would you still tell people about Jesus? Would you still have a compelling message to share? Would you have any motivation to try to reach those who don’t know God?

“If everyone on earth were saved, what could you say about God that might still appeal to people? Would you have enough of a relationship with God to talk passionately about his love and mercy? If you couldn’t spare people the torments of hell, would you still want to make sure they knew how to enjoy a relationship with God?

“How you answer those questions says everything about the nature of your relationship with God.”

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