Getting your heart where your body is.

Here’s the problem. 

We love people deeply.  Friends and family.  And then often God calls us to leave the friends and family we love so we can serve Him someplace else. 

So there’s this love for God that makes our mouths say, Yes, I’ll go, Lord.  The suitcases get packed.  The feet head out for a new place. 

But while the suitcases get unpacked in the new place, the heart commits a heinous mutiny and longs for the people in the old place. 

I remember when we moved to Kalispell, Montana from Texas where we had lived for seven years.  Matt and I fell in love in Texas, had our first child there.  The friendships were family-deep. 

When we moved here I held a secret distain for the new people.  I didn’t want them.  I couldn’t love them.  Give me the old people back.  The comfortable Texas people.  The ones who know me.  

Yet here I am 17 years later, and I do believe many of you reading this blog post today are the new people.  The Kalispell people.  Now my heart is tied so tightly with yours that I can’t imagine life without you. 

It’s sure hard to love new people, though.  To get to a new place and work to make friends.  To make mistakes and wonder if these new people will show grace to you the way the old ones did. 

It’s easy to pack a suitcase for your clothes and transport them, but it’s not so easy to pack up your heart and bring it along to the new place.  It weighs more, and it’s hard to carry.  It’s that last box that gets unpacked. 

Colossians 3:23 (NIV) says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” 

All your heart. 

We can’t start a new something for the Lord in a new place and not bring our hearts along. 

Today I’m praying for each of you who is in the new place.  Praying God will give you the strength to let your heart (not just your body) settle there.

What you're looking for.

My 15-year-old son wants a Camaro.  A yellow one.  With stripes. 

I know because he has told me this 500,000 times.  Every time we drive past the car dealership he says, There’s my Camaro.  Except I want a yellow one.  No one is more focused and passionate about looking at cars than a 15-year-old boy who is two weeks away from taking driver’s ed.  

We just took a long road trip, and he pointed out every single Camaro on the highway.  There are a lot of Camaro’s, he said.   

The truth is, when you start looking for something you begin to see a lot of it.  All of a sudden every corner has a Camaro, but there aren’t more now than there were before. 

Only the seeing has changed. 

The same is true when it comes to looking for God’s goodness.  When we start looking for it, it’s everywhere. 

“The Lord is good...”  Psalm 100:5. 

I had the experience of walking with two different women as their husbands threw them aside in divorce.  One woman, through her tears, could not stop speaking of the goodness of God.  The other, through her tears, could not stop speaking of her bitterness.       

There’s a lot of goodness out there.  We just have to start looking for it with 15-year-old-boy passion.

Class number six.

$400 later and she has a stack of books for her first semester of college.  As a book nerd I pick up the stack of textbooks and flip through them, resisting the urge to open them up and stick my nose in the binding. 

New book smell.  Why don’t they make that as a car air freshener? 

My first days of college rush back to me, and I say to her, I love to learn.  A feeling of jealousy comes up in my throat.  You get to read new things and learn new stuff. 

Five books sit on her desk.  World music.  Music foundations.  Intro to business.  Intro to economics (scary!).  Biology. 

There’s a sixth. 

I feel it as I lay in our hotel room anxiously anticipating saying goodbye to her.  Seeing in her eyes the panic of coming loneliness. 

The sixth textbook.  Learning to rely on Jesus. 

It should be on the schedule and come with a syllabus.  It should require tuition and a ridiculously expensive textbook.  It should be listed as a core requirement to get a degree.  It should have a learning lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It should have tutorial support available. 

It’s the hidden class.  The one you don’t sign up for but get enrolled in anyway.  The one that comes with starting a new job or having a new baby or experiencing a new illness, loss, or grief.  It’s the class you take when you’re a mom alone all day with little people who can’t talk yet or when you plant your family in India or Africa to be missionaries. 

John 13:25 (NIV) says of Peter, “Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him…”  That’s the class –learning to lean back against Jesus 101.  Learning to sit close.  To ask the hard questions of the One who can answer them.  To let Jesus’ love and His companionship be enough. 

This old hymn comes to my mind as I think about learning to lean on Jesus.  Care to sing it with me today? 

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the everlasting arms. 

Refrain:
Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms.
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms. 

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way,
Leaning on the everlasting arms;
Oh, how bright the path grows from day to day,
Leaning on the everlasting arms. 

What have I to dread, what have I to fear,
Leaning on the everlasting arms?
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near,
Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Feeling unsettled?

I went for a tour last night of my dad’s impressive garden.   

He walked through, pointing out a field of potatoes, some pushing up from the ground.  Knee-high, feathery carrots.  Rows of tomatoes standing tall on dad’s homemade support towers.  Lettuce tall and gone to seed.  A fence line of acorn squash. 

Enough produce that all of my parents’ friends had better keep their car doors locked at church, or they’ll end up with a squash and tomatoes in their front seat. 

It’s hard to imagine that all of this came from fragile starter plants and a handful of miniscule seeds. 

This is a note for you, my daughter only three days in to your college experience.  Right now you’re at the fragile starting place.  The time where a gust of wind feels like it could blow the tiny seeds away.  Where roots wait in a starter container.  And you wonder if you’ll ever, ever feel comfortable and solid and firm in the ground. 

Psalm 44:1-2 (HCSB) says, “God, we have heard with our ears –our forefathers have told us –the work You accomplished in their days, in days long ago:  to plant them…to settle them…”   

God works to plant people where He wants them to be. 

I feel a bit unsettled too, my beautiful girl.  A bit fragile and wanting to feel comfortable and okay again. 

Surely it’s a condition most of us wake up with every day.  Fragile and small and looking for solid earth, to be able to dig deep roots and know we’re in the right place.   

Strong enough underground to reach up and really live out in the open. 

Here’s encouragement to everyone who feels unrooted –God accomplishes the work.  God plants.  God settles people.  We just need to look to Him and have patience. 

Gardens take a whole summer to grow.

Watch your language.

It might not surprise you that the article on language in the National Geographic caught my eye.  Did you know there are 7000 languages in the world now, and they predict in about a decade half of those will be gone? 

Which is sad, because language is unique to culture.  Word choices reflect how the people think.  When the language goes, a part of the culture is lost. 

Words and culture. 

The God who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Genesis 1:3  NIV) –He has created a culture where there are words like forgiveness, grace, blamelessness, reconciliation, hope, love, salvation, comfort, faithfulness, truth, peace. 

I live in a culture where there are words like idiot, loser, failure, pathetic, fear, skinny, fat, nerd, hopeless. 

I read in the National Geographic there are people who are working like crazy to preserve some of the endangered languages.  To save the very culture in which the people live. 

Language is a big deal. 

It shows where you live.  Who you are. 

Yesterday my daughter texted from her first day of college (sniff sniff) and said by the grace of God she met up with a friend at orientation. 

That was a great moment for me as a mom –to hear my daughter’s words reflect the culture of the kingdom of heaven. 

So to quote The Music Man, “Wad-a-ya-talk? Wad-a-ya-talk?”