Proud resident of Chaos, Tennessee

A dirty shirt still 20 feet from the laundry basket. The matching pants 10 feet further, still inside out.

A toy that will pierce the bottom of your foot. Next to one that's broken because it already has.

A few crumbs on the floor... well, a lot of crumbs. 

Even more crumbs next to an uneven stain of old milk that didn't get cleaned up fast enough.

Crusty dishes.

Dirty carpet.

Piles of laundry.

Down the hallway is that bathroom that hasn't been cleaned in six months.

Boys.

Bugs.

Dirt.

Chaos.

That's where I live.

Chaos, Tennessee.

As a confessed ex-perfectionist who liked the toys put away and the carpet vacuumed just so (although I'll confess that I never was one for making my bed), you can imagine my inner struggle with the current state of affairs.

Ever since Case's diagnosis four years ago and especially after my arm injury a year later, things have slowly dissolved from order to chaos in my home.

Some might say that your surroundings reflect the perspective of your mind, suggesting that I might feel anxious or chaotic because my home exists as such.

But it is quite the opposite.

While I can't say I'm *in love* with home chaos, God has used it to slowly chip away at my need for earthly order at the expense of heavenly grace.

Earthly chaos, in fact, serves as a constant reminder of where my eternal peace, order, and rest can be found:

My soul finds rest in God alone. 

My salvation comes from Him. 

He alone is my rock and my salvation. 

He is my fortress; I will never be shaken.

Psalm 62:1-2.

So if you're living in chaos, let me encourage you that God cares more about order of your heart than the order of your house.

 

Are you living in chaos? Where do you look to find your peace?

Or are you living in order? Is that order at the expense of heavenly grace?

 

Every.Single.Soul.

I was sitting in a terminal of Chicago Midway airport, surrounded by throngs of people preparing to visit family, take a vacation, or travel for work, when I had an unremarkable epiphany.

God cares about every...single...soul...here. Every one.

Not only that, He cares about every thought, feeling, worry, prayer, experience, heartache, and fear of every...single...soul...here.

As I sat with my fellow passengers at gates 20-26, I thought about what it would be like to care about every person in this area. There are hundreds. And to know about and care about their heart, their life, their eternal soul. I was overwhelmed. Just following the phone conversations of the five people surrounding me was making my head swim.

And these throngs of people also know and interact with so many other people.

And then multiply those people, their thoughts, hopes, dreams, cares, and fears

by

the

WORLD.

Then add the animals, all the species, their natures, their feeding, their offspring.

Then add the physical happenings of the world. The weather, the dew, the tides, the rotations of the planets.

God is so vast. His understanding is so awesome. His power is so magnificent. His love is so great.

I cannot comprehend the nature of God. And I am totally fine with that. In fact, I'm in awe of that.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

What makes you realize the vastness of God?

I'm No Angel

God never gives you more than you can handle. 

If I've heard that phrase once, I've heard it a thousand times. As if God created me with some extraordinary amount of patience, hope, perseverance, and strength. 

Sometimes people think that parents of children with special needs or terminal illnesses were hand selected by God because they were particularly worthy and able of enduring the hardship in such circumstances. That we're somehow more perfect, more faithful, or more "Christian."

That is so far from the truth. 

I am so incredibly flawed that it would probably shock most of you. I'm selfish. I'm prideful. I complain. I whine. I yell at my kids (shocking, I know).

I would love to be one of those moms written about in blogs shared to over a million readers, moms who have given up hurrying... or yelling... or let's throw it all in, given up all heartache.

But that's not so easy in our world. 

Sometimes I daydream that I could go to Hawaii on a whim and leave all these responsibilities and cares behind (at least for awhile!). Does that shock you?

God never gives you more than you can handle. 

Frankly, I think that line is really just a bunch of bull. That's just me being honest here. 

This life is more than I can handle. 

The truth is that often God gives us way more than we could ever possibly handle on our own. Enough that we feel buried six feet under in a pit so deep that we can't see the sun shining over the top.  And all the while, the dirt is crumbling down the walls every time you try to climb out or sometimes, even if you don't.

The risk of being buried alive creates an anxiety, a tightness in your chest that threatens to overwhelm you and even steal your ability to breathe before the pit itself overtakes you.

That sure feels like more than I can handle. 

I can describe it so well because I've been there. Have you? The pit is a dark place in which few have sat with me because you can't invite them. They have to have arrived in that pit of their own accord and only then, can you choose to sit together. And to possibly help each other out. 

But it is still more than one alone or two together can handle. God does give you more than you can handle.   

That's how you realize how much you need Him. 

If my life wasn't overwhelmingly more than I could possibly handle, physically, emotionally, logistically, every single day, would I go to him every morning for His strength, wisdom, comfort, and peace?

I'd like to think so. But He knows so much better than me, because He's made it my reality that I realize every single day how much I need Him.

And for that, I have to be thankful.   

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 
Isaiah 40:29

•  
• My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.  
• Psalm 119:28
•  

What in your life has caused you to realize how much you need God every single day?

A Re-imagined Christmas List

I'm kind of at my wits' end with Christmas lists. Are there things we'd like? Sure. Are there things we need? Not so much. But still we go through the process every year of looking through catalogs, daydreaming, and scrolling to find just those additional things to fill our house to (over)capacity.

So why then do we make Christmas lists? Certainly we are honored by loved ones who choose things that they think we'd like or might need. And sometimes there are things that we wouldn't buy for ourselves but are still nice to receive.

But in light of that, how do I raise children who are not focused on material possessions when each year we get to make a list of what we want and give it to people to buy for us?

I've been challenged to start a new tradition. A new kind of Christmas list.

We plan to sit down with our kids and ask each of them to make a new list, a list of at least three things that they'd like for us to do for someone else, someone who is not part of our family. Something big.

We would do the same and we'd then compile all the lists into a "Family Christmas List," choose one item to do on Christmas Day, and complete the rest of the family list by the next Christmas. Now that's a Christmas list! 

Now of course, upon having this revelation, my first (fully and sinfully human) thought is, "What if my child wants to give a million dollars to a homeless man? I'm going to have to tell him that we don't have a million dollars to give. And maybe the man wouldn't spend it right. And maybe there are others who need it more."

But shouldn't I just be happy that my child would be so generous as to have that intention?

And shouldn't I realize that God could easily provide the means by which to give someone a million dollars? I mean, the recent Powerball was what? 550 million? And that surely wasn't even God....

I write, dear friends, so that this intention will not remain just that, an intention, but instead flourish into an action and then, a tradition.

So who will make a new Christmas list with us? Or who else has a tradition of particular acts of service around Christmas-time?

Who you are

I heard a song recently and one line particularly stuck with me. It said, "sometimes pain's the only way that we can learn."

Maybe that's true. I found my true self on April 6, 2009, lying flat on the floor sobbing for the life of my child.

But what if that hadn't happened? What if Hunter Syndrome were never part of our lives? Would I have continued on in my mediocre, "I'm a nice person and I know that God is there for me" life?

I hope not, but quite possibly.

If you, my dear and few readers, have not had a life-altering, what I call "Come to Jesus" event in your life, I hope it never takes that for you. And if you've had that event and it's not changed you, then I pray it will.

As the song notes, "You can never fall too hard, so fast, so far that you can't get back when you're lost. Where you are is never too late, so bad, so much that you can't change... who you are."

Thankful for that.

I want to be a peach

We were not meant to have a mediocre life.

We were meant to live a radical, blessed, edgy, open, screaming about the love of Jesus life.

I've heard people sometimes being referred to as an onion, and even in the movie The Blind Side, Leigh Anne and Michael are each referred to as onions, where you have to peel them back one layer at a time.

But I don't want to be an onion. I don't want people to only see pieces of me at a time, to not know the real me until layer after layer is revealed.

I want to be a peach.

I want to have just enough skin to hold the bursting flavor inside. And when the skin is open, I want to burst forth with the sweet scent and taste of trueness, compassion, and radical love for Jesus.

I want people to see that underneath that sweet soul is a hard rock, a pit that is not a pit, but instead the unbreakable core of my life that is my Lord and Savior.

I want to be a peach.