He Said "Yes" to Me

Please, Father, help me publish this book? Please, will You send me a husband? Heal him, Father. Please? Lord, will You keep me from sinning? Will You restore their marriage? Will You reconcile this church? Will You sell this house? Will You make Your presence known in this pain? 

Often, when I've prayed over the really big concerns in my life, God has said, "no." Friends comfort me by saying perhaps it's just a "maybe" or "wait." Maybe. Often, though, I understand clearly that God is saying "no."

Where does a person go when the creator of the universe says "no"? The only answer is to run, not walk, right back to Him and find comfort in those arms that seemed to be pushing away just minutes ago. They're not pushing; they're reaching. When God says "no" it's for our good.

Sometimes, though, when God has to say "no" too many times in a row it's easier to quit asking. The threat of another disappointment feels too big. My faith feels like it needs a "yes" to survive, and there's no guarantee.  Cancer brought me to that place. My diagnosis came after a summer of "no's." During those days of surgeries and chemotherapy and hospital stays and nausea, I continued to speak with the Lord; I felt his presence and was comforted by his love. I was reminded again and again that even his "no's" were for my good and not my harm. But I stopped asking.

When I quit asking, others took up the mantle. Friends and family cried out for my healing and comfort; they asked the Lord for my restoration and sanity; they petitioned the almighty for things like blood counts and CT scans. And the Lord has been saying, "Yes" to them for the past two and a half years. Two of my little friends, both now six years old, each prayed during dinner and at bed time that my bald head would one day be covered with long, dark, curly hair. And though I had always had fine, light hair, it came back dark and curly, and after months became long again. Jesus said "Yes" to these children.

And during it all, a years long prayer of mine to one day travel to East Asia was picked up and dusted off and presented to the Lord by a friend who shared a similar passion, though she had been there herself many times. She prayed that one day I might be able to travel with her to this faraway land, bringing a flicker of the light of Jesus into places of darkness. And though there's an expired passport to renew and vaccinations to receive and money to raise and plane tickets to buy between here and there, God seems to be saying "yes" to her.

And in saying "yes" to all of them, he has said it over and over to me, "yes, yes, yes!"

Though I often experience God in the context of "no," leaning into Him through disappointments and heartaches and breaches of faith, lately, I am drawing near to Jesus through the exuberance of "yes!" And finding once again, my voice to ask.


"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ. And through him the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God." 2 Corinthians 1:20




I am writing in community with Ann Voskamp and friends today, exploring our experiences with God, and answering the question, "How have you recently experienced God in your life?" To see how others answered, click on the graphic above for a list of links.

The Father's Love: Extravagantly, Sacrificially the Same

This past weekend, I was dogsitting for a 4-month old puppy named Brewster. He is the recent addition to the family of my friends Greg and Joy, who were out of town for the weekend.

The fact that Brewster is still in the chewing, biting, housebreaking stage made the weekend busier than usual. But also having my own grown-up dog, Precious, here too made the weekend more conflicted.

What was best for Brewster often felt like a slight to Precious, and vice versa. Brewster needed to go out every 30 minutes to avoid accidents on the floor. Precious doesn't like to be in the house by herself. I needed to take Brewster out on a leash in the open part of the yard, but because I couldn't handle two dogs on leashes, Precious just had to fend for herself in the fenced in area. But when I took a shower, Brewster couldn't be trusted to roam the house, so he had to go into his crate; Precious sat in the hallway waiting for me. Brewster got a treat after every visit outside: part of his training. Precious has weight problems, so too many treats are a no-no. And the list goes on. Caring for both Brewster and Precious, when their needs were so different, was hard to do.

This dynamic has always been what amazes me most about God's love for us all. While I couldn't even figure out how to be a good caregiver to two different dogs, God loves us all as a Father, never caring for one of us less because he is focusing more on another.

I'm no better with people, to tell you the truth. I can't love lots of people equally, at least I can't demonstrate love equally. When one friend has a great need, my relationships with others suffer. Same is true with my family. My relationships are more like a pendulum swing than the soft, steady pounding of a good rain. That's how Father loves us: pouring Himself out onto all of us equally, soaking into our souls without considering our skin color or bank account or reflection or personality.

I want to love this way, giving myself generously and graciously, but I also want to learn to be loved this way, remembering that God is not like me. I don't want to look at the way God loves others and feel envious or bitter. I don't want to see a friend's happy marriage, energetic children, meaningful job, or successful ministry and think that God has given her more of his love.

Instead, I want to look to the cross, to that bleeding brow and those outstretched arms, and remember that God loves us all the same, extravagantly, sacrificially the same.


Today, I am blogging in community with Ann Voskamp and friends. Follow the link above for other posts on "Loving Like Father."

More than a Meal

Today, I did what very few of us modern Americans ever have to do anymore. I thought six months ahead about what I will be eating by writing out a check to Balanced Harvest Farms as part of their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group.

Being part of a CSA for the first time last year was a natural move in my progression to eat locally and organically. It's been a several-year journey, and gradually, I find my cabinets, refrigerator and freezer filled with more and more local products. 

As a CSA member, I pay the Jamesons money in the winter for equipment, seed, and income, and in the summer, they pay me back in fresh produce. I take on some risk (it is farming, afterall), and Todd and Kathleen agree to be as diversified and nimble as possible to adapt to changing conditions (weather, pests, etc.). I felt the risk a little more personally, today, however, as I forked out half of this month's grocery budget in hopes that the summer will be a good growing season. And by the time I finish making payments, I will have invested $325 for 15 boxes of food, one each week from June through September.

In addition to joining a CSA and paying for my food months ahead of time, eating locally and organically all year around takes a lot more time, thought, and planning. In order to eat locally in the winter, I have to keep Saturday mornings free each week so that I can shop at a local winter farmers market. Also, I spent many evenings last summer chopping and freezing berries and vegetables from my garden and the market so that I could eat locally when those items weren't in season. And the meals I choose to prepare and eat require much more thought as I start with what's available locally now and go from there, rather than deciding what I want to eat and buying it at the store.

It would be far easier and much cheaper for me to do all my shopping at the nearby chain super market. There are some items I still have to buy there, anyway. But committing to eating locally and organically is about more than just food, and my investment in local farming goes far beyond my love for fresh produce. Though I may spend more money on the food I buy and eat, these foods don't cost more. Here's what else I am buying when I shop and eat locally:

1.) GRATITUDE. I have discovered a deeper sense of gratitude to Jesus when I eat because I know what was involved in getting the food to the table.

2.) RELATIONSHIPS. I have a relationship with many of the people who grow and prepare my food. On Saturday, I spoke at length with Norman about his green house system for growing tomatoes in the winter. Later, while I was buying a couple of bunches of her green onions, Vicki and I spoke about the problem local farmers face when they have to keep side jobs just so they can have health insurance. And there were two other farmers that I had purchased produce from the previous week that I went back to just so I could compliment them. I also have grown closer to several friends who share my love of food. Many weeks we go to the Farmers' Market together, sharing treats, swapping recipes.

3.) HEALTH. Local, organic food for me means less processing, less chemicals, more nutrients, more healthfulness. Not to mention more color and more flavor. When I buy food from people I trust, I know what's in it. And it's not just healthier for me, it healthier for the land, the people who grow it, and their neighbors.

4.) LOCAL JOBS. I help create jobs in my local community by purchasing goods directly from the people who do the work.

5.) A FAMILY HERITAGE. I am preserving a way of life, a connection to the land, a sacred vocation that has been part of my family for generations when I plant seeds, hoe dirt, pick vegetables with my own hands and support others who do the same.

I realize that eating this way is an idealistic and unrealistic for many people these days. Especially if you have children, or multiple jobs. But eating locally and organically can be done with some thinking, planning, and reprioritizing. And it's not an all or nothing proposition. If you are interested in making small steps toward a different way of eating, here are a few ways to get started.

1.) Find a farmer's market near you by visiting Local Harvest.

2.) Get to know what foods are grown in your area and in what season by checking out websites like this.

3.) Check out a couple of cookbooks that are organized by season, with lots of recipes for each fruit and vegetable: Simply in Season and A Midwest Gardener's Cookbook. I own and use both of these books.

Happy Local Eating!

PHOTO ABOVE: This was my dinner this evening, almost entirely locally grown and purchased. A tomato grown by Norman in his green house, five miles from me. Cottage Cheese from Trader's Point Creamery Dairy, just down the street from Norman's. Green beans grown, picked, and snapped by my mom last summer, pulled out of the freezer yesterday. An Asian pear from Wild's Apple Farm, and cornbread made with eggs and cornmeal from the farmer's market.

A Marriage-Less Wife

Today, I heard best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert talking about her new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. Gilbert's earlier memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, launched her into overnight success, and then continued on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 100 weeks.

Eat, Pray, Love was her memoir about a solitary trip around the world after a shattering divorce: eating her way through Italy, learning to pray with the yogis in India, and unexpectedly finding herself in love again in Bali. Though Gilbert and her Brazilian boyfriend vow to live a life of love together outside of the bounds of marriage, they soon find themselves with an immigration problem, and in order to continue their affair, they are"forced" to marry. Thus begins, Committed.

I resonated with much of what Gilbert was saying as I listened to her today. She talked about the mistaken notions we American women have about the marriage partner who will "complete us," while our unrealistic expectations often doom us to failure. She mentioned the cultural impression that a person is not really "grown up" until they are married, even though increasing numbers of us are never marrying. And she also lamented the emphasis too many women place on the wedding day far more than on the hard work of marriage that lays ahead. Yes, far more than I expected, I found myself agreeing with Gilbert on her views about marriage.

Toward the end of the interview, Gilbert said her vision of the future of marriage is what she and her sister have coined as the "wifeless" marriage.

"A lot of thinking women that I know would really like to get married but none of them would like to be a wife and actually their husbands don't want to be the wives either. It just seems like the short straw to draw in history is to be the wife with everything that that entails about what you give up for the rest of the family. So I see a lot of couples trying to figure out how to negotiate some sort of a marriage where nobody has to be the wife because frankly, except for a few people who are really suited to it, it's not a terrific job that a lot of people really love and revere."

When I heard this, first I was angry with Gilbert and the other women who were calling in, lamenting their role as a wife to a man they no longer loved. I longed to tell them that they don't know how good they have it since some of us would love to be married but aren't. Then, I was confused, trying to imagine what marriage would be like if no one wanted to give up anything for the sake of the family.

And that's when it hit me. I realized that this low-view of wifery doesn't really have as much to do with a woman's role in marriage as it has to do with a general repulsion for dying to self, with sacrificing your own wants and desires for the sake of others. On top of the complexities of being a woman in the 21st century and living with the same man for 50 years, having to give up your own dreams and desires for others is really more than most women, or men for that matter, can handle. Gilbert's right, it's not a terrific job that a lot of people really love and revere.

For those of us walking around in Jesus' name, however, we are called to this kind of wifely living whether we're married or not, whether we're women or not. In fact, Jesus said that marriage roles are really just a picture of how we are relate to and serve God. The husband loves the wife like Christ loves the church, his people. And the wife submits to her husband, gives herself up for him, as the church submits to Christ. (See Ephesians 5.)

And dying to self, considering others needs before my own, is also how I am to relate to all the people in my life, not just the one I'm married to. (See Philippians 2:3-4.)

As I have thought about this interview, rather than lamenting my singleness or despairing over the future of wife-less marriages, I see a third way to think about Gilbert's ideas, another way to interpret this interview for my life as Jesus might see it.

I see a future for myself, married or not, in which I become a "marriage-less wife." That I would learn what it means to set myself aside and to love Jesus and others in a way that demonstrates a Jesus-sized love. That is a proposal I am willing to commit to, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, so help me God.

Resolving . . . Emerging

So, it's a new year, and I've been busy doing all of the new year stuff. Like I do every year, I spent the first weekend of 2010 cleaning, putting away Christmas decorations, organizing files. Today, I got my haircut and joined a gym. And so far this year, I've read my Bible daily, watched almost no television, and eaten more vegetables than I care to mention.

I'm resolved.

At the same time, I couldn't help but melt a little when I read Jennifer's question a couple days back, a question posed to her last year about this time. "What are the beautiful things you did that you never resolved to?"

It was the question in the back of my mind as I set about to paint a little last night . . . another goal for the new year, another reason to keep the TV off. I pulled out the paints, a jar for water, the well-worn brushes. But rather than start with a fresh canvas, I gravitated to one that I already had started several months back.

It was just a small canvas, 8x11. And so far, I had painted just a couple of flowers. I remember the vision I had when I first started the picture. It was going to be a garden full of every color. But now, I realized the composition was all wrong. The flower that was supposed to be the anchor, the focal point, was too centered, too small, too straight. I was borrowing the general idea from someone else's photograph. It wasn't even my idea; it didn't mean anything. The whole thing was too rigid, too predictable, too boring.

I just about gave up and put the paints away for the night until a very unpredictable thought entered my mind. What if I make something new out of this? What if I let the colors find their own place on the canvas, what if I loosen up, let the composition become what it wants rather than what I want? What if I make art that isn't pretty, that means something I don't understand?

And so out of the tubes I squirted colors I wasn't sure about, and I picked up the largest brush I own, and I painted how I felt instead of what I was thinking. I didn't erase what I had started, but I changed it. I made something new, something I would never have planned. I did something beautiful that I had never resolved to.

I am hoping this can happen again and again this year. That when I am about to give up on the things I plan and resolve, something unexpected will happen in me, to me, and out will emerge something beautiful.

That's my prayer for us all:

Jesus, we make these big plans because we see there's a lot left in us that needs to change. But at some point, we remember that it was never ours to change in the first place. In those moments, help us see that You are at the center of all that is beautiful in us. Thank you that you have promised to finish what you have started.