On slowly saying Yes and how brokenness actually helps…

It’s interesting how few things matter when eternity hovers, gleaming, just over the horizon. When things get stripped away that you thought were so important, and then you chuckle to yourself because you can’t remember why they mattered so much.

“All the deciding factors” dwindle down to the deciding factor: “God, what do You want?”

Oh, friends, I know it’s only April but this year has been SO good. This year of taking off speaking, of letting the laptop rest, of pausing on all projects and letting the ground lie fallow, so to speak. I mean, I’m still growing a human (almost 30 weeks!). Still raising and schooling a few little warriors and caring for one great man and loving (oh how I love them!) the sisters at Renew, and seeking to serve and savor days with my parents. God has also given me a sweet little opportunity to love and serve my elderly neighbors, who have won my heart. One is teetering near eternity, just weeks or months until her departure, due to cancer, and the other, 85-years-young, so needs the love and truth of Jesus: Fresh bread is my offering, and it’s amazing how gluten can go where no glossy gospel-tract ever could.

I mean no disrespect (Jeff was saved by reading a tract!), but trust-building takes time, so.much.time, and who has time to invest in the elderly when there’s so many more important things to be done?? 

The gift of time has been a rich blessing this year.

We’ve slowed. So many projects that felt urgent, now aren’t. We don’t have to have that done by such-a-such a date, because projects will always be there, but people won’t. 

But there is a breaking, a dying: Accomplishing things brings a steady-stream of affirmation, boxes checked, achievements wrought. Loving people brings considerably less affirmation. In fact, it often brings exactly the opposite.

Pride dies hard.

I wrote here about an experience with discouragement. I’ll just tell you clearly: I had received a statement on my first 6-months of book sales, and I was caught off guard by how few had sold. I mean, it’s still sold way more than average, and the feedback I receive from you precious readers is amazing (!), but compared to what I expected, I felt sorely disappointed, and the enemy used it convince me that the work was a waste, that I was delusional to even think that writing was part of my calling, that I was stupid, foolish, that I should quit writing, quit speaking … quit quit quit. 

And the next day I heard His tender voice so clearly—keep writing even if no one reads. Keep writing even if you never get another book contract. Keep writing because it has nothing to do with worldly success or affirmation, it has to do with obedience to Me. And so I shook off my pride and set these fingers to keys, but, I’ll admit, I’ve still felt disheartened, and considering quitting. Besides, there are neighbors to visit and people right in front of me to love.

Why waste time writing words when bellies are hungry and babies are dying?

And then I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and realized that the godly wordsmith Harriet Beecher Stowe changed the course of history with her words. That she liberated the captives by telling their story. That she preached the gospel to hundreds of thousands by her story. I read how Madeline L’Engle received a rejection notice at age 40, and vowed to never write again. But she decided to write, even if no one ever read her words, and later that same manuscript was accepted, and we now know its name: A Wrinkle in Time.

And at this same time a few speaking requests trickled in for 2019. And I’ve just stared at them. Wanted to say, “Nope, that season’s over. Hunkering down here forever, thank you very much.”

But as I’ve quieted, stilled, destroyed all the “deciding factors” and instead just let God’s and Jeff’s voices be the only ones I hear. They’ve both said:

YES.

Slow yeses, prayerful yeses, cautious yeses.

But slow doesn’t always mean no.

I go visit my dying neighbor whether I feel like it or not. Is it not the same spirit of obedience that stands at a podium and humbly seeks to serve a message of truth and hope? Is it not the same spirit of obedience that pounds out words that will, Lord willing, refresh a weary soul?

Yes, it is the same obedience.

But it’s the brokenness that makes us better able to hear His voice. The dying of pride and striving, the death of vanity and ambition. The glory of self crumbling so the glory of God can be clearly seen.

So whatever He’s stripping away, let it be stripped.  Something so much cleaner, purer, better will be born.

{Thanks for reading.}

[PS I still have Sacred Mundane available, on sale, with free shipping! Or here from Amazon. Thanks!]