​I remember the rush of bitterness washing over me in the bowling alley. I was less than ten years old, spending my Sunday afternoon along with my siblings being entertained by our father. It was our weekly visitation day, after the divorce, the day we got to represent our mother’s righteous demand for child support before a man who valued other things above his family.  As an adult I have far more grace for the brokenness behind failure. But when Holy Spirit returns such memories, there is a reason. 

The memory was triggered as I hiked a familiar trail alone in the isolation of the COVID-19 mandate to stay cloistered. Families are out in droves, staying in their cocooned clusters of “just us”. Stepping aside for a wife, toddler, and infant strapped to his daddy’s back, the memory flooded back to me in a flash. 

As a jaded child, I thought to myself looking around that bowling alley full of fathers and children, “If you had been there for your family when they needed you, you wouldn’t have to be here now in this meaningless ritual,” judging every sans-mother father there assigned a lane with his brood represented what our grouping did. Abandonment. Divorce. Feigned connection. 

My first response now is to invite Holy Spirit into this memory, into this pain that is still trigger-able for a reason. A wound unrecognized and therefore untended. 

What memories is this current crisis triggering for you in this time of unpredictability and even chaos? What are you feeling? 

The temptation is to quickly sweep the discomfort to the side, to walk past without addressing the underlying wound or even the fresh gouging of new assaults against your heart. But there is an invitation in the pain, a wooing into communion with the Great Physician, the Counselor, the One Who bears our grief. God brings beauty straight out of the charred remains of ashes. 

Come Holy Spirit. Lead us into all truth. We invite the healing Balm of Gilead into our most hidden places of wounding, in Jesus’ name.

The moment I emerged into the calm, my phone rang.

​I took a deep breath of relief with risk behind me, and answered.

On the line was one of the heavy hitters I took with me last month for Kingdom expansion pioneering work in North Borneo. She related that God spoke my name to her, and directed her to call me with an immediate message:

"I see you as the trophy. You are victorious. You are fully capable. You are well equipped. You are a leader. He is so pleased with you. Again, you are the trophy...you are His champion."

I was stunned. Timing is everything.

Then last night, as I'm sharing with my host my vision for founding a non-profit to bring autism intervention to developing nations, discussing setting up the board, the same feeling hit my stomach: rapids ahead, uncertainty, a mission seemingly without the skill set, but determination.

Immediately the affirming word returned, "His trophy, His champion, victorious, capable, equipped". His word had imprinted, and now is triggered with the internal feeling I get when approaching rapids in a kayak.

I thought of Gideon threshing his wheat while hiding from his enemies in a vat. God addressed him as "O valiant warrior!" And truly he was.

What rapids are you approaching that turn your stomach a bit, that threaten to tumble you upon the rocks?

​Listen intently for the affirmation God is poised to speak into your spirit at that very moment, to imprint upon you that indeed, you've got this. He is with you with every thrust of your oar.

Thanksgiving is over. I can breathe deeply, content in the peace that comes from a sense of completion and well-being. Love and joy are the hallmarks of holidays spent with family. 

All is well in my world. 

My circumstances have not changed, but my sense of acceptance has matured right along with the aging of my children with hidden disabilities. 

My son is approaching his last semester as a senior in high school, shy the credits he needs to graduate. There are other paths to success than academics and glee club. 

My adult daughter on the spectrum is unemployed, yet chose to forgo the annual family pilgrimage to Texas for feasting with those we all love. By now the cooperative extended family is well versed in questions not to ask that showcase her deficits, and all of us celebrate her remarkable strengths.  Nevertheless, anxiety won this year and she remained home in Colorado. We missed her, but nobody batted an eye. 

Guilt free decision. 

Yet I remember the days when the activity in our home, the door bell ringing, the festive music, the buzz of the oven timer, the rearranging of the dining room to accommodate more people, and the cheerful voices of guests would almost certainly elicit a meltdown in my daughter. Also elicited was my own deep sense of sorrow when she missed what was supposed to be that magical moment called Thanksgiving Dinner. 

Learning to topple the idol of ideal in my life changed everything. I look for love, laughter, and shared connections to define well being, setting aside the pursuit of white picket fence living. 

What's right in your world? Let that define your experience this holiday season and drive your gratitude. 

​With many hot tears and great effort I refused those thought patterns real time in moments of desperation. They were lies and I knew it. I turned them into prayers of realignment with God's heart for my child and renewed commitment to respond to my child with compassion. 

It is too easy to react with anger when our child behaves defiantly. But learning to remain calm and respond through careful consideration in the midst of great provocation is a skill only mastered in the midst of vexation. 

• "You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness." (NRSV, James 1:19-20) 
  
  
• "If you have love for those who have love for you, what credit is it to you? for even sinners have love for those who have love for them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is it to you? for even sinners do the same." (Luke 6:32-33 CEB) 
  
  
• "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11 ESV)

Perhaps the season of discipline our family was in belonged to us as the parents, rather than to our child? And the sooner we yielded fully, the more our home reflected His peace, even as we trained our children. 

Whether compliant or difficult.

When I was two I used to toddle around our home looking for the dregs of creamed coffee and settled sugar to slurp with glee left in the bottom of china cups on saucers adorning table tops within my reach.  But one morning, my father had doused his filterless Camel cigarette butt in the liquid goodness, and the remains lurked undetectable under the surface. As a 54 year old woman, I remember the "swig-gag-overwhelm of betrayal" moment I downed the contents of that cup. Innocence lost.

​From that incident forward, even the smell of coffee nauseated me. Starbucks? Cream based Frappicino please. 

​We tend to accept the way we are as gospel truth, claiming it's just the way we are wired, whether born that way or got that way through life experiences.  "I'm afraid of heights" or "I don't multi-task" or "I'm not a very patient person". The truth is, our Creator reserves the right to re-wire our brains. After all, He made us. 

Recently I did a ropes course, an obstacle course suspended high above the ground, and discovered I wasn't afraid. Heights terrify me. Or at least they used to.

I was amazed.

So amazed that when I visited the Royal Gorge last week, I offered my guest to join me in a bungee sling out over the canyon. Now that's a REAL test of my new found "no fear" I mused. I was not awash in nauseating adrenaline. It was actually FUN, and even more fun with world traveling Pastor Wendi screaming by my side creating a life memory for both of us. 

What are you facing that you are not wired for? I wasn't wired for raising children with disabilities. But LOVE and tapping into the resources of my all sustaining God rewired me for that.

 And now, with this heights thing, I think God is just showing off.

There was a time in my life when rope courses petrified me. They are HIGH, and although harnessed in, the illusion was that I could fall. I’m not really all that athletic, and trying to maintain balance while leaping across boards suspended on guide wires was, well, terrifying.

So 15 years ago when I finally dared for the first time, I lied to myself in mental gymnastics pretending that the ground was only two feet down. I completed the course with great difficulty, but perhaps more importantly, I had a eureka. 

There were areas in my life where I lied to myself to get through, thinking it was necessary in order to survive the most challenging aspects of my life at the time.

One lie I told myself was that I couldn’t have a voice in the lives of other Moms until all my children were grown and all had chosen to love and serve God. This kept me less involved in transparent relationships, which was easier.

Another lie parents raising children with disabilities may tell themselves is that this season of child raising is so difficult that treating their spouses with loving deference and having a quality marriage is beyond their bandwidth and unachievable due to their circumstances. Maybe later. 

The truth was that the ground was indeed well over twenty five feet down, but fall, I could not. 

The truth was that God called me to good stewardship, and outcome was not in my hands. Vulnerability in honest conversations with other parents could have strengthened me and my friends who also struggled. 

The truth is that marriages can become more beautiful as parents offer grace to one another, look for ways to out serve the other, and capitalize on each other’s strengths rather than demanding perfection in each other’s areas of weakness because of our own perceived needs. Just like we accommodate our children to foster success, we can accommodate our spouses, focusing on strengths and capabilities. 

I stopped lying to myself and excusing my misalignment with the truth of God’s word. I began to spot the illusions in my life and renounce them. I’m harnessed. I’m not going to fall. 

God’s word is truth, and He says: 

The LORD directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the LORD holds them by the hand.

(Psalm 37: 23-24 NLT)

I learned today that I am no longer afraid on a ropes course. I know that I am high off the ground, and that if I slip, I will dangle safely by my harness. I not only didn’t slip, but I went for a second round.

I got this.