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Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Nature of Callings

It's been a while since I wrote something specifically for the purpose of posting it here.

I am a crappy blogger. It's ok. You don't have to assure me otherwise. Let's be the kind of friends that are honest with each other. I'm really just not good at this. 

See, since before I could remember, I was always a journal girl. In the years since I opened this blog and have struggled to post in some semblance of regularity, I've filled dozens and dozens of journals. I may possibly be pushing triple digits. Writing is my therapy. It's where I talk to Jesus and it's where I allow Him to work out the tangles my soul has a tendency of getting itself into. 

But I've never been one for the stage, and let's be real, this is as much of a stage as any wood framed thing. This blinking curser carries as much power as any microphone. Sometimes, even more. 

I think I'd probably be content to forsake all of it. There are days I seriously consider deleting every media account I own and just focusing on the flesh and blood in front of me. There's enough of it to keep me busy. Just the laundry produced in this full house of mine could count as a part-time job, one with 30 hours a week of work and no benefits. 

But the thing about callings and mandates is very simple. They are not easily abandoned. 

Tonight, I made the kind of dinner that makes foodies like me cringe. It was hot dogs and goldfish crackers served on paper plates, and I found myself standing at the counter, in my pajamas at 7 p.m., sighing at the sight of it. The kids had to eat on the living room floor because my kitchen table is covered in heirloom seeds that will turn into a years worth of beautiful, healthful food. I'll be planting the garden this week and I've been so engrossed in the preparation of it, that we've eaten total garbage for days. Ironic? Maybe a little. 

In moments like that, the little voice that sings of my failures takes the stage and the house lights go dim. Then Tobias came in, as if by cue and said, "Mom you're the best maker and the best planter and the best mom." The spotlight shut off, house lights came back and I carried the plates to the living room. 

Then, as I stood in the midst of a scene where love had silenced the voice of the one who accuses, the One who Identifies spoke up. See, callings do not stay quiet. And my calling has always been to be real, and honest and vulnerable in a world that tells you no one could possible love you if you are.

I took a photo of my dirty, half-dressed boys then and there. Them, licking their lips to what they considered a fine meal that was surely much appreciated since it was an hour late. Both couches were piled with clean laundry in the background. The floor hadn't been mopped in at least four days. Ezra was smearing copious amounts of mayonnaise on Ben's hot dog, because Ezra is on a mayonnaise kick, eating it on everything from eggs to blueberries, coming up with creations like Peanut-Butter-Jelly-Mayo Sandwiches and frankly, I've got bigger battles than to try to stop him. And Ben, I don't know that he's even that fond of mayonnaise but he's really, really fond of his big brother and I figure they'll work it out. 


It wasn't really a romantic moment at all, but that pesky calling tells me in moments like those to take the picture and then to drag it out on the fairly substantial social media platform He's given me. 

There's a dramatic part of me that would like to declare that this has been the hardest year of my life, but I think that would be an exaggeration, and here we've agreed to be honest with each other. 

It has been hard, but probably not harder than the year that included crippling postpartum depression, or the year that I earned the title "divorced" or the year that I watched my friend bury her kids. No, this year hasn't been that kind of hard. But it's had its moments. 

I can confidently say that I've never before faced the amount of rejection that the last twelve months have held. I've never before experienced the kind of character assassination I have this year. And though I've experienced a handful of times what it feels like to be the hot topic of the church's gossip-mill-masquerading-as-a-prayer-chain, I'm pretty sure this last season breaks the record for that as well. 

Do you know that the enemy comes after the very area of your life that God intends to thrive you?
As a gardener, I've become incredibly familiar with seeds. Given a mixed bag of seeds, I could easily separate out the tomato seeds from the peppers, the watermelons from the cucumbers, the squash and the lettuce. Without the label on the package, I'd have no way of telling you the color of the fruit or the size of the plant but I could easily identify the type. 

I am confidant, when God set to knitting us in our mothers wombs, it might not have been obvious to anyone but Him the exact details of our fruit, but I think it was detectable what we were made to be. I think the enemy is able to tell from the time we are in seed form what we will become, and he does everything he can to keep us from reaching the mature stage that will see our intended fruit brought into the world. 


Recently,  I went to God in the sort of prayer that looks a lot like a temper tantrum, the sort where you ask indignantly, "Why is this allowed?!" He responded in such a precious tenderness. He told me if I would take my eyes off myself and trust Him to protect me from the shots being fired at my character, I could take advantage of seeing where my adversary was shooting from. 

When Satan comes at you in accusation, take note. He's giving away his position. He's showing you were he
is afraid for you to believe God. He's seeking to destroy your very destiny. 

So I looked up. And I saw that the giant of fear had pointed his sword at the very place God was using to bring Himself glory in my life. 
If I believed the lies, I might become afraid to be real and honest, because I might assume I was already dismissed and diminished. If I believed the lies, I might be tempted to ignore my calling and instead pick up the role as my own defender, as if my Father was insufficient. If I believed the lies, I might be tempted to consider myself disqualified. 

I might have chosen silence over obedience. 

Well, my answer is very simple. 

No. 

No, I will not be silent. 
I am not disqualified and I am not perfect. 
I have made so many mistakes and on the same hand, I have done so many things right. But the real fact is, the things I've done wrong matter no more than the things I've done right when the hand in question is nail-scarred. 

Years ago, a friend of mine told me in a time of turmoil, "Rest in your Righteousness". I took it to heart, but in all my wrong mindsets of God, I thought it meant I could trust Him to be on my side because I had done all the right things. I've lived a lot since then, and I've learned a few lessons. Like that my own righteousness was nothing to rest in, but I've been cloaked in the righteousness of precious Jesus, and that the fear-driven voice that comes against it is the same voice thats been questioning the validity of Jesus long before I lived and breathed. I've learned that not wresting with flesh and bone means releasing myself from my own grappling. 
I've learned that if the enemy comes against a voice, the attack in itself identifies that voice as valuable.

You know,  I don't even know why I'm sharing this. Maybe someone needs to see my laundry or hear my struggle with the fear of sharing it. Maybe they need it today and maybe they need it a year from now. I guess that's the nature of Callings. They don't give you the stipulations. They don't tell you the worth of your "yes" on the front end. They demand you come out a little further. They don't let you settle into comfortable. 

When you stand in your pajamas and put hot dogs on paper plates, Callings send blog posts reeling through your head. And when you walk in obedience, you take the photo of your laundry and your dirty floor and you post it alongside the almost worked out tangles of your heart. And you believe, that surely, somehow, by some reason far beyond your understanding, it matters.