No CODs

Incredible breakthrough comes at a high cost.  The cost required is pain - pain to your pride, your selfishness, your neediness, and the list goes on (at least for me, it does).  In order to gain life in one area, there must be death in another.

I find that I'm am incredibly slow in my payments of pain to breakthrough.  And perhaps that is indeed the only way that breakthrough accepts payments.  I'm not sure if there is a way to pay in full up front.  If there is, I have yet to discover where to check that box on the form.

It is difficult but mandatory to look at yourself face to face and realize that you are a mess, no matter how pretty you make yourself look.  We have all sorts of methods of dressing ourselves up, but in the end, we are naked, poor, blind, needy, and the like.

I am naked, poor, blind, needy, and the like.

And it is beautiful indeed.  Oh, how beautiful it is when someone knows exactly what they are and can still look themselves in the eye!

I am a magnificent mess, always and forever. It'll never change, and that's OK.

As long as all of my weaknesses and shortcomings are clothed in a robe so righteous no one can refute it, then I'm A-OK. I'm golden. I'm set. I'm good.

Good. I'm good.

Wow.

Whether I run to You or I run to myself, the payment is pain.  But when I run to myself, I am paying someone who is totally and completely lacking in resources. I have nothing to offer me.

You are my one and only true resource. And You never run out.

I am bottomless. You are infinite.

Once again, we're a perfect pair.

Good Enough

I'm the fabric of love
I am patched up with sorrow
I am stitched together carefully
With tears of hope

I am right, I am wrong
I am both, I am neither
I am good and bad
And all of that, and in between

I am black, I am white
I am cloudy, I'm bright

If that's good enough for You
Then it's good enough for me, too

Complex-Free Italian Mama

Colossians 3:23-24 - "Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily, from the soul, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing with all certainty that it is from the Lord and not from men that you will receive the inheritance, which is your real reward. The One Whom you are actually serving is the Lord Christ."

If you're anything like me, you might have what I like to call the Italian Mama Guilt Complex.

Here's how it works:
You serve, serve, serve, serve because you love to serve.  This love of service is truly genuine, something in which you exult.  You love to see people happy, so you tune into what you know makes them happy, keeping a mental check list of each and every thing for each and every person in your life.  And then whenever an opportunity arises, you jump at the chance to provide that thing for them, whatever it may be.  Because you love it.  Right?

This goes on and on, and then, after a certain period of time (This could last anywhere from one day to ten years, depending on your disposition at the time.), you start to feel under appreciated.  People begin to stop thanking you or even noticing your tireless and genuinely-motivated labor.  You push on as you did before because you value loyalty and consistency even more than you value service.

And then, it happens.  You snap.  You begin to resent the people you once loved serving.  Oh, you continue to serve (read above paragraph), but it no longer brings you joy.  It is your main source of frustration and the theme around which each and every pity party you throw for yourself revolves.  You find yourself lashing out on the people you love most because they don't value what you do nearly as much as you do.

Cue the guilt.  A feeling of guilt within for not being good enough to make everyone happy, which you then gladly and liberally spew onto those who are not nearly as impressed with you as you are with yourself.

And by you, of course, I mean me.

The irony of Italian Mama Guilt Complex is that I'm fairly certain I've had it since I was 5 or 6 years old.  I fluttered to and fro on my nimble and almost-newly born feet, smiling and twirling and entertaining and pleasing.  And I loved it.

Twenty years later on feet not-so-nimble and not-so-new...yeah, not-so-much.

Why spill my guts and reveal to you what is probably the most shameful and embarrassing addiction in my life?

Because I had this amazing revelation today.

If I don't need anyone's approval, then I'm free to serve (or whatever other action or lack of action you'd like to insert here) without getting tired of it!

OK, so not an amazing revelation by the usual standard of the word revelation, but to my recently complex-wearied soul, it brought me relief like I have not felt in a very long time.

The truth of the matter is that God approves of me.  All the time.  Period.  End of story.  I am never a disappointment or a surprise to Him.  Ever.

With this permanent stamp of approval, I am free to love and to serve and to cook and to clean and to work and to sing and to play and to be silent and to be loud and to be stupid and to be brilliant and to be awesome and to really suck and to go to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and back again without ever having to consider one time whether or not anyone is happy with me or not.

Wow.  Fabulous.

I can do everything, from the most mundane to the most magnificent, as if I were doing it solely for Jesus and know that from the beginning to the end, He is pleased.

I can serve you without you ever noticing and still be completely satisfied at the end.

This is definitely a win, win (win) situation.

Thoughts From the Potter's Wheel

If You are a Potter by trade, and I am clay by nature, how then can I bark orders or make demands?  How then can I tell You what's best for me unless I have first asked You Your opinion?

You are a Creator without limitations, an Artisan whose skill and ability are matchless, a Benefactor whose generosity is devastating in its extravagance.

With descriptions such as these barely scraping the surface of who You truly are, even "clay" seems too great a description for one such as myself.

But You have called me
beautiful
daughter
conqueror
victorious
warrior
desirable
one worthy of Your jealousy and intensely passionate affections.

If You can gladly call me these things without hesitation or chagrin, then I will also rise up and call myself the very same.

Artisan of my life, I will not insult Your great ability or Your fathomless wisdom by rejecting the truth that You do indeed know my nature better than I do.

I am who You say I am.

I am taking on the shape and the form that You intend as Your hands knowingly mold me.

Because I am Yours.

And I'm Not Afraid of Sharptooth

Worry and anxiety make absolutely no sense.

Whenever I feel worried or anxious, it's usually with the intention - conscious or unconscous - of staying aware or on top of the situation so that it can't get the better of me. It's as if my soul believes unswervingly that if I am not anxious or if I do not worry, then I'm lazy and unaware, and I'll ultimately be overtaken.

The truth of the matter is, however, that the moment I've begun to worry, I am overtaken already. The worrisome situation has already gotten the better of me.

The purpose of trouble is to cause trouble - duh.

If I am troubled about trouble, then trouble's purpose is already satisfied, and it's hardly had to lift its dreary little finger. My worrisome attempt at not being troubled by trouble has done trouble's job for it.

That being said, there can only be one solution:

The only way to overcome trouble is to laugh in the face of it. Big or small, the problems of this life can never overcome one who is not afraid.

What If I Surrender?

When I say, "I surrender," it immediately demands that I must give up the right to say, "What if?"

We use the words, "What if?" in many different capacities. The phrase is a weapon to ward off our need to be obedient; it is a balm to pacify that nagging thought to step out into the unknown; it is a murderer of hopes and dreams and destiny. The desire to utter those two small, devastating words will remain within us, of course, but the right to speak them aloud or to dwell on them is relinquished with the word "surrender."

The word "surrender" is the most painful word a man can release from his lips. The mechanics of forming words are quite simple, but the heart to speak them truthfully with intent to act upon them is not so easy a task. The word "surrender" is painful because the heart required to speak it with truth and action in mind is a broken heart.

Now, I use the phrase "broken heart" in a different manner than the usual picture it creates. A man who has the heart of surrender is not a blubbering, pathetic, barely tolerable mess of a man, though seasons of being such is mandatory to master the heart of surrender. A man with the heart of surrender is rather a man who has broken away from being obedient to fear, rejection, doubt, shame, laziness, excuses, and the like.

Brokenness is the end of obedience to man-pleasing and self-pleasing. It is the beginning of obedience to the resounding whisper of our Father.

A truly broken heart has surrendered one type of obedience - the one which comes to us naturally - for an obedience of a different sort - the sort of obedience which is learned and has nothing to do with instinct. This is the obedience which leads to a most beautiful satisfaction.

Surrender's broken heart is not a debilitating, emotional state of mind. It is a heart which has stolen itself away from the natural order of the world, hiding itself in an order which makes no sense to man. The heart of surrender has found its hiding place in trusting the Father when He doesn't make sense (which is most of the time, by the way).

A surrendered heart has found its refuge in knowing that nothing in the universe, seen or unseen, can ever render God a liar.

Joyfully Hopeful Have-Not

Romans 12:12

"Be joyful in hope..."

If the Holy Spirit took the time to inspire Paul to write this one simple phrase, then there is mostly likely an equally simple and doubly as powerful reason that He did.

And here it is:

Hoping sucks without joy.

If you're hoping, it means you are a have-not.  And having not gets old after a while.  These "whiles" have a tendency to be "good, long whiles," dragging on and on until have-nots also become hope-nots.

Unless you can joyfully long for the things for which you hope, you're going to lose your steam along the way.  By the time you get the hopeful expectation and graduate from your have-not position, you're so exhausted from being so angry for being a have-not, you can't even enjoy having for the very first time.

Do yourself a favor, have-nots.  Get some joyful hope.

Wait joyfully, as a mother waits for the child growing in her belly.

Your have-not hope is already yours.  Enjoy every moment of waiting so your joy may be complete when at last you hold it for the first time.