I’m not necessarily proud of it. In fact, I feel a little dirty, sitting here, sharing this personal detail of my life with you.
I cleaned my fridge. Not the typical swipe the front with a rag and hope nobody looks too closely kind of cleaning that I normally do. I took out the drawers.
I’m not sure if you’ve done that recently. You’re probably a much better housekeeper than I am, and if so, this doesn’t concern you. But here we are, being honest with each other, so I’m going to keep going.
First – a picture:
I blame my children for spilling something and not telling me about it. Chances are I wouldn’t have bothered to look this closely if they had, but let’s not tell them that.
At first glance, upon removing said drawers, my impulse was just to shove the drawers back in and go on my merry way. I mean … who really sees that part of my fridge anyway?
Right?
How many parts of our house exist that we just can’t let anyone see? There was a moment when I thought that terrible color was just permanent part of the plastic, and then there was the moment when my dog started sniffing and I wondered if it was a new life form emerging.
And as I stared at that embarrassing space, trying to will myself to do something about it, I remembered a time when Jesus talked about cleaning the outside of a cup but the inside was still filled with greed and self-indulgence (Mt 23) … He had some pretty strong words about that. And suddenly I started thinking about all the ways we pretty up the outside of our lives and just hope no one will get too close or look deep enough to see the reality that our social media filters cover up so effectively.
I don’t have a whole lot more to say right now. I have a fridge to clean.
But I know that as I do, I’ll be talking with Jesus, asking Him to show me what parts of my life I need to drag into the light and let Him heal and clean. It’s worth it… no matter how uncomfortable it is.
And I’ll be celebrating these words as I go: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Feels pretty good to know anyone can come over and look in my fridge without me hiding in shame… now just don’t look under my bed ;P
“Open your mouth wide and I will fill it” … what a funny phrase to have running through my head all day. It just popped in there and wouldn’t stop, like when you hear that ear worm song that’s on repeat all day long. So I wandered around the amusement park that day in December when all of this began, a bit bemused and filled with curiosity.
As I sit down to write, it is now a couple months later. I have a story to tell, but it is very incomplete, and I have to confess I am still a bit bemused and filled with curiosity over what God is doing. So I invite you into the middle of this story as I travel this road with Jesus.
In the last year, God has been showing me a beautifully intimate form of personal care – a friend giving me a grill when mine is wearing out, a loveseat that matches my decor perfectly right when I was looking for a new chair to replace the one I’ve had for 15 years… small details that don’t mean much in the grand scheme, but declare to this heart that God sees, and He who sees the sparrows cares about the intricate details of our lives as well.
So when God started whispering these beautiful, simple words to my heart, I started to look up in expectation and wonder at what He is promising. I found the origin of the words in Psalm 81: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it”. I read further… I opened commentaries and dove a bit deeper. And I discovered these words from Spurgeon that captured my heart:
“When the mother-bird brings food she never has to ask the little ones to open their mouths wide; her only difficulty is to fill the great width which they are quite sure to present to her: appetite and eagerness are never lacking, they are utterly insatiable…picture a nest of little birds reaching up their mouths, and all opening them as wide as they can.”
Hey Spurgeon – guess what? I have that exact picture because that is precisely what happens in my backyard every spring!
Do you see what I see when you look at this picture? The utter helplessness of those baby birds to provide for themselves? The wide open expectancy of those beaks on hearing the sound of their mother approaching? My heart leaped at this realization – this is how God is asking me to live my life! No more chasing after my own means of provision, no more carrying the constant burden of control. Just release and open my mouth, expectantly waiting for God to fill it. I read on, and my heart beats faster:
“You may easily over-expect the creature, but you cannot over-expect God, ‘Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it;’ widen and dilate the desires and expectations of your souls, and God is able to fill every chink to the vastest capacity… Our cup is small, and we blame the fountain. (Spurgeon)
I read these words and resolve: I no longer want to live in small expectation, carrying memories of disappointments and longings not satisfied. I want to widen my desires and expand my expectations of what God will do for me.
As children, we have big dreams and high expectations of life. But then the reality of bills and sicknesses and unmet expectations hit, and our hearts begin to shrivel. Cynicism sets in, we diminish our expectations because we fear disappointment, and we begin to close our mouth to God. In fact, the rest of Ps 81 speaks directly to that, and the sorrow God feels over our lack of trust.
So I set my heart to release more and trust as a child. I ask Him to help me believe – to help me see Him as a God who provides without limit. But how? How do we see beyond the loss and the pain and the drama and the material wants and the demands of others and the distractions of our tech driven world – how do we see beyond our current mud puddle to the offer of a holiday at the sea?1 To not wonder where or how the provision will come, but only to look to the heavens with curious expectation, watching for His hand to fulfill His promise. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it”.
Let me tell you what has happened in the last 2 months since all this took place and I set my heart to trust. It is the tale of a two cars, a dryer, a diamond, and some other stuff.
We have two cars. One is the newer “good” car, the other one we bought when I was pregnant with our first child…. it is now over 20 years old, has 265,000 miles on it, and I call it “Old Faithful” because it just never stops running. Warning lights start flashing on the “good car”, and despite attempts to get it diagnosed and fixed, we found ourselves stranded on the side of the road one night while driving our daughter home for Christmas break. Yet He says,”Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
Multiple visits to multiple garages resulting in multiple bills finally led us to a more expensive garage who would diagnose a more expensive repair … but it’s our main car and we need it, so we go ahead and stretch our finances to get it repaired. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
On a Monday like any other, just a couple weeks ago, while driving “Old Faithful” from Walmart to Taco Bell to pick up lunch for my boys, someone turned into me and totaled good “Old Faithful”. Gratefully, I am not totaled, and as we get the newer car back from the garage, we begin to hunt for a replacement vehicle for the one that was just wrecked. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
Then there’s the ring … and the day I look down at my hand and discover the diamond that has been there every day of our marriage these 23 years is now missing… “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
And on the day of a massive winter storm… our dryer stops working. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
Our car shopping is turning up empty thus far… “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
And just this morning, as we drive to church, the newer car that we have dumped more money into than we would have anticipated is now flashing all the warning lights that is has been giving us for the last 2 months, and it appears we are back at square one. “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
So here I sit on this chilly Sunday afternoon, aware that my current circumstances are not matching the expectation in the promise I have been receiving from God. I asked Him to help me believe – and it seems He is doing the opposite.
Do you hear it in the air? That temptation to listen to that great lie the enemy of our souls has been whispering since the beginning of time? That voice that says, “did God really say…?”
So I have a choice to make. It’s a choice that each of us face every day of our lives.
Will I let my current circimstances define my belief in God’s promises – or will God’s promises define how I see my circumstances?
As I sit here on this chilly Sunday afternoon, I think of these words from Scripture: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him [Jesus]. (2 Corinthians 1:20)
And these: “Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to Him for protection” Proverbs 30:5
And “my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:19)
So I say it again: Will I let my current circimstances define my belief in God’s promises – or will God’s promises define how I see our circumstances?
How do you then reconcile a life that doesn’t seem to be lining up with the promises you thought you were hearing from God? It is easy to sit here, on this chilly Sunday afternoon, and resent God for promising good things while my situation continues to worsen. I mean, let’s be honest – my situation isn’t even that bad. It’s just earth stuff and inconveniences I’m grappling with. There is so much life-and-death struggle all around us: traumas and hurts and insecurities and fears pressing in. How do we cut through the fog to understand what God is really promising us?
And I think that might be the key question right there– how do we cut through the fog?
How do we understand that “Now we see through a glass dimly” (1 Corinthians 13)? Peter demonstrated this when he stepped out of the boat, eyes on Jesus, and against all odds found his feet walking on top of the waves. His feet remained steady while His eyes were on Jesus. Trust cuts through the fog. Trust hushes the challenging voice of the enemy, calms the restless heart, and releases the controlling compulsions. Trust chooses to believe what is true when the world feeds us false visions of a tainted reality.
Trust chooses what to see. My story tells of a lost diamond – but it doesn’t include the gift of an old ring that might help replace what was lost. My story tells of a broken dryer right when we needed a touch of encouragement. A week later, a hand-me-down dryer was delivered, and just this weekend we celebrated fresh laundry and clean, dry clothes! My story doesn’t include the day my husband left to get groceries and came home with 3 dozen eggs that were being given out for free by generous souls who wanted to bless others. As I crack those eggs into our French Toast this morning, I thank God for providing for us in unexpected winks from Him that tell me He sees, He cares, I am safe in His hands. Then there was a “random” gift handed to my husband as we entered church (just 30 minutes after those warning lights started flashing again) – a very specific gift given by a friend who knows my husband loves the’80’s. This friend didn’t know the discouragement that had just hit us, but he came armed with encouragement right when we needed it. There are so many lavish blessings that surround us, and we miss them because our myopia only repeats to us the stories of loss. So we rejoice, we give thanks, while we continue to live in this thin place between what is and what will be. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16)
Trust means we know that His vision is so much clearer than ours. It means knowing that we see today and maybe part of tomorrow – He sees all eternity, and “all my days … written in Your book and ordained for me before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16)
Trust teaches us the beauty of Paul’s words reminding us to look beyond our circumstances: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want…” (Philippians 4:12)
Trust tells me that while I am restlessly wondering how the bills will all get paid and how we will meet the needs we currently have, Jesus says, ““Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Mt 6:25-27)
Trust believes that the firmness of His promises are more sure than the mirages we see all around us. Trust tells me to “open your mouth wide, and I will fill it”.
So today, on this chilly Sunday afternoon, I choose to trust His promises. I know His timing is often different than mine, and that “His ways are not my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). And so I lay down control and that crazy, constant urge to “fix it” myself – and I let His promises speak louder to me than my fears. I will dig up the deep promises of His Word every day, and I will choose to let them define that day’s circumstances for me. I will do this with every sunrise and every sunset, for “His mercies are new every morning” and “from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised” And when I falter, He promises to help even in that (Romans 8:26).
And that’s my story. At least all has been written on the pages of my life so far. But it is enough. Some stories are about what happens in the middle.
“Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it…”
it looks a little like this:
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23)
1 “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis)
This time of year, nature adorns itself in a parable so loud it is impossible to ignore.
And yet, still my heart fights within me.
So I sit here, hoping my words can somehow summon in me the willpower to become the person I want to be. But I know my spirit is often weak.
The meteorologist says it will dip to 36 degrees on Friday night. All of my family rejoices, but part of me wants to die inside. I realize I’m being a bit dramatic. These are the days so many are waiting for. The days when the muggy summer days are replaced with crisp air and beautiful red leaves. When pumpkins adorn our steps and our coffees, when flannels and blankets wrap around our bodies, and it seems everything beckons coziness and quiddity.
Yet, I rebel. Because these are also the days that threaten winter. The beautiful green descends to dismal brown, the flowerbeds lose their brilliant colors and are covered in a blanket of dead leaves. There is a chronic illness in me that gets stirred up by cold, and so I subconsciously dread that lovely chill because it usually means physical pain and retreating indoors.
“Lean into it?” How do you lean into something that stirs pain? This is what I am thinking about today.
I’m suddenly remembering a day many years ago when I gripped tightly to my friend as he wove his motorcycle through those San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, CA. Curve after curve flew at us, that motorcycle leaning one way and then the other. I somehow thought I could “help” by counterleaning … you already know what I’m going to say, don’t you? “Lean into it” he yelled as the wind whipped his words past my ears.
Lean into it? When my natural instinct is to counter-balance and push against gravity?
I read this morning about the physics behind this – I read words like “torque”, “centrifugal force”, and “center of gravity” … And basically, it looks like this: When your body is in line with the bike, gravity works to increase the friction of your tire with the road. When you lean away from that, you decrease that connection between your tire and the road, which makes all the difference.
They call it getting “crossed up”. I’m beginning to think that’s how I’ve been living in some areas of life. Pushing against what God has brought to me because it’s hard to see how it is going to help. Maybe it just plain hurts. Let’s be honest – it’s hard to release control and lean into whatever it is that He is doing.
So I spend my days getting crossed up. I’m missing the glory and the beauty in what is surrounding me because I’m only looking at what comes next. Missing the joy in the moment because fear or anxiety consume and distract. Missing what is because of might be. How can I learn to lean into it all and what might I discover in the process?
I’m not talking about bending in the waves of culture wars or committing our beliefs to the tides that come and go. There are places we can (and must) keep our feet firmly planted and stand strong and unwavering. But I wonder if we weaken our ability to do that well because we’re so busy fighting the things we can’t control? When our bodies give out and we can no longer function at the physical level we expect of ourselves? When loss leaves you suddenly feel so helpless? When our finances collapse upexpectedly or our children make choices that break our hearts? When the diagnosis comes in and everything changes in an instant? When life just feels dark and you feel like you can’t find your way through…
This is becoming bigger than me being grumpy about weather. This is about the posture of our lives. Will we stubbornly push against the storms of life and try bend them to suit our expectations, growing angry and resentful in the process? Or will we receive what comes our way, lean into it to hear what the Holy Spirit is whispering in our ear, so that where the rubber meets the road, it will hold? The curves will come, the unexpected will take us by storm – what will our posture be in that moment?
I drove through the storm this morning that is bringing the cold weather our way, and I sit here in my sweatshirt thinking that maybe it’s time to lean in and let the beauty wrap itself around me with whispers of His glory. Maybe this is what quiddity is all about: “Jenkins seemed to be able to enjoy everything, even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town, seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was not Betjemannic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was” – C. S. Lewis
Did the sun set in your town last night? Did you notice? Sometimes it dips below the horizon in a wild display of splendor and social media lights up with celebrations of brilliant orange and pink brushes of glory. And many times, it happens while you’re making dinner or just busy with life and you don’t even notice. One night, late in August, my family climbed some sand dunes to fly kites overlooking the beaches of North Carolina. We’d been there before, but that night, we climbed higher and sat with a vast assortment of other people to watch the sun march towards to the sea.
Then a strange thing happened – something I have never experienced before. As the sun dipped below the sea and we were all gripped in a shared moment of wonder, the entire mass of humanity on that sand dune began to applaud.
And yes, we may have giggled a little bit at the silliness of it all – I mean, doesn’t the sun set every night? Why are we suddenly applauding somethinghappens without us noticing every other night of the year? Maybe it’s not so silly after all… in that moment our hearts responded in unison and we were actually seeing as if for the first time what God has been declaring since the beginning of time.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat” Ps 19:6
In that moment, we all cumulatively lived the truth of Romans 1, regardless of each one’s personal belief.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” Romans 1:20
Oh how I want to see it all and taste the splendor of God as He declares His glory all around us! To let myself soak in the changing landscape that brings us each season for all God means it to be. To lean into the message He is declaring all around us rather than getting crossed up in all I want it to be.
As I talked about in my previous post, the last few years feel like a blur of head, heart, and body busy-ness. This is my last year with my daughter, my first born, at home. Oh how my heart calls me to slow and savor. But part of me has forgotten how. Jonathan Edwards may have had 70 resulutions, but today I have only one. I sit here and I resolve, out loud to make it real, to lean into it. To let the rainy days drip and the cold days creep in with delight. To feel the fog and rejoice in the colors and truly smell the glory of fall. To have picnics on rainy days and feel the wrapping of my scarf and covering of a blanket as I lean in to really listen.
“Don’t you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You’ll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car.” Jane said she’d never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn’t mind trying. All three got in.
“That’s why Camilla and I got married,” said Denniston as they drove off. “We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.”
“How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?” said Jane. “I don’t think I should ever learn to like rain and snow.”
“It’s the other way round,” said Denniston. “Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children – and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”
“I’m sure I hated wet days as a child,” said Jane.
“That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,” said Camilla. “Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength)
Now, I am not naive enough to think that stopping and smelling the roses will magically erase the tragedies and trauma in our lives. And I am not proposing that a splash in a mud puddle will be enough to distract us when life is crashing in around us. But a vulnerable little bird this past spring taught me that every day we are surrounded with messages from God and about God – and by adjusting my posture now, tuning my heart to sing His praise, I can see Him and hear Him more clearly in both the good and the bad days. To align our hearts, our minds, and even our physical senses with the moments Jesus brings to each day rather than my vain attempts at control and my unrealistic expectations … And that happens in all the small moments. New life can spring forth even in autumn! And that is the adventure I am on right now.
So grab a cup of coffee and join the experiment with me?
Our God is a consuming fire 