Personal Process

Jul272014

My cry and His answer

Father, hold my hand

stroke my head

kiss my cheek

I have been deprived peace, I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say “my splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.” Yet I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seek Him, it is good to wait quietly.

Let Him sit alone in silence for the Lord has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust, there may yet be hope. For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Thought he brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is His unfailing love. For He does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children on men. It is not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

~ Lamentations 3 ~

Hope is a golden cord connecting you to heaven. This cord helps you hold your head up high, even when multiple trials are buffeting you. I never leave your side, and I never let go of your hand. But without the cord of hope, your head may slump and your feet may shuffle as you journey uphill with Me. Hope lifts your perspective from your weary feet to the glorious view you can see from the high road. You are reminded that the road we’re traveling together is ultimately a highway to heaven. When you consider this radiant destination, the roughness or smoothness of the road ahead becomes much less significant. I am training you to hold in your heart a dual focus: My continual Presence and the hope of heaven.

~ From the daily devotional ‘Jesus Calling’ by Sarah Young ~

I love that you are here, and I certainly would love to hear from you. To leave a comment go HERE !

Jul252014

For years…

For years THIS is the day I would arrive in the Philly area. My yearly house sitting job would start and I was always excited about it. I remember looking forward to some hot summery weather, finally, for in Holland summer was never a sure thing. I’d have a pool for 3 whole weeks! I remember looking forward to spending time with my dear friend Melissa. During the year we’d spend hours and hours on Skype, finally we’d have 3 weeks in person. I remember looking forward to 3 Sundays in church, church in Holland was never the same. I couldn’t wait to see deer in the yard when I’d sit down with my coffee for quiet time. And my annual trip to Amish country and my Amish friends was another highlight.

Today I arrived on my house sitting job. That has not changed. But that is the only thing that didn’t change. Instead of an 8 hour flight… it took me 40 minutes to get here today. And I think back… back to those years where I’d house sit. Always having a great time, but also feeling somewhat alone. Having my quiet time on the porch and my long walks in the neighborhood talking to God were precious, but I do remember talking to God about feeling alone at times. Would I ever be here, house sitting, with a husband? Summer after summer I’d have that ache and I truly wondered if it would ever be given to me.

It’s good to look back and remember. It is good to look back and feel, to feel those emotions of the past for it sure makes today very sweet. This year I am house sitting for the 2nd year WITH my husband. Last year we had a blast. Having a constant flow of friends popping in, sharing dinners and fun in the pool. I will still have my quiet time on that porch, I will still go on my walks taking to God… but the ache of aloness is replaced with celebration and gratefulness, for I am here with Tim. God has been good and Tim is my true gift.

And that is not all there is to celebrate because in 2 days there is another special date. Two years ago, on July 27th, I arrived in the States to marry my love. It’s another sweet date that deserves thought and gratefulness.

Maybe I will write about it some other time… but I have struggled with some darkness lately and these special dates are a sweet reminder of God’s faithfulness and loving gifts to me. God reminds me of the new name He gave me. There is always Hope, I can always have Hope. In these dark days God reminds me of His goodness to me, He has never failed. He reminds me of those house sitting days when I ached. And He shows me how different life is today. I am married. Melissa and I can see one another whenever we’d like and this time I was even around when she had her baby. The church I loved for those few weeks per year I now call home. God is good, and although life gets tough and dark… I can have hope that the darkness will come to pass, God will heal and in the mean time I look back and remember…

I love that you are here and I certainly would love to hear from you. To leave a comment go HERE !

Jun062014

Community scares me

MaddyChristine Hope Photography-Summer in Kennett

So I have always had lots of friends, and I love socializing. I love people! But when Tim started mentioning us moving so we can be closer to friends, I wasn’t too thrilled.

I LOVE where we live. Tim had this home ready for us when we got married. It was pretty far out from where he used to live but Tim knew what I had left behind in Holland, he wanted to give me similar characteristics. So far out we moved so I could have some cows around, lots of green and space. It blessed me from the get go. When we got home after our honeymoon I started going on morning walks to be with my Heavenly Father. I LOVED it. It is so very peaceful and I feel blessed every time I go out. I love the quiet crisp morning, the birds chirping, my walk starts as soon as I close the door– no need for a car to drive me anywhere, and sometimes we hear cows mooing at night. It is perfect!

But it is no longer perfect for Tim. Tim is a people’s person. He energizes by being with people. After we got married, not only did I leave people behind but by us moving, Tim sort of left his friends at a distance too. After having been here for a year and a half, we realize it is just not convenient. Most people don’t like to make the 40 minute drive to come see us, and we don’t like to always have to drive for everything either. We would love to be more involved in church but that is hard when we are so far away. Besides, we are ‘in the spur of the moment’ people and that doesn’t work when you live 40 minutes from your community. Tim was starting to ache. He missed his friends and it was starting to show.

Tim was good to give me time. Knowing I love where we live, he would just mentioned moving every now and then and it started to settle in me. I realized that I too would benefit from moving. And I had to be honest with myself… I wasn’t too thrilled not only because I would miss our surroundings… but because community scares me. It was a bit of a hard awakening.

I realize I have never really lived in a community setting. Growing up everything was pretty dysfunctional and I learned that I can manage on my own. I learned it is very safe to manage on my own. Sure I have tried the community thing but I feel God is bringing it to the next level. I think He has great things in store when we move. Like me learning TO DO community. Like me learning to BE ME and seeing people will STILL love me. Like SHARING LIFE. Like BEING THERE FOR one another, which goes BOTH WAYS. I think there is just a lot of healing involved for me.

At first my take was: we tried it my way (by living out in the middle of nowhere), now it was time to try it Tim’s way (living near friends and community). We could test it out and see how we’d do with that. But my heart has changed… I no longer want to try it out. I think it will be a great next step for us. I think this is what we need and even brings us as a couple to a next level. I am getting excited and even anxious… LET’S MOVE!

I love that you are here and I certainly would love to hear from you. To leave a comment go HERE!

Jun032014

This is exactly what I feared

It was hard getting home. Tim and I had such a good month away that I was sad to go home, and once home I was even sad to be home. I needed time to adjust.

It was interesting to see that in Burkina none of our concerns from home mattered. There are certain things we’ve been focusing on lately, even to the point it consumed me. When away the past month we spoke about all those things and how it all seemed irrelevant in light of what we were doing in Burkina. How would we respond when we got back? Would we just be consumed over those ‘things’ again? It’s certainly not what we wanted.

I don’t want to be consumed by anything but with the matters of the Lord. I have written before about heart’s desires going unanswered. In Burkina it didn’t matter. Tim and I have been consumed by wanting to move. We live too far from community and church and it is bothering us, it aches. In Burkina it didn’t matter. I desired to go home with a new passion… focusing on the things that truly matter and on things that are way more important than my ‘things’.

And yet, what I feared is happening. I am getting consumed by the things here. The old things pop back up and seem to matter. And it saddens me. There are better things to be consumed by, like focusing on making this world a better place, wherever, however, but that has got to be my focus. I have lived a past and God has used it to write a story of redemption through my life. Sharing that has got to matter. Seeing need all around me, that has got to matter.

The first morning home I couldn’t wait to sit down with God and just be. He showed up as such a loving Father. Guess what He told me? He told me that ‘my things’ matter to Him! The things I get consumed by are obviously important to me, and so they are important to Him. That was a beautiful first awaking.

God said something else, something He’s been saying to me before. He said: “Don’t pray, let me do!” Sounds familiar? He said: “Don’t worry about being back, don’t fear it. Don’t think about moving, about ministry, about what you will do. Just let me be! BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.”

I desire to live a life of sacrifice. I do pray, but I try not to be consumed. I try to pray and just see what happens next. My prayer sounds like this: “God, open my eyes to what You want me to see.” I can desire many things, but I cannot make anything happen. I want to acknowledge where God is at work, and I desire to join Him. How, where… only God can work out those details. It is not good to be consumed. It is best to be still and know that God is God.

I love that you are here and I certainly love to hear from you. To leave a comment go HERE!

This was also shared at Holley’s Coffee For Your Heart. To read more personal stories or get encouraged, go HERE!

Apr162014

No matter how bad, God always lets good come out of bad

Last week was a painful week for me, for more reason than one. But when I look at the two pains, I see that out of both pains came good.

When my oma was not doing well and the end was near, with Tim being out of town, dad invited me to stay with them. “They were my family now too and I shouldn’t be alone” he told me. That was good out of bad. I had never experienced family like the way I was experiencing it that week. When I had that emotional morning and was hurting over my sister rejecting me, I ended up sitting down with mom (MIL) and we had a long chat about my hurts, and life in general. It was the first time we sat down like that, just the two of us for an hour of uninterrupted time, sharing back and forth. I realize we are still getting to know one another and this was a very precious time that we closed with praying together. What a blessing! Again, good came out of bad.

Then this morning I realized it was the same with Jesus’ death. Out of the horrible death on the cross came good. And so I look to that and it’s healing for my soul. Out of every bad, no matter how bad, God always lets good come out.

I remember going through counseling, dealing with my past of sexual abuse, people were always quick to say: “God will turn this into good, it will not be for nothing.” I H A T E D when people said that. For one, I was in the middle of deep deep suffering, do you really think this is a message I want to hear right now? If I could trade my life with someone who’s life wasn’t filled with that pain, I would trade it. I would rather have a life that was easy and good without all the lessons than my life filled with abuse, pain and abandonment that somehow I would learn from and that at some point would turn into a blessing for others. Forget the “God will turn into good”.

But looking at last week, in the midst of all of it… good came out of the bad. God took care of it. He took care of me. I am still looking to see where my past of sexual abuse will turn into good. Other than a documentary was made about my life years ago and that was a testimony. I was on TV plenty of times sharing my story, counseling people and sharing the lessons I had learned. And I simply sat (sit) with people in church during ministry time. Some of it seems far away today though. I hope it will somehow get more meaning in the now and future too. That is up to God. My heart is willing. But knowing that my life isn’t different from Jesus’ is a bandaid on my heart, it’s encouragement for my future. His bad turned into good, my bad will turn into good, your bad WILL turn into good.

So in my opinion it’s better to let the bad be there, work VERY hard to heal and give it a place in your heart, even though you’d rather have something more beautiful in there. And one day you will wake up and see that God has done good in it.

God bless our hurting hearts. And bless God for His ‘system’ where He lets good come out of bad, always!

What bad did God turn into good in your life?

This was also shared at Holley’s Coffee For Your Heart. To read more personal stories or get encouraged, go HERE!

I love that you are here and I certainly love to hear from you. To leave a comment go HERE!

Apr072014

Embracing Pain

I have never written about this before but I feel I need to, for me!

Rejection is a big reality in my life. I have been rejected, I am rejected, I feel rejected. And this morning I am sitting down with God to find out how to deal with this, for me!

The pain of rejection is so real and it goes so deep. It feels like a slice into my heart every single time. I feel like the ‘black sheep’, I feel like the ‘bad guy’, I feel like there is something wrong with me. I truly feel like I am a bad person.

That is how I feel. And yet, I have a God who wanted me and thus created me. I have a God who is truly saying I am enough. God loves me with such a powerful love and sometimes I can feel that, other times it’s my faith who ledges on to that truth.

And this morning I sit down with God to find wisdom. It’s my desire to be healthy. I know I want to hide this pain, walk away from it, pretend it’s not there, pretend none of this is hitting me. But I know none of that is healthy, neither is it truly possible, we just think it is. I know I need to embrace this pain in my life, it’s part of my life and there is no walking away. Embracing pain, doesn’t that sound strange?

The reality is that my older sister has decided she doesn’t want me in her life. In our family it’s pretty normal to have a traffic light relationship. Sometimes you are in, other times you are out and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. It is a very painful thing. I am all for family. In my eyes we have suffered so much, it could strengthen us, bind us. But in our case it has always driven us apart and it still is. And a year and a half ago my sister decided for the second time she doesn’t want me. But she is my sister and I want to be loved and wanted by my own big sister. Besides, I really do love her… still. Being rejected by your own blood cuts deep. Lately I was thinking I was dealing with it, I thought I had found my way with it. I look to what I do have: God, the new family I have because of Tim, our friends. But now oma passed away, and that is typically when family gets together. In normal circumstances all of us would be in touch… But in our case it brings up our brokenness and my sisters choice not to want me in her life. I am broken all over.

So I am sitting down with God for wisdom. First of all, I want His love to be enough. I want to feel His love so strongly that it doesn’t matter who wants or doesn’t want me. Second of all, I want help in knowing how to deal with this, to know how to communicate about this and speak up where I need to speak up. Thirdly, how do I give this a place in my life without ‘just’ trying to push it away.

God is meeting me in all this. It is most important I sit in HIS truth about me. I am not outcast, there is nothing wrong with me, this isn’t even about me. And in all my pain and emotions, He wraps His arms around me and comforts. This CAN have a place in my life when His arms are around me. No need to pretend it’s not there. I have learned that when I do pretend something is not there, I die inside, I am not real. I’d rather be real and hurt with His arms around me than walk away from a pain that is just reality.