Lighten Enlighten

Peekaboo God

Peekaboo God.... I don't know how many times this phrase comes to mind for me. God is a Peekaboo God. And what I mean by that is he plays with us sometimes, not in a cat and mouse way, but in the playful and loving way a parent interacts with a child. That's what it feels like to me anyway. He shows his face, then quickly hides it, a moment of glory, then he's gone... A sunbreak on a rainy day, the unexpected four-leaf clover found just in the moment you're needing encouragement, a rabbit trail of answered prayers that are sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. Like Hansel's bread crumbs, he says, "Follow me... Here. Now here. Now just over that log. Now down this path." He plays. And we follow step by step looking for delight and his face to lead us. Are you tracking me? Let me explain further.

We recently fell in love with a house out in Issaquah that got us so excited it kicked us into gear to get our own house fixed up, cleaned up, and on the market to sell, something we've been saying for many years we were going to do. We had a lot of projects sitting overdue, so it took us a couple of months to get it ready to list, and I spent way too much time along the way checking the MLS listing for the house in Issaquah we wanted. Eventually, I felt God gently leaning on me to stop checking it (and rest). At first, I wondered if it was just me or really him, then I felt it more strongly as time went on. I told Jeff, too, so we kept preparing our place and let the Issaquah listing go to the back burner. "Oh, great!" I thought. "This surely means that the house we love is sold and off the market, and God just knows that if we knew it, we'd lose steam and quickly abandon all our preparations to sell. But maybe he wants us to sell anyway, and this is how he entices us to do it." Who knows what it was? But one of the biggest things we were praying along the way was for clear direction (still are), so we decided to be obedient to what he'd led us to so far, obedient to prepare our home to be sold.

It was a Thursday that we got our own house (finally) on the market, so Jeff came home that night, and we sat down to the computer, hand in hand, much like children, waiting excited and a little anxious to check the listing on the Issaquah place. Peering through half-squinted eyes, we pulled up the MLS listing for the house we'd fallen in love with. Gone. Off the market. But not sold, we found out. The listing had expired and had been taken off the market one day (one day!) before we put our house on the market. Crazy! God is leading... "Follow me." (peekaboo) Well, long story short, Jeff stops by the house the following Tuesday to see what the scoop is. "Yep. Delisted," their teenage son tells him, "Contract was up with the realtor." ("Great!" Jeff thinks.) But catch this... the house had already been sold on Sunday, three days after we listed. (And God's face disappears.) It had nothing to do with them de-listing the Wednesday before, but someone came in and scooped it in the very same weekend we listed our house. While we were a little heartbroken at losing what we were hoping was our next home, it was hard not to smile on some level because our prayers were answered: God was leading clearly, and crumb by crumb leading us only as far as the next crumb can be seen. (peekaboo) I mean, what are the odds that Wednesday they would de-list, Thursday we would list, and Sunday they would sell? Crazy, right?

So as a result of falling in love with that place, we stumbled upon another great little house near there that still might be an option for us. Maybe that's why God took us to the first one, who knows? If we bought it, we'd virtually be staring across the yard right at the first house we found (for less money). It also started us looking at a whole different kind of home we would have probably never looked at if we hadn't fallen in love with that place in Issaquah. Since then, we've also found and lost a really great place in Woodinville, too, even more perfect than that one. (This one caused me a few tears.) But again, it felt divinely led that we would find it, fall in love with it, and lose it. "Keep following," it seems like he says. That second home, the one in Woodinville was scooped up the same week we found it, and they hadn't had an official offer in 3 years on and off the market. Again, I look at it and think it's God's clear leading. What are the odds?

Playing Peekaboo with God through this whole moving season has been interesting,  no doubt, and sometimes challenging. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out. The weak side of me wants an answer, and I want it now. Are we moving? Are we selling? Is the next house I fall in love with the one we're destined to move into? Just tell me clearly and tell me everything. But the real me would rather do it this way, delightedly playing games with God as he entices us and teaches us along the way. Then one day I suddenly remembered the educational purpose of playing Peekaboo with an infant: object permanence. All children's play teaches them something of the world around them, and Peekaboo is a game meant to teach object permanence - the concept that when mommy or daddy leaves the room, they still exist out of sight. They don't just vanish into nothingness. Wow. Truly... wow. So each time God's face appears then vanishes and appears again, I learn just a little more about faith, the spiritual version of object permanence, and my faith grows. Each time I become more and more sure that Daddy still exists in the other room well after our fun-loving game of Peekaboo is long over and he's gone.

Foods we're introducing to our 8 month old: peas, carrots, applesauce, cat food, bananas... Wait, what?? No, that's right. She chose cat food on her own. It appears she prefers it to any of the fruits we've introduced so far. Found her still munching away on it 15 minutes later instead of spitting it out like she does all the other stuff she hates. Whose kids is this?

Christmas Is Coming the Goose Is Getting Fat

On a totally different note, I discovered the greatest designer this weekend: Hale Bob! Not that we have a ton of discretionary income we're wanting to spend right now, but I was so excited because I really liked a lot of the things I saw and normally don't resonate with one specific designer. As I was looking, I starting thinking, "Hey... That kind of looks like that one dress I wore to my in-laws' anniversary party!" Turns out I was right. Found out I already own one Hale Bob original. Nice because I could wear it pregnant (here) and also not so pregnant. : )

 

Put this red tunic on my Christmas list! Go, Hale Bob!!

 

Grace: Such a Long Road

Time and again... Grace. May be my favorite Bible word. Probably also my biggest personal challenge, I'm reminded. Reading through Ephesians (last post) because I'm starting a study on Ephesians kind of vicariously through a friend of mine who's actually attending the study herself. (And I'm tracking from home in the workbook.)

The workbook is called By His Wounds You Are Healed by Wendy Horger Alsup, and I'm enjoying her writing so far. Take, for example, the word "grace." I would guess most people have some half-decent notion of what grace means, whether that's a biblical definition or cultural or otherwise. But in reading this week, I was challenged by what she drew out of her own study of the word grace or charis - also meaning "gift" in the original Greek. "The common thread," she says, "In each use of the term is that it is not about giving what is due." This is something I think we'd probably all agree on as a pretty decent intellectual understanding of what grace is: It's not an earned notion but a gift of some sort. She continues:

"When you give back what is earned or deserved, it is not charis. It is not favor or benefit, and it is not credited toward you as anything other than exactly what you are expected to do. Instead, grace does what is unexpected, undeserved, and out of line with reasonable responses. Grace is an unreasonable response - unreasonably good, but unreasonable nonetheless. When we give grace, this undeserved favor that does good to enemies and lends expecting nothing in return, then we give evidence of our relationship with our Father in heaven, because this is his calling card. He is kind to the ungrateful and evil. He is full of grace." (p. 18) - Bolds added

Man... I'm so bad at this. What a challenging word! To do the unexpected when what a person may "deserve" or "expect" is something violent in return. The guy who cuts me off in traffic, the rude solicitor on the phone, the person who throws a disgusted look my way when my son has just dropped and shattered a bottle of olive oil in line at the grocery store... I often don't want to be unreasonably good to any of these people. (And admittedly, too often AM not good either.) But what about deeper levels? What about the person who has truly offended you or me? It's difficult to offer "good" to even the first set of people. What about those who deeply, truly have wounded us? The one who abused me as a child? The friend who betrayed me? The person who lied to me or stole from me? It made me think of the times in my life I've received the "unexpected" from someone. And I don't always mean unexpectedly saccharine sweet either. (Saccharine sweet is much easier to give than sober and purposeful kindness.) Sometimes unexpected can simply be telling someone the truth with an intentional, sober kindness that recognizes our faults and at the same time says, "I see you and love you anyway." I want to extend this kind of grace that Alsop calls God's "calling card" - Grace, the unreasonable response! But it's such a long road. Maybe that's the point. It takes a lifetime, and it grows the giver as much as it does the receiver. I don't know. I just know I've got a long way to go.

Can I get a Wit-NESSSSSSSS-AAHHH??!?

Reading (and re-reading) Ephesians 1 lately, and in particular, verses 18-21 popped out like I've never read them before. They're the kind you hear banged around all the time by believe-it-to-receive-it TV sermonizers, but the idea is fundamentally amazing at the root, whether they abuse it or not.

"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come." (Bold added.) - Eph. 1:18-21

Put differently, his power set to work in you (and me) is the same crazy display of might that shook the earth and darkened the sun at his crucifixion, bounced bodies from graves when he died, and exploded the very God-man himself back from death and into the heavenlies where it landed him smack next to the Eternal and Everlasting One on the throne. (Amen and Hallelujah.) The very same power! That same power he puts to work in us, and we need to see it for what it is. That's the start of the prayer here in v. 18 anyway, that we would be able to see it and truly know it. (Isn't that at least half our problem? We're hard of hearing and hazy-eyed, weary pilgrims, dumb as sheep, who can't even see straight sometimes. And that's on a good day.) Seems to me that's power crazy enough to conquer just about any fear, make crooked limbs straight, cure the worst broken heart, rectify tanked relationships, and at very least make our day-to-day struggles much more than just a pointless exercise. I don't know about you, but there are days when I need that kind of power. Amen to his continuing good work in us! What do you need crazy God-strength for?