White Space

Several years ago, a speaker said something that has continually rattled around in my head and heart--especially each time I approach the family calendar.

She said, "What if we could take a peek at God's day-timer? What if we snuck in His office, crept around His desk and looked at His calendar for us? What would be on His calendar for my day?"

She definitely had my interest, but then she added something that really took my breath away...

"What wouldn't be on His calendar for me today? Of all the things that I have on my calendar, what are the things that God doesn't have on His?"

For a "doer", that's a very challenging question. I'm challenged to leave space in my life--space to meditate, rest, think, laugh and play. I have trouble with that. I tend toward overscheduling and driveness which can drive both myself and my family CRAZY. In addition to making time for worship, our family has decided we need to make some time for family fun.

On the way to the beach (I can't wait to share new family pics with you!), our family made a little list of the fun things that we want to do over Christmas. In addition to leaving "white space" on the calendar for rest, we want to include some "want-to-dos" as well as the "should-dos" on the calendar.

Our "want-to-dos" include:

• Finding the best, over-the-top yard lighting displays in Wake Co.
• Going to hear The Messiah at Duke Chapel
• Checking out the new outdoor ice-skating rink in downtown Raleigh. How is this even possible?!
• Watching "Elf"

It's terrible in a way to have to schedule fun during December, but I know how the calendar can fill up before we know it. What kind of fun do you want to schedule during Christmas?

For more thoughts on Christmas, don't miss my friend Karen Ehman's 12 Days of Christmas posts. I've got a giveaway there today!

Back Next Week

Truthfully, I'm swamped with all kinds of things this week--getting ready for Thanksgiving, teaching, running boys, running boys, running boys...

I love ya'll. I really do, but I don't have the umph to write tonight and then I'm off to family time.

I couldn't miss the chance to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, though. Join me in taking time to give thanks for all the God-given gifts we've received this year. Bask in His presence and love on your family.

Enjoy, and I'll see you next Monday with a Christmas giveaway!

Little Miss Sunshine Strikes Out

I wasn't afraid. Our team had watched videos, read books about culture shock and been briefed by missionaries. All travel is extreme adventure to me, and I was ready to hit Calcutta. One of my friends that was going along was struggling with fear of the unknown-- but not me!

I wasn't struggling with fear... until I was. After over 24 hours of travel, we landed in the Calcutta airport at 2:00 am. My friends watched my face turn white with strain as I alone was grilled by a customs officer. We weren't officially there as missionaries but as tourists, and we had been told over and over not to reveal our connections lest they be sent home from the field.

Finally, the interrogation was over, and I was allowed to begin my "vacation" in Calcutta. Our group walked out of the airport only to be surrounded by a pressing crowd of beggars and men pleading to carry our luggage. Desperate women with babies on their hips held out bony hands to us.

As we drove through the city, I watched machine-gun-armed policemen patrolling, feral dogs sniffing at mounds of garbage and cows wandering slowly along the streets. To my untrained eyes, the buildings looked like something in a war zone. They looked like bombed out shells. (I later learned that many of these had been under construction for years.)

Fear began to seep into my soul. About that time, I looked up to see a huge billboard that declared, "Calcutta: City of Joy". I hate to admit, but this was the first crazy thought that went through my head, "This is no job for Suzy Sunshine." You see, in all my preparations, I had harbored a hidden belief that my cheery personality would change Calcutta. I would blow in, smile at everyone I saw, tell all in sight about Jesus in the perkiest tone of voice you've ever heard, and all would be well.

I'm exaggerating a little of course. But my first thought at seeing a billboard that declared something that seemed so contradictory to my surroundings revealed my flawed belief about my role for a week in Calcutta.

Suzy Sunshine couldn't make a dent, but God... God can speak to hearts in bondage to poverty, fear and idolatry. God can heal the sick on the street. God can care for the orphans. God can turn Calcutta into the City of Joy. He is big enough.

Slowly as the week went on, my fear was replaced by faith, and I'll share a few more stories about that in upcoming posts.

In light of yesterday's post, though, this was a good story for me to retell. Suzy Sunshine (aka Amy Carroll) can't do a thing about the evil that surrounds me right here in America, but God...
Thank you, God!

Thank you also to several of you who gave me a picture of Shaniya being held in the arms of Jesus. This bloggy world is a wonderful place where I hope you receive the kind of encouragement from me that I receive from you. Love you all!

Not Today

Usually I commit to myself to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I commit to having a lesson from Calcutta tomorrow morning. This morning I just can't. I'm way beyond sad.

Last night I watched the news as our news anchor announced that Shaniya's little body had been found. She's a beautiful little girl who disappeared from her Fayettville home last week, and there has been a search for her ever since. They found her yesterday thrown away like a piece of trash on the side of the road. Her mother has been arrested on charges of selling Shaniya for sex. She was five years old.

This morning I opened my email and read my friend Melissa's devotion about her sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor.

I want to honor Melissa by saying first that her devotion wasn't really about the abuse. It's about the power of Jesus to heal and bring forgiveness. It's an incredibly powerful piece from an amazing woman who I love and respect. Melissa goes on to share honestly on her blog about the effects on her life.

And it completely breaks my heart.

And I feel overwhelmingly sad and angry about living in a world where such evil exists. I feel broken for every little girl (and boy) who is suffering at the hands of an adult today, and I grieve for every little-girl-heart walking around in a woman's body who hasn't gotten past the pain inflicted on them as a child.

So I can't tell my Little Miss Sunshine story today. But I'll tell it tomorrow. Because no matter how overwhelmed by the evil of the world I am today, I serve a Savior who is bigger and who grieves over the world's evil even more deeply than I can imagine.

Don't Miss It!

If you haven't already signed up for the giveaway at the She Reads blog, don't miss out! They are giving away not only the newest novel pick for Winter but also an iPod nano.

The "Little" Stuff

I often share the story from today’s Encouragement for Today devotion when I speak. During the last conference that I led, several women approached me separately with the same insight from this story. It was one that I actually hadn’t pondered very deeply.

They said, “I’ve always thought of an ‘idol’ as something really big in my life. Your story made me realize that even little things (like HGTV and “Southern Living” which fueled my remodeling obsession!) can take God’s rightful place as Number One.”

Wow! It’s true, isn’t it? It makes me think of Song of Solomon 2:15, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyard, our vineyards that are in bloom.” Sometimes it’s the “little foxes” that are the most deceptive.

It’s spending more time in the mirror than on our knees.

It’s consulting all our friends first and Jesus last.

It’s counting on our checking account for security.

It’s finding our significance in being a wife or a mother or in our job.

(I had to add one from an email I've already gotten this morning.) It's finding time to check our email or Facebook but no significant time to spend reading the Bible and praying. Ouch!

I remember being in the heart of Calcutta near the temple of Cali, the goddess after whom Calcutta is named. She is the goddess of death and destruction. You can just imagine how much fear is involved in the worship of this goddess.

The area was lined with booths filled with flowers, grains and other items being sold to those heading to the temple to leave an offering. I have never been surrounded by such poverty, filth and human misery. It was an area that included the city’s red light district—a place filled with women with the deadest eyes I had ever seen. The spiritual oppression was tangible.

I wanted to stand there and shout, “Do you see? How can you not see? Do you see what Cali has earned for you—fear, poverty, death, misery! True destruction. Turn to Jesus. He is kind and gentle of heart. He loves you and longs for you to turn to Him.”

But do we see? Do we see what our own idols have done to us? They have bought something so much less than what we were created for. We are created for relationship with Jesus, the One and Only.

Let’s beware of the idols, the little foxes, that come to kill, steal and destroy.

(Next week I'll be posting more lessons learned in Calcutta. I've enjoyed your visit today, and I'd love for you to come back!)

Where I End

Years ago after Barry's grandmother lost her husband of 64 years, I remember her saying "I don't know where I end and he started." It was a sentiment that pierced my heart as I collected memories of the years that I had known them.

Granddaddy was a semi-retired pastor. He was one of the sweetest, most fun and godliest men I've ever known. More than any other thing, though, he was known for adoring his wife, and she adored him right back.

In fact, he was known as such a wonderful husband that my mother-in-law immediately agreed to a date with his son during a summer that she and Granddaddy worked together. I sure am the happy recipient of the fruit of that pairing!

Granddaddy and Grandmama modeled oneness in marriage for every generation after them. Even my children got years to observe this outstanding marriage, and I'm so glad. Oneness is probably the greatest gifts of marriage but maybe the hardest to develop. Check out my friend Melanie's blog about oneness today. Reading her post made me miss my hubby even more.

Barry, I'm missing you, but I'm unbelievably proud of your accomplishments and how you provide for our family. Can't wait until convention is over so that my overlapping half is home!

Oswald Chambers gave me an Ah-Ha moment today. I've been struggling with (really against) a circumstance in my life. God has been speaking consistently to me about not complaining about manna, but it still has been chafing me.

In a moment of complete honesty with Him this week, I said, "But God I don't get it. Not only don't I LIKE it, but I don't see the potential good in my life." (Trusting Him like I do, I stand on His promise of a good outcome. I just really can't see it today.)

Here's what Jesus used Oswald to respond directly to my heart today:

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." 1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across. Oh, I can't deal with that person. Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you barged off because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.

The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God's aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the "long, long trail."

Are we partakers of Christ's sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say - ' 'Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!"

Pile Up

It is not good for a mom to spend the weekend in bed. Really. Don't get me wrong. My guys are great. They're very self-sufficient in a lot of ways, or I'd never be able to travel on the weekends like I do.

I had a long list for this weekend, though. I was behind already. Piles of laundry spilled over on the floor. The refrigerator was bare and the cupboards empty. The carpet needed vacuumed, and I'm pretty sure that the guys were going to start writing messages to me in the dust.

...and then tragedy hit.

I got sick.

Yep.

Today is Monday, and I feel lots better. Yeah! However, the pile up is now at critical stage. It will all get done with everybody pitching in. Four grown folks can get a lot done in a house.

It got me to thinking about my spiritual life, though. What happens when "stuff" (sin if I call it what God calls it) starts to pile up in my life? That same inertia that affects me in my overwhelming household takes hold of my heart, too.

It's hard to face piles. They're big and overwhelming. They make me feel shame. It's so much easier to sweep those piles under a rug or shove them into a closet. The problem is, as my wise friend Zoe has said, "Things under the rug don't just lie there. They rot." True, true, true.

My piles are reminding me to keep a short "gap time" in my spiritual life. I can't allow piles. I need to shorten up the time between sin and repentence. I need to cry out to God to make me aware of my sin as soon as it happens so that I can run to Him with it immediately to ask for forgiveness.

I need to pull it all out from under that moldy, dark rug into God's amazing Light and air where forgiveness and healing happen.

Tomorrow I'll attack a few more piles in my house and ask God again to expose any piles in my heart.