"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."
2 Corinithains 5:17-18
This summer we welcomed our new Community Pastor Brian Horn and his family to our church. Only a few weeks after their arrival his wife, Wren, was diagnosed with Colon Cancer. As difficult as the news was it was complicated even more by the fact that Wren was only about 25 weeks pregnant with their daughter.
In August they welcomed their daughter Grace. Because Grace was born at 31 weeks she was kept in the NICU until the end of September. One day Brian posted this picture on Facebook of Wren holding Grace.
Immediately I felt the Holy Spirit say, "Paint it." Of course, I was nervous, never feeling confident in my ability to paint people--especially people I know. But I felt a great peace about it.
The whole process was very quick and went incredibly smoothly. Never have I had such an easy time painting a picture. I know God--the Great Artist--was holding my hand with every stroke.
In the midst of this, Brian and Wren found out that the cancer had spread to her lungs and other places in her body. Brian and Wren have been so authentic and real during the whole situation, but they have also displayed incredible grace--something given to them by the Holy Spirit. I know that despite what happens, God will receive great glory and many lives will be changed because of their story.
Title: Wren's Grace
Medium: Acrylic
This was another picture a friend of theirs took in the NICU.
I cried.
If you would like to pray for and follow their story you can find updates by joining the group: "Wren Horn Support" on Facebook.
I wanted to share with you some things from my heart.
I love to paint, draw, and simply create in general, but it isn't very often I actually share some of my projects with people. Part of that is because of time. I am a perfectionist to a FAULT. I'm highly critical of my work and if I can see things that should be improved, then I feel like others will be equally critical...in other words, I'm afraid of others' opinions. Another reason I often hesitate to share is I wrestle with worrying that people will think I'm prideful if I display my work.
Both of those reasons are WRONG.
God has graciously given me a gift, and if I continue to literally hide my gift in the closet then I am living in disobedience to His call for my life. I must always continue to guard against pride, the desire to please/impress people, or to even hoard the gift and keep it only for myself.
So I've added a new tab to the top of this blog that is to be a "Gallery" of sorts where I can share the "dreams and visions" God has given to me. I pray they will bless you and stir you to a closer relationship with Him.
Have you ever had one of those moments where you KNOW God completely orchestrated something? I've heard some people call them "divine appointments". Well, whatever they are, they are thrilling!
A few weeks ago I was in kind of a slump in every area of my life...physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I was recovering from being in a car accident, trying to get ready to send my baby off to Kindergarten, attempting to prepare myself to go back to school, wondering where I fit in the world....blah, blah, blah...mix that in with some hormones...you get the picture (and I'm sure you've been there!).
Anyway, while I was doing some back to school shopping with my mom, my friend Kim spotted me from waaaaaaaay out in the parking lot. She called out and walked quickly toward me with open arms. As she met me with a HUGE embrace she said, "Ohhhh, I've missed you. I love you so much!" Well, that was just about enough to send me over the edge into tears...but not quite yet.
After a few moments of chit chat, she asked me what I've been doing for a Bible study lately. I had to honestly answer her with, "Well, it's kind of random right now..." and listed off a few things that proved that I had zero direction in my devotional time at the moment. Her response was, "Well, let's do a Bible study together!" That was it. I burst into tears.
Obviously, she struck a nerve. After some discussion, prayer, and research over the next couple of weeks we settled on a study called, "No Other Gods: Confronting Our Modern-Day Idols" by Kelly Minter.
We meet once a week to discuss the week's material and usually there is some sort of food and/or sweet beverages involved. This week we met at my house and Kim brought me sweet Tea from Bush's Chicken. Mmmmmm.
I have to say I love this girl, and not because she brought me straight sugar in its liquefied form. She is brilliant and passionate about Jesus. She is also not afraid to push me...hard. She asks me the tough questions and makes me evaluate myself, my motives, and just plain makes me want to love Jesus more.
So, anyway, this study has been a huge blessing. The author has no qualms about stepping on your toes! We are definitely working through some really difficult things, and I cannot even begin to tell you how liberating it has been to be able to identify the things I place on pedistals and in my own way bow down to worship them. But nothing is as liberating as demolishing those idols and returning to the One True God who is full of Love and is the only One who has the power to give freedom.
Just as a little something extra to encourage you to evaluate your own heart, you can take a look at this video from Breakaway Ministries. I had heard it months ago, but it had a completely fresh message for me after beginning this study.
Just wanted to give you a list of songs the kids and I have been listening to on our commute to and from school these days. About a week ago I realized we all have a tendency to be a little sour in the mornings, so as a way to combat that I decided to make a CD with several "happy songs".
It's amazing what this has done to our trips to school and home and wherever! So here are a few of them:
How can you not smile, sing and laugh after those songs! All of us will sing and shout during most of the songs...I'm sure we look like quite a sight to anyone we pass! Oh well, they probably just wish they could have that much fun too! :)
"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones." Proverbs 17:22
My friend Kim and I are doing a Bible study together right now (I'll tell you more about that later). Last week she and I were discussing the idea of sanctification and she read me this excerpt from A.W. Tozer's Root of the Righteous. It was so powerful. I just wanted to share it with you: Praise God for the Furnace
It was the enraptured Rutherford who could shout in the midst of serious and painful trials, "Praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace."
The hammer is a useful tool, but the nail, if it had feeling and intelligence, could present another side of the story. For the nail knows the hammer only as an opponent, a brutal, merciless enemy who lives to pound it into submission, to beat it down out of sight and clinch it into place. That is the nail's view of the hammer, and it is accurate except for one thing: The nail forgets that both it and the hammer are servants of the same workman. Let the nail but remember that the hammer is held by the workman and all resentment toward it will disappear. The carpenter decides whose head will be beaten next and what hammer shall be used in the beating. That is his sovereign right. When the nail has surrendered to the will of the workman and has gotten a little glimpse of his benign plans for its future it will yield to the hammer without complaint.
The file is more painful still, for its business is to bite into the soft metal, scraping and eating away the edges till it has shaped the metal to its will. Yet the file has, in truth, no real will in the matter, but serves another master as the metal also does. It is the master and not the file that decides how much shall be eaten away, what shape the metal shall take, and how long the painful filing shall continue. Let the metal accept the will of the master and it will not try to dictate when or how it shall be filed.
As for the furnace, it is the worst of all. Ruthless and savage, it leaps at every combustible thing that enters it and never relaxes its fury till it has reduced it all to shapeless ashes. All that refuses to burn is melted to a mass of helpless matter, without will or purpose of its own. When everything is melted that will melt and all is burned that will burn, then and not till then the furnace calms down and rests from its destructive fury.
With all this known to him, how could Rutherford find it in his heart to praise God for the hammer, the file and the furnace? The answer is simply that he loved the Master of the hammer, he adored the Workman who wielded the file, he worshiped the Lord who heated the furnace for the everlasting blessing of His children. He had felt the hammer till its rough beatings no longer hurt; he had endured the file till he had come actually to enjoy its bitings; he had walked with God in the furnace so long that it had become as his natural habitat. That does not overstate the facts. His letters reveal as much.
Such doctrine as this does not find much sympathy among Christians in these soft and carnal days. We tend to think of Christianity as a painless system by which we can escape the penalty of past sins and attain to heaven at last. The flaming desire to be rid of every unholy thing and to put on the likeness of Christ at any cost is not often found among us. We expect to enter the everlasting kingdom of our Father and to sit down around the table with sages, saints and martyrs; and through the grace of God, maybe we shall; yes, maybe we shall. But for the most of us it could prove at first an embarrassing experience. Ours might be the silence of the untried soldier in the presence of the battle-hardened heroes who have fought the fight and won the victory and who have scars to prove that they were present when the battle was joined. The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
Without doubt we of this generation have become too soft to scale great spiritual heights. Salvation has come to mean deliverance from unpleasant things. Our hymns and sermons create for us a religion of consolation and pleasantness. We overlook the pace of the thorns, the cross and the blood. We ignore the function of the hammer and the file.
Strange as it may sound, it is yet true that much of the suffering we are called upon to endure on the highway of holiness is an inward suffering for which scarcely an external cause can be found. For our journey is an inward journey, and our real foes are invisible to the eyes of men. Attacks of darkness, of despondency, of acute self-depreciation may be endured without any change in our outward circumstances. Only the enemy and God and the hard-pressed Christian know what has taken place. The inward suffering has been great and a mighty work of purification has been accomplished, but the heart [knows] its own sorrow and no one else can share it. God has cleansed His child in the only way He can, circumstance being what they are. Thank God for the furnace.
We have officially entered into a new phase in our lives. My munchkin has started KINDERGARTEN!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness! I can't believe it! As with all parents these days are bittersweet...but mostly sweet. We absolutely MUST praise God for this time because He has provided for us to put Josie into a classical school.
If you are anything like I was about 7 years ago you're asking, "What the heck is classical school?" Well, I found out when I was hired several years ago to teach P.E. at a classical school in Austin. The more I learned about the teaching philosophy the more I fell in love with classical education.
In a nutshell, it is old. We're talkin' ancient--literally. It's methods are extremely similar to the methods used with people like Socrates and Plato. Yes, I mean old. Of course it's developed since then but at it's foundation it is the same. It uses the developmental phases of children to their educational advantage.
For instance, little ones are considered "sponges" so the aim is to allow them to "soak up" everything they can. Middle school ages are called "Logic" students. This allows those tween and teenagers to ask the questions and the teachers embrace the questions...teaching the students how to think for themselves. Finally high school is called "Rhetoric". Here they take all the knowledge they have, combine it with their ability to think things through and then articulate their ideas WELL...even defend them...much like debate.
The extra-super-fabulous thing about this school is it is Christian, so high school students learn how to defend their faith in a world that thinks it can't be proven....in other words, they are learning to love God with all their "hearts, strength, and MINDS" just as the first commandment instructs us to. (And how often we forget the MIND part of the commandment!)
Realistically, we have no idea if our kids will go all the way through the school. We are doing our best to stay open to God's plan for our EACH of our kids. What we do know is this has been a dream of both Wesley and myself and God has allowed it to come to fruition today.
Seeing her cousins made the whole morning even better!!!
I loved picking up a happy girl at the end of the day!!!
So what do Caleb and I do on the days we're home together? Well, here are a couple of ideas for ya.
A few weeks ago we had a chance to go see one of my friends who lives near Ft. Hood and enjoy the perks of military life. She took us "on post" and we had a chance to play at the lake, their small water park, and even a really great pool there on the base. Here are a few pictures from our super fun day!
Who said sunscreen couldn't be any fun?
Popsicles during the life guards' break at the lake.
I was honored to introduce Ashley and both of my children to the joy that is Freebirds.
Happy tummies...proof that they are my offspring.
Caleb was fascinated by all the tanks, cannons, helicopters, planes, and people in uniform. He loved seeing all the equipment. At one point he said he wanted to be a superhero. I took the opportunity to tell Caleb that the men and women all around us in the uniforms were real heroes....like Ashley's husband Josh who is currently in Iraq. So, thank you to all our heroes who protect us! Praising God for your courage and your sacrifice!
