Devotion 320 - Upside Up

It must be Spring Break.

There is something about having my oldest home from college.   The days suddenly seemed longer, the air was warmer, the sun shining brighter throughout the day and an extra set of hands to button, zip and an extra heart to enjoy and with whom to laugh.

Spring Break affording me time to stroll through my thoughts and journals.

I hadn't even realized I was strolling until I saw my youngest children at the park.  They were running, my mind racing.  My oldest and youngest daughters seemed caught in a duel of who could hang upside down longer and swing the highest.  

Upside down, yes, that is what the current events had done.

I reread the words of my journal over and over again, another Spring Break, some three years ago, same battle.  

I found myself upside down…

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Romans 15:13

I dog-eared my Bible with scripture after scripture.  I prayed them to the Father and went to bed every night silently sobbing.  I would whisper, “I trust you” hoping to usher in some sleep.

As the weeks went on, it became apparent that we would not be traveling for my daughter over Spring Break.  I geared up to speak to all our teachers.  They were marvelous.  The packets of homework started coming home.  We would spend spring break working ahead.  I was no longer a popular mom in my home.  

Finally the lists, the packing and the preparation began in earnest.  

Busyness became a balm to my histrionic soul.  

I went to bed many nights in tears.  At best I held my husband and asked him to pray for me.  Could I do this?  Would this little girl love her hysterical mom?  Could I trust my Father to bring me through?

There were moments of great peace and moments of shear panic.  I don’t think the will of God is meant to be easy.  If it were Dear One we truly would not need Him.  Likewise, I don’t believe our life here is meant to be easy or again, why would we need a Savior, why would we hunger and thirst for something greater, peace, love, and hope.  These are the things of God our heart so longs for.  

EASY,  as my kids ran through the park, the first trip this spring, life looked EASY.  I want their life to be easy.  We had had a few tough weeks,  daddies we know and love, ill.   Friends suffering.  No dear children life is not easy.  Lap up the moments that are and remember the warmth of His presence as you touch the sky with your swing. 

Remember the grace as you run wild that all around you screams His presence, the trees, the sun, the warm air.  “I AM HERE,”  remember that Beloved.  Because one day… one day, you will need Him more than you can ever imagine.

You think you have Him.  He is this divine source of comfort that you whip out of your pocket in illness, in fear and in tragedy.  But then, He turns you upside down.

I watched as my daughters took turns one after the other.  They would clasp their hands on the bar and then shimmy their little feet up the side until their knees bent over the metal.  Then they would let go.  Their shirts rolling up, their hair a blissful mess in the breeze, and their pockets would empty.

You see you cannot hold on to anything when you are upside down, you can only keep what sticks.  I wondered as I snapped their pictures, what sticks?

I had told my friends whose daddy was ill to TRUST, I had prayed for family whose baby struggled for life to TRUST.  Would it stick, when nothing separates you from God?  When your little gym shoed feet fly in the air your pride, your success, your money, your friends, your family, nothing separates you from God.  Your hands, your pockets, everything empties.  It’s just you and HIM and what sticks.

I remembered those days in China.  A teary girl and her teary mama.  We were quite a pair.  She was stuck to me.  Every morning as soon as she would see the baby carrier, that would be her first smile of the day.  She wanted to be stuck to me.  We learned we could trust each other.  For two years she had searched every nanny’s face for me and for a lifetime I had searched for her.

The Father had turned me upside down.  Convincing me I was to mother again. 

Now, I see her run, giggle, and wonder, what if I had missed this, these precious moments?

What if the Father had given up?

What if He had not asked us to climb to a higher bar of trust, to shimmy our hearts up and throw away the comfortable life we had with three school aged children.  I had read that too in my journal….

“Comfort is a crazy, mixed up thing that I am more and more convinced is not divine.  We want to sleep in comfy beds, sit in comfortable chairs, as I get older I insist on comfortable shoes.  I think this is a particularly American thing.  In France, women do not wear comfortable shoes.  In Kazakhstan, people do not live in comfortable homes, they live with enough.  Enough room to sleep, to eat and to hang their clothes.  When I am comfortable, I do not need my Comforter nearly as much…

So He takes me, He turns me and I find myself upside down.  The things separating the two of us fall out and it is Him and I.  I think of Isaiah, when He saw the heavenly image of God on the throne surrounded by seraphim, “I AM UNDONE,” he roared. 

Upside down, we do not see the same way.  Our eyes are fixed as we hang there; we grip tighter on the things we are sure of.  The Father, the Comforter, the Fixer, the Easer of our Pain and the Healer of our souls.

He removes the unneeded, He allows us to be undone and He takes the coal to cleanse our life and make us whole with Him.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.  Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I said:

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”

Isaiah 6:  1-5