My Hero

I want you to meet my friend, Lori Harris.  I have never met Lori except through her words on her blog (loriharris.me), words that wreck my heart each and every time.  Her words aren’t whinny words, or complaining word, or even “poor me” words.  They are bold, courageous words and words that make me feel guilty.  She has boldly gone to the place where the pew hits the curb, leaving most of us in the dust.

Lori is married to Thad and they live in Rocky Mount where they moved to plant a church, but not the kind of church plant that their seminary friends were planting.  Thad is a warehouse manager, and that job is his source of income – their church was not started with the thought that it would support their family.  The church supports the wider“church”.

They planted a church and moved their family of six children into what most would call the “hood”.  Lori has been homeschooling the older kids because the school they would attend is rated in the very last place of all NC schools in performance.  The kids have asked to attend the school their friends attend and this year, very bravely, the transition will happen.

Lori and Thad’s 100+ year old house is the neighborhood playground and is a safe place as the parents have come to know.  There are drug deals going down and the police are frequent visitors to the street and Lori knows all the kids by name and through them is learning about the families.

Lori has never asked for any outside support (remember she isn’t a whiner) but I have adopted her and begun mentoring her through my daily prayers over her and her family.  She makes me feel guilty because I haven’t found that boldness she possesses.  She does not just make Jesus famous, she gives Him away on a daily basis and takes on His skin.  She is one of my heroes.

Here is a blog she wrote for another website.  I think you will say you know her heart after reading it.  I hope you will pick up her passion and join me in praying for her and her heart.

    Your Work Matters: Unspoken Agreement (The High Calling)

Hope this link works! Here is the official “address”: www.thehighcalling.org/work/your-work-matters-unspoken-agreement

Please let me hear from you after you read Lori’s words.  I would love to go to Rocky Mount and sit across the table to hear her heart talk…maybe some of you would like to make the journey with me.

Lovingyougood…sd

David Crowder "All I Can Say"

I haven’t listened to this song in a long time but a playlist brought it up.

It is a heart-tender song for me. One of those songs that I have to decide do I really want to deal with the tugging of the heart and the scab scrubbing it will expose, and this morning it again brought tears and a deep sigh as I was caught up immediately in the desperateness, and utter emptying of self, and the unexplained love of God.

In order to heal, scabs need to be debrided "the usually surgical removal of lacerated, devitalized, or contaminated tissue".  The scab needs to be removed to let the air heal the wound.  Wounds heal best when allowed to heal from the inside out, but we find that too painful. So we elect to cover the wound with a scab, but for the soul to heal it needs to be debrided of the scabs and let the God-love begin its healing.

…”so tired from walking”…”so alone”…”the dark is creeping up to swallow me”…“think I will stop here to rest a while”.

Have you been there like I have?  Has this summer been a place you feel the dark is slowly going to swallow you?  Have you reached the dark place of utter exhaustion?  When all you can say is…

This is all I can say right now…this is all I can give… this is 

all I say right now…this is all I can give… that’s my everything.

Have you railed against God?  Throwing up questions and accusations, hoping to catch God’s passing ear?

Did you see me crying?

Did you hear me call your name?

Wasn’t it you that I gave my heart to?

And then the words that break me every time…

I wish you’d remember where you set it down.

There have many dark nights and valleys I wondered the same.

I have heard it said that sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we are able to lift our head and look up towards the light and feel, ever so softly, the soothing love of God.

Didn’t notice you were standing there

Didn’t know that that was you holding me

Didn’t notice that you were crying too

Didn’t know that that was you washing my feet

He was there there all along. We were rolling around in our own mire and mud, searching how deep we could go, and there was no strength to look up.

On the playlist, this is followed by the “new” Doxology…”Praise God from whom all blessings flow”!  Amen and amen and amen. And the healing begins...

And the next song on the play list?  "Stars"!

You should see the stars tonight
How they shimmer shine so bright
Against the black they look so white
Comin down from such a height
To reach me now, reach me now

Cus i got nothing of my own to give to you
But this light that shines on me shines on you
And makes everything beautiful, again.
It'll be alright, it'll be alright.

And I have learned once again…the scab that was rubbed off this morning and the ever present wound has started the healing process and it will be alright…even when all I could say was…"that’s my everything”…I gave it my everything…and once again I bravely rubbed at the scab so he could show me he had never left, and he wasn’t going to leave…he never lost my heart.

lovingyougood...sd

Summer Reading

Summer Reading

Sometimes my family believes that I live just to read…I always have my nose in a book or in the Kindle!  Bob wonders if I ever read any ‘redemptive” books and my daughter wants the titles of the best fiction.  I do love to read and yes, some of my reading is “redemptive”, but a lot of times it is just “good” reading where I don’t really have to think.  All I have to do is dive in and wallow around in the story.

Here is my summer plan and what is on my reading table and in my Kindle to wade through these next few months.  I also have some “books I don’t have to think about” scheduled as well!

My summer reading…

Chasing God   Angie Smith

Aha   Kyle Idleman

Undaunted: Daring to Do What God Calls You to Do   Christine Caine

Passion   Louie Giglio

Learning to Walk in the Dark   Barbara Brown Taylor

A New Kind of Normal   Carol Kent

Pursue the Intentional Life   Jean Fleming

Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest   Bonnie Gray

Rhinestone Jesus: Saying Yes to God When Sparkly Safe Faith is No Longer Enough   Kristen Welch

Adventure of Ascent: Field Notes from a Lifelong Journey   Luci Shaw

What you really need to read…

Now here are the ones that you really need to read.  These are the ones that I give away any time I get a chance, and if I were rich, I would see that everyone of you had copies!

Anything: The Prayer that Unlocked My God and My Soul   Jennie Allen

Restless: Because You Were Made for More   Jennie Allen

Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption   Katie Davis

You’re Made for a God-Sized Dream: Opening the Door to All God Has for You   Holly Gerth

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes   Shauna Neiquest

Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning   Rebekah Lyons

Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World   Tsh Oxenreider

Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World   Bob Goff

All In: You Are One Decision Away from a Totally Different Life   Mark Batterson

Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected about Being a Mom   Lisa-Jo Baker

Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women   Sarah Bessey

Fun…

And these…well, they are just plain laugh-out-loud-tickle-your- ribs-can’t-wait-to-share-with-your-BFF books:

Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn   Melanie Shankle

The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life   Melanie Shankle

A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet: Southern Stories Faith, Family, and Fifteen Pounds of Bacon   Sophie Hudson

Just good stories:

The Invention of Wings   Sue Monk Kidd (fiction)

Unwritten: A Novel   Charles Martin (fiction) or anything he writes!

Good beach/pool reads…

Anything these authors write is good reading!

Anne Rivers Siddon

Dorothea Benton Frank

Erin Hilderbrand

Marybeth Whalen

Patti Callahan Henry

Mary Kay Andrews

So…do you have your list?  Enjoy!!!

lovingyougood...sd

Cheerleaders

I saw my grandson hit a ball and run to 1^st base (because 1^st base is as far as you can run after you hit the ball in T-ball games) and a wave of sadness poured over me in a way that it hasn’t in a long while.  “How Mama would have loved to have seen her only ‘boy’ smack’ that ball.”

And the sadness isn’t just missing my mama…it is what Eli is missing from not having his grandmamma in his life. She would have been his biggest cheerleader and every child needs a cheerleader in their life.  It was a beauty to watch her face every time she was around Eli and his sister or even when she was looking at their pictures and videos.  She never could watch and look at them enough.  It was like she was seeing her legacy…the continuation of her life.

Mama never was a softie to say the least.  She was raised in an orphanage and only had the housemothers pattern her mothering style.  She was only four when she went to live in the orphanage and had few memories of her mother being a mother.  It was a different time and her mother and father lived what we would say was a “hard” life with four children born in five years…the baby barely out of diapers when my grandfather died of typhoid.

Mama never gave herself the luxury of showing her tenderness raising my sister and me…there were too many lessons to be taught and too many experiences to live through.  When she stood on the sidelines and watched McKenzie and Bart navigate through the rocky trail of Murray’s brief life she was reliving losing her first child who she carried full term and only lived minutes following birth.  Then as we held our breath the nine months before Eli was born healthy, Mama watched and prayed, and greeted Eli with more joy and wonder than I ever saw in her eyes when she first saw her grandchildren.  This child was a new chance at life continuing…a boy in the family again…another “Bud” to pass on her love and her legacy.

When thinking about the legacy that has been passed down I remembered the story of Rahab and the scarlet cord in Joshua.  Rahab believed that God Himself was on the side of the Israelites…she believed in God more than she believed in herself and threw out the scarlet cord of faith to save her family.

My grandmother had no choice but to send her children to live in an orphanage.  I imagine that was a wrenching decision for her to make but her love for her family and the faith that her God would take care of them opened the door to her decision…she lowered the scarlet cord that would save her family and He blessed her faithfulness and so the story began.

Rahab throws out the blood-red cord desperately clutched on one end … a desperate woman who believes in the God she has yet to meet.

My mother in a sense lost both parents at an early age…her first child was born and only lived a few minutes…she lost her husband of 68 years…a 24 year old granddaughter…a 28 year old grandson…her first great grandchild…her oldest daughter and all of her brothers, but she kept lowering the scarlet cord of belief to the God she had not yet met face to face…the cord that would save her family from disaster just as it did in Rahab’s story. And the Lord kept His promises to her and she continued to do His will.

That is my mother’s legacy to me…to McKenzie…to Eli…to his sister Mary Marshall…as we clutch what by now is a familiar red cord…and the Lord keeps His promises.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us that we may feel we are alone but we aren’t. We are surrounded by a huge cloud of those who have gone before…run their race of faith and finished well and now are cheering us on in our race

So today I imagine my mama and daddy and Robby and Paw Paw and even baby Murray, watching from heaven as Eli smacks balls and runs to bases and they are cheering him on…for every child needs cheerleaders…even if they are heavenly…even this child standing here clutching a red cord.