kindling
when God breathes on our blackened coals
If you’ve been burned, and have given up on those old dreams and desires, this newsletter from the archives is for you. It’s from December 2016, and here’s the transcript:
I turned forty this month. I had no plans, no big celebration, and joked that I might use the free time on my birthday to go see my chiropractor. I felt like I needed a good tune up, and well, friends…I’m not much for parties. See here and here.
But it turns out it was less of a joke and more of a prompting of the Holy Spirit because six days later I caught the flu, then tweaked my back on Christmas Eve, and then had a flu relapse in quick succession, while Vince and four of the kids also got sick. Which was sort of a joke in itself. All of this straddled Christmas, leaving us mostly intact on that day – just extremely sore (me) and uncharacteristically taking two hours to finish a single cup of coffee (Vince).
In the midst of it when the hits kept coming, I tried to remember what it felt like to be healthy. Just like when we go through weeks of morning sickness and it feels like we’ll never have energy and a good appetite again, or like last summer when I had pneumonia for two months and couldn’t remember how it felt to breathe without coughing, it’s easy to be so discouraged by pain and weakness that we forget how we were made to do our normal activities.
Sometimes fear kicks in, and we think we’ll never be strong again.
But fear is a liar.
Today I feel better than I have in weeks. The kids played outside and I had the energy to clean the kitchen. I was able to bend over and load the dishwasher. I even swept the floor – which doesn’t sound impressive until you consider that our Christmas tree is the sorriest specimen of live greenery ever sold by Lowe’s Hardware and has shed approximately the same amount of needles as one-third the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
While recovering from the flu I was reading in Genesis about Abram, when God changes his name to Abraham and establishes His covenant. It was just one chapter but it took forever for me to get through. I was crowded on the couch with the girls and Finn, the boys relegated upstairs to keep the noise of violent Lego raking as far away from my headache as possible.
I read a few verses, then held the baby. Read a few more verses, helped someone with a hard word in their own book. Re-read those verses that I already forgot and read a few more, then stopped to answer a question from Reagan about where we’re going tomorrow for the fifth time in two hours.
And He showed me that this is how His covenant was established, and is still established – in our obedience, in allowing our agenda to be interrupted and in slacking our pace to make room for others.
Sometimes it feels like it takes forever. We think we are wandering and getting nowhere, but His purpose is less about taking us to a certain place, and more about making us into a certain kind of people.
A year ago we thought for sure we’d had our last Christmas in this house. But we're still here, our house is pregnant and bursting at the seams and our toddler miraculously has not discovered how to climb out of his crib (and up the shelves) in our walk-in closet. And I feel more at peace over this in the last few months than I have in two years.
We are waiting, and I can finally say, I am okay with that. This is where He’s wanted me all along. Maybe this is what He’s been waiting for.
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
- Hebrews 12:7, ESV
Over the past year He’s spoken increasingly to me about things I used to love, used to hope for, and gave up on ages ago. Thoughts and dreams I was afraid to articulate He has put in black and white, right in front of me. He’s stubbornly putting them in my face, reminding me everywhere I look – as I’m thumbing through Instagram, reading a scene in a story, or talking with a friend – and He is breathing on them as you would rekindle an abandoned fire from black, smoldering coals.
A few things I dismissed as impossible: too big, too grand, too other-people-ish. Other things I thought I’d sacrificed for motherhood and other priorities, and thought maybe they were my own ideas and didn’t necessarily have any part in His plans. And sometimes that’s the case, sure. But mostly, friends, I felt burned – blackened from fear and pain and disappointment, like I was never going to be normal again. I was discouraged when the hits kept coming and thought maybe, this was just my lot – and not only was I not happy in it, but I thought since I wasn’t happy in it I must be doing life wrong.
I forgot what I was made for.
But when He persistently puts things in our face and we know it’s Him and there’s no arguing or ambiguity about it, we have to reconsider:
Did I dismiss all of this because I thought I was too small?
Or did I dismiss it all because I thought He was too small?
Were these dreams really impossible? Or was I just supposed to wait, trading my agenda and hurried pace for His training and timing and perfection, and the time is now at hand?
We would rather stay cool, unhoping. The fear of disappointment hurts; the heat of His breath on our blackened coals burns us.
But like a good parent, He is more stubborn than His kids and He keeps depositing small tinder. A little dried grass here (Hey Love, do you remember this goal you used to dream about?) and a piece of dry moss there (What about that idea your heart lights up over?) and something catches. A little smoke rises and scares us, gets in our eyes – so we pooh-pooh our dreams, and they darken again. But He just keeps laying on kindling everywhere we look – visions inspire us, pictures show what might happen in a hopeful future, memories unearth our hard-fought victories – and then He breathes again; something glows.
The darkness lights up with ideas, and fresh thoughts take shape. Hope carries heat with it. He blows again, and the flame leaps.
Those things we gave up on – because we are unworthy, unable, too small, defiled, tired, broken, selfish, wounded, unhealthy, etcetera; we think it’s too late, hopeless – He wants to breathe on them to create in us a fire that catches.
His reminders are not a joke; they are a prompting of the Holy Spirit. We were made to be ablaze with purpose and joy. He wants us to remember what it feels like to be radiantly healthy, committing the exploits He designed us for. We were made for this.
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