Home

As I drove home tonight, the world was quiet. It was dark and cold and crisp. George Strait played softly on the radio, and the heater hummed happily. The brake light glared red at me, the one that never shuts off in the Ford Tempo. I smoked the last cigarette from the pack I had bought a month ago.

My mind was tired from thinking of the past, my heart stirred with memory. My home had become a crazy house overnight. People slept in every room, schoolbooks and video games were strewn hither and yon, the smell of Mom and Grandma’s cooking filled the house, and the bathroom was always occupied. I thought grimly that at least I would only have to put up with the chaos for another week.

That was a strange thought. I would miss the farm, as much as I tried to squelch the emotion of leaving. But my home wasn't what it used to be.

I had always liked the cold. Maybe it was because it made you appreciate warmth. In the farmhouse, upstairs was probably a whopping 12 degrees. I'd stand by the fire and soak up as much heat as my body could hold, then sprint for bed, hoping hypothermia wouldn't catch me in-between. And anyone who's ever complained about getting up in the morning should've experienced a winter's morn in the Reams' house. Laying there contemplating getting up to go feed the cows, I felt like Bilbo Baggins leaving the warmth and safety of Bag End to go to his probably death. Dangerous? Clearly. Life-threatening? Definitely. They made long underwear for people like us.

Winter in the Valley was a thing of its own. It was not warm and calm, but neither was it a glorious blanket of white. We succumbed to around eight months of cold, miserable constant rain and somehow, we rather liked it. The Old Barn was a beautiful, romantic place any other time of the year. In the winter, it was dark and haunted. Feeding the cows was a mad dash of fear that never took more than thirty seconds. The house was a haven of warmth and love. When we first moved into the old house in 1994, the winter came upon us rather quickly. The toilet seat cracked clean in half. To this day, I still remember putting down a few blankets by the fire and falling asleep to the slow warmth.

In the summers, Chad and Chase would come over every day. We made smoothies out of blackberries and vanilla ice cream and swam in the Luckiamute until it got too cold to stand. We had a mascot, a stuffed polar bear named Fred or something like that, who we'd throw in the water and expect to swim. We played War for hours in the barn and the six different forts we had created around the fields and the river. Chad and I were always on the same team and always won, because we were the oldest. Chad was my first crush in the second grade. I baked him a chocolate cake. I don't even think he knew what a girl was at that point, but he did eat the entire cake.

We bought a horse in 2005 and I named him Indio. He was a snarky Appaloosa with a nasty habit of running under trees when you rode him. He took it upon himself to shepherd and protect our herd of cows. He and Penny the cow became best friends and never were without each other. We often put a saddle on him and rode him around the countryside, and sometimes we rode him bareback and pretended we were Indians. He put up with it rather well, even if he did have a condescending air about him. That is, as far as horses can be condescending.

The dogs sit with me by the fire as I remember those days. They smell of rain and moldy straw. Doc is old now, and so deaf you have to scream to get his attention. Indio is gone. Chad is in Georgia now. He's happy there. Once in a while I'll give him a call, and we'll just talk. Once you've shot someone with a BB gun, I guess that makes you best friends forever.

The day draws ever nearer when I will say goodbye to the old farmhouse. It is strange and sad and a little bewildering, for I really have not known anything else. The house was always a place for people who had never had a home. The lost, the broken, the people who needed to eat. Mom would never shut her door to anyone, nor withhold her affection. It was a place where you could rest, a place where you felt like you belonged. Granted, it was hardly ever clean and never normal, but it was full of love.

But it’s changed, or maybe I have. I can’t hold onto this place, waiting for the past to somehow resurrect itself and come back. I must go on; I must live and love and breathe and move. The old house will continue to be a home for many, but I must go on to find a home of my own.  

As I sit here in the quiet, I am for a moment discomforted in my soul, for I wonder if I will ever find a home, a place where I can rest and play and eat milkshakes. A place to laugh and sleep, to be free to be completely me. If it is not here, then where shall I find it?

And then He whispers to me ever-so-gently that my home is in His heart. He is in my heart, as I rest in His. He lives in me. He walks with me, no matter where I should go. My home will not be shaken and will never change. I am always a child with Him, and the wars of my life seem like play in His place of peace. And maybe as I rest in Him, the lost and broken can find their home in Him too.

And I'm truly thankful, Lord Jesus, for that.

Beholding

The day draws near to me now,

The long-sought day of beginnings.

The day of adventure,

Or so they say, I say.

I am weak. I fear. Fading...

Are You there too, as here

In my heart, in Yours?

I have none. Strength...

Will any remember my song?

When I have fled, gone.

A hero of the faith? No.

But maybe You will know me.

Perhaps

You shall hear of One who risks

everything

to follow

And you will come down.

A weak but valient

daughter.

Crazy but never numb

to love.

Will hunger move

You?

My song is dead.

I come to find

awe.

beauty.

in You.

To behold

at last

what was passed over.

B.R. 11/13

The Problem with Dissatisfaction

"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." (John 10:10, NKJV)

 

Have you met Alison? You should. She knows what she thinks about stuff. She likes tree houses and making coffee and walking with people. She works at Trader Joes just because she likes it. She went to Australia to learn to be a midwife and delivered babies in India, "out of the jaws of Satan," as she puts it. She is warm, inviting. You can rest in her presence, because she is not striving to be anyone she is not. She’ll tell you what she thinks about stuff, but instead of feeling put down, you feel more excited to experience life!

 

We all like people who are confident (Let me make a distinction right now between pride and confidence, they are two very different things). They know what their tastes are and what moves them and what they like and what sort of a person they are and who they want to be. Yet for all that, they never have to prove anything to anyone. People like that are attractive because of their confidence, their security. They are satisfied.  We think to ourselves that they are so assured of who they are… and then we start to wonder what the heck we're doing wrong.

 

For some reason, I used to think the Lord was separated from the part of me that obsessively exercised, always thought about looks and weight, and felt guilty about everything I did. I tried for years to wrest confidence from my unwilling brain, and with little success.  No matter how confident I tried to feel in myself, some deeper issue would always arise, leaving me empty, wondering if I would ever be that confident woman I longed to be. Instead of being warm and inviting people to experience Jesus, I was often overpowering, loud, and controlling. I stared at myself in the mirror and felt a twinge of guilt when I realized I had become vain and self-obsessed, but I didn’t even know where to start fixing it. I started to wonder why the heck I felt this way if I was supposed to be a Christian. I wondered if Jesus dying on the cross could save me from feeling like I always had to fix something about myself. Could that one act change that dissatisfaction I felt in the very core of me?

 

The thing is, it’s been whispered in our ear our whole lives that the Lord's arm only reaches so far, that there is a limit to His goodness. We think that that stuff is our own responsibility to fix. And women, let’s be honest, there are some fears deep in your chest that you don’t think anything can remedy. But the Lord was not crucified so that we could live in fear or dissatisfaction from anything. Any thing.

 

Well, it turns out there is NO limit to His goodness. Turns out that true confidence is only found when you find out who God really is (like, you know Him as your best friend) and what He thinks of you. It's found when you allow the Presence of God into your life. I've found that a lot of people I meet seem initially confident, but this emotion soon fades in the face of fear. (Being overpowering or loud or controlling are the world’s version of confidence, but in reality they are only reactions from fear). But the ones like Alison who were transparently free, the ones who truly had nothing to hide, the women who were not proud but confident, not sexy or pretty but lovely in all their ways, the men who were patient and strong, these were the people that were not just intermittently confident, but even in their worst times they were totally free.

 

He says He want to transform your life into abundant life, freeing you from anything that will hold you back from Him. That thing you think you’ll never have… that assurance you seek and you think you’ll never find, it’s only possible by allowing the Presence of God Himself into your life. By seeking Him and Him alone, for anything else will only lead to being dry and empty. 

 

People tell me I can't be free. The world tells me I am asking too much of Him. But I am assured that He is the God who Saves.  I am convinced that He is the God who Lives and sees me. I am convinced that nothing will separate me from the love of my God. I have been called out of my old life into His Light, and in that light there is NO room for fear. Darkness flees. Fear is no more. And that little nagging voice inside you telling you that you need to be something else? FORGET IT!

You are His and He is yours. You are His child, his friend, His lover. He died so you could be truly free, and have true confidence. 

 

Walk in that truth today,

 

B

 

A Treasure Well-Hidden (and Most Precious)

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (vs. 44-46)

I can’t tell you when it happened, exactly. It was a slow, long, deep yearning that came from within, an undeniable Love that made its way known to me. It was the kind of love that consumed everything.

 

I had heard of Him from books, His renown from the lips of others, but I had not known  Him, down to my very Heart of hearts. People told me that what I had was it, where I had been was sufficient. But I was lost. I hungered, my soul was tormented, for I knew there was something more to Him than what everyone said. I had come to the end of Myself. My song had left. My Hallelujah was so very tired. I thought I had reached the end of the road and I had missed something. I had nothing left to give Him, no gift that I could offer. But I yearned for something. I knew not what, but I knew it was to be found in Him.

 

And He saw my hunger and came to me and made His home with me.

 

So I can’t tell you what happened, exactly, or when, or where. But I am irrevocably, inexplicably, totally in love with a Crucified Savior. I am obsessed with the thought of the next time I shall meet with Him, I cannot do anything without thinking of what He is doing or what He is thinking or saying. He calls me out, away from a conventional life.  When I am with Him, all other things start to fade. All other loves, all other things I could run after, they do not satisfy me as His love does. Only His love can reach the innermost places of my heart and overflow because I cannot contain it, and still leave me wanting more and more. I see now that He is beginning where I ended.

 

I can no longer be the same. He has changed everything I am, and I welcome it with outstretched arms. There can be nothing else for me. This is the treasure a man would leave everything to own. Riches beyond compare, wisdom, strength and love so high and wide and deep that it penetrates the deepest parts of me, yet still leaves me wanting more. All along, I knew He was the One for me.

 

I can't tell you the exact moment it happened, but there is now nothing else for me in the world. 

Nothing that I could desire or obtain.

Nothing that I could own or accomplish. Nothing that I could be or learn that will ever compare to the simple joy of being with Him. To rest in His glory and offer up my heart in praise to the King of Glory

 

What is the highest goal of a life with Christ? Is it to win over souls for the Kingdom? Perhaps, but something about that doesn’t sit right with me. Is it to heal the nations or perform acts of power or see the lame walk? Maybe, but that seems a little showy and slightly superficial. Is it to have comfortable lives where everything is in order and people are wowed by our pleasant demeanor? If the Bible or my natural state of frustration is any indication, that’s clearly not the case.

 

I think that the highest aim of our lives is simply to be near to God, knowing Him, maybe even to be ONE with Him.

Just some thoughts to ponder over..

Draw near to Him today.

Beth

"If we would stop proclaiming a God of information and knowledge and started experiencing His love, we would discover that there is nothing greater than knowing Christ."

-Alyssa Cagle