But First,the Test..

A month ago I moved to the Hawaiian islands, and not only did I have a turbulent landing, but I've also been swimming in spiritually rough waters every day since my arrival. I could list my woes one by one (and some days I do), but I've made a decision to fight for gratitude instead.  Most people quickly assume that living on Maui, where I moved,  must be paradise, but the difficulty of the transition has made for some incredibly challenging days.  The breathtaking views are undeniable, but things are far from perfect on my new tropical home.  That said, I press on and muster the determination to see my life and surroundings through the lens of Psalm 34:8 that says "taste and see that the Lord is good." My life here has been about more than just soaking in the beauty of the island though. I can both taste and see His goodness without effort, but He's interested in far more than fixing my eyes on the lush scenery.  There are deeper, more educational undercurrents on the move and His goal is my surrender.  Our yielding to His Spirit is rarely a once in a lifetime event; it's a daily endeavor, and more often than not, the process is painful (Galatians 5:17).  On one of my more difficult days recently, I came across an email that I wrote to someone else a couple of months ago.  She was having a hard time and I prayed for the Lord to give me words that would soothe her hurting heart. It turns out the words He penned through my hand weren't only for her, but also for me.  If you're reading this and going through a difficult time, the words are for you as well.  Be blessed as you endure your test (James 1:2-4)!  

Listen to Understand

I recently had a conflict with someone who responded to the situation by verbally attacking who I  am, who I once was, and who I will presumably be in the future.  It was a less than poetic assault on my character, and while I'd like to say the words were quickly and easily shrugged off, the truth is I had to fight pretty hard to cast them back into hell where they originated.  In the message sent, he laid out a list of my life's wrongdoings that began when I was a teenager, long before he personally knew me.  I'm almost 40 now, so the accusations he fired my way sounded strange and foreign.  I had forgotten some of what he presented because of how far back in my history the incidences occurred and the forced memory of sins I committed long before I knew Jesus assured me that his words were not from the Lord.  The Bible says in Revelation 12:10 that satan is the "accuser of the brethren," and so often he works through those close to us to bring shame and guilt and separation from God.  If he can get us to focus on what we've done instead of on how far we've come, then he has already gained a small victory.  Don't give him that foothold (Ephesians 4:27).  His ultimate goal is to convince us that the cross of Christ is insufficient to cover our mistakes and sins, but here's what I know - 2 Corinthians 5:17 says "therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; the old has gone, the new is here," and shortly after this person's ugly tirade, I came across a social media post that said the following: train your mind to hear what God whispers instead of what the enemy may be shouting. I had to consciously choose to tune out the voice of hate that yelled through an email and instead, intentionally pursue the voice of God I know to be true, so my question is - whose voice are you listening to?

What if?

Not long ago I began working as a psychological competency evaluator for inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial.  My job consists of assessing their mental health and writing reports to the court indicating whether or not I believe they have been restored to competency based on the assistance they receive in our program.  It isn't without challenge, but I love many aspects of the position.  The hardest part, however, is looking into the eyes of an inmate who hasn't even reached the age of 30 and has been charged with attempted murder.  Or rape, or any other episode of violent criminal behavior. Some of the alleged crimes I hear about bring tears to my eyes and pain to my soul. When I read a rap sheet 28 pages long and then scan the date of birth only to find the inmate is a mere 24 or 25 years old, I feel heartbroken.  I locked eyes with a man recently and the emptiness in his stare sent a shiver down my spine.  Without emotion or remorse of any kind, he shared chilling details of the incidents leading up to his arrest.  I asked the Lord Jesus to open my eyes and show me what I needed to see in order to serve Him well and love the prisoner sitting before me.  Suddenly, my heart swelled with compassion and I understood that the man's brokenness originated with the first fist struck against his face.  The repeated and merciless words of cruelty spoken against him still lingered in his mind, and the unlawful and sexually violent attack on his innocence by another enveloped him.  He was only four years old then.  Unable to escape.  Beaten, battered, and violently abused at the hands of others who were supposed to love him.  His only chance at survival was to mentally and emotionally die inside so that he could physically survive outside. My heart hurt with the child inside of him who never got to be.  It doesn't right his alleged wrongs, but 1 Samuel 16:7 says "For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” I allowed the Lord to show me what He saw.  And it changed everything.

Leaving God

I looked around the room at all the furniture I was leaving behind. Pictures. Books. My daughter's crib. My own bed.  Many of my son's belongings.  Everything I owned was about to fade into nothing more than a distant memory.  Let it go I heard my Father whisper.  I struggled, not with starting over again, but with leaving behind my books, Bibles, and Christian wall art, the plaques that had Scripture written out on them.  Hanging crosses that I hung carefully throughout every home I've ever lived.  My reminders of God's presence. A white piece of wood that had the word hope written across it in gold.  A table cross that bore one of my favorite verses, Proverbs 3:5-6.  I reasoned a hundred times that the Lord wanted me to make room for these things, but each time I tried I was quickly rebuked by the Holy Spirit within me.   I didn't understand because they were my reminders of Him after all.  They were, to me, symbols of God Himself.  Shouldn't I keep them close? Leaving them all behind felt wrong, felt saddening.  It felt like I was leaving God.

To Fail

According to Business Insider, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor felt he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas."  Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first television anchor job because she became too "emotionally invested in her stories."  Steven Spielberg faced multiple rejections from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.  Colonel Harland David Sanders was fired "from dozens of jobs" and Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to learn anything."  A personal favorite of mine, J.K. Rowling, was a single mom living off welfare when she began writing the first Harry Potter Novel.  The list of failures goes on, but my favorite part of these life stories comes after the rejection.  After the firing.  After the insults.  Walt Disney later became "the guy who redefined American childhood," Oprah Winfrey is now worth "three billion dollars according to Forbes," Steven Spielberg has "won three Academy Awards, 4 Emmys, 7 Daytime Emmys, and his 27 movies have grossed more than 9 billion."  We all know who Colonel Sanders is, and his Kentucky Fried Chicken is a household favorite still today.  While Thomas Edison needs no introduction, his record of success shames the voice that spoke the word "stupid" over him.  J.K. Rowling, once living on welfare as a single mom, became the "first billionaire author in 2004."  Reading over these stories, if you had to choose one word to summarize them, what would it be?  The word that came to me is perseverance. Galatians 6:9 says "let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up," and while the road can be long and the mountains steep, the greatest and most inspiring stories aren't written from overnight success legends, but from the forward movement, persistence, and continuous effort of those who pursued greatness, but also knew how to fail. 

Rooted

As I sit here, quietly allowing disconnected words to swim around in the oceanic depths of my mind, I hear my eight month old daughter babbling on the baby monitor.  She's awake and the sounds are both precious and overwhelming. I've been wanting to write for weeks now, but each time I sit down to try, I'm quickly pulled away by other life demands.  I call out for my 13 year old son to help, which he does, and I've bought a few more moments of solitude in which to think and organize my current message.   The times are blessed, but challenging. In December of last year, I packed up and left California, the only home I'd known for over a decade, and headed east.  I imagine what Abram must have felt when the Lord told him to get up and go to a land He would show him. Genesis 12:1 records God's instruction to him and it's direct, but void of elaborate detail.  He said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you." In essence, leave everything familiar, all that you know and love, and go somewhere new and unknown.  From what we can read in the text, God told him nothing of the new place, He simply called Abram to obey in faith.  A risky venture for most, but the New Testament Hall of Faith Fame, Hebrews 11, puts Abram, later called Abraham, on shiny display as a model of righteousness, faith, and obedience (Hebrews 11:8-12).  He didn't have all the answers, but he went.  He couldn't see the outcome, but he trusted God.  He undoubtedly felt sadness and grief to leave his family, friends, and comforts behind, but he didn't count any of it so precious or too valuable (Acts 20:24) to miss the call of God. He knew where he was rooted.  Do you?  

Unsee

If you've ever had the unfortunate experience of watching The Silence of the Lambs, then you know the main character, played by Anthony Hopkins, is a brilliant psychiatrist, but also a dangerous psychopath with a penchant for cannibalism. Many years have thankfully passed since I saw it, but the unsavory scenes of one human eating another stay with most viewers.  In my younger days I liked a good scary movie,  but as an adult I've never much cared for them, which is ironic considering some of the horror shows I see when I go to work each day.  Most recently, I witnessed the aftermath of a patient who later brought the aforementioned movie to mind.  But sadly, this wasn't a movie.  Chewing from an open self-inflicted leg wound, my patient tore around seven inches of flesh from her body and spit it on the bed.  Her own blood covered her face and sheets as the nurse practitioner on call and three nurses worked quickly to stop the bleeding.  She had done this before.  The wound had grown so deep and so large that not enough skin remained to stitch it closed.  I had never seen anything like it and nurses on call that day said the same.  Standing to her side and trying not to cry for her,  I forced myself to hold it together and work to calm her while the ambulance for another hospital was called. As I looked into her eyes, I saw her desperation to die and with tears beginning to run down her cheeks, she asked me if she would live. When I softly told her that she would, her face fell in disappointment and she laid back in defeat.  Of the entire experience, that moment was more painful to see than the bleeding hole in her leg, blood stained sheets, and the pieces of flesh lying on the bed.  It was all too much, and as I fought back tears, I knew I could never unsee any of it.

In This Moment

As I walked into a patient's room recently, I wasn't surprised to see blood stains on the floor, bed sheets, walls, and her face. Only seconds earlier when her screams filled the hallway and nurse's station where I sat charting, I had taken a deep breath in to prepare for the complete breakdown that was commencing, and as I made my way over to intervene and stabilize her, I didn't have time to consider anything but the immediate crisis.  She was in there somewhere...the woman God created, but shouting back at me and the rest of the treatment staff was a person so incomprehensibly angry, scared, and reportedly desperate to die that I didn't know whether or not I could reach her in that moment.  So I prayed as I worked to calm her.  Our sessions up to this point had been as productive as her limited cognitive functioning allowed, but in the middle of a self-injurious rage, patients aren't always so easy to calm.  It's not my favorite part of being a therapist, but I had been in this setting before and the scene was all too familiar.  Several years ago I spent time working in a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles, but when I left that position, I had no intention of ever working with the severely mentally ill or those with neurocognitive impairment again.  But there I was.  Working calmly and quickly to stabilize a bleeding patient screaming about wanting to die.  Again.  How did I get here was no longer the question running through my mind; I knew exactly how I got here, but the question had become Why am I staying here? To be honest, I'm still not sure, but what I do know is that in this moment, all is well.