Truth Written on a Coffee Pot

Last year, I decided to randomly start writing messages on post it notes - messages that I knew needed to further sink into my heart. I chose my coffee pot to be the place where I put my notes, because after all,  I knew I would see them there. In such a loved place in my home, surely, after seeing them so much, they would sink in.  Right?  

The first one was "You deserve to be loved".


A year ago, I was just beginning to believe that. And I confess that a few select events of the past year threatened to uproot that belief. Thankfully though, those words were knitted in a very solid foundation because a year later, I come to you now with these words:

I still believe it. 

That's why I can speak the same phrase into other's lives too - because I've known what it's like to suffocate without holding that belief in your heart. 
 
So, my coffee pot affirmation worked, right?


If only it was always that simple. 
                                                               
                                                                 
                                                                           The truth is that it's not.  



Earlier this year, I retired that post it note and put another one in it's place: 

"The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" Job 1:21

~ 

That verse made it's way to my coffee pot earlier this year - after I had experienced a loss that took me much by surprise.  Shortly after that loss, I experienced a personal trauma that shook my foundation to the very core. Trust me, that event put me on a journey that I never thought I would face again. 

Yet, this verse would stare me in the face each and every day - and it became a truth I stood on and it rooted firmly in the soil of my faith.

It's what has kept my eyes toward Heaven, literally singing to the stars, "Happy Birthday" to my sister, a few short weeks ago. 

It's what softened my sorrow when I found out my Father passed away last month. I know where my Daddy is.  He's HOME.

My Dad lived a FULL life here.  And I can only imagine the even FULLER life my Dad is experiencing with Jesus and his other daughter, Elena.  This belief, held in my heart, serves to blessedly soften the loss of my Dad because I truly believe his soul entered the place it was created for all along.

And even still, I reach out to the woman whom God chose to give me life and bring me into this world, even as she rests in a psychiatric unit, detached, bitter, angry, and overcome by her own mental illness that her doctors are doing their best to treat.  I have had numerous "Why do you still care, after everything she has done?"  My response is simple and direct: "She is a human being. And sometimes people need love the most when they deserve it the least."  And instead of having my own heart be consumed by bitterness that I still can't have the Mom I have longed for all my life, I am grateful that my heart refuses to dwell in unforgiveness.  Mom, I forgive you.

In the middle of all of this, I find a place in my heart to give thanks - my eucharisteo. I have seen that God not only works in big ways, but is it not true that He works in small ways as well?  I love how Ann Voskamp of "One Thousand Gifts" puts it .. "When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin, and deep crevices, life grows."

I praise God that my Mom is being in a place where she is finally receiving the help she needs.  I am thankful that my heart still has compassion for her - and still cares about a woman who long since ceased to care about me. I am thankful that God gave me the strength to testify in court - ultimately for her well-being - a mere 4 days after I had laid my Father to rest.  I am thankful that the Lord blessed me with dear friends who uttered timely words of love and support during my harder times and for the arms that have held me when no words would suffice. I am thankful that God has given me a multi-tasking and reasonably intelligent mind to hopefully handle their affairs and estate with the care and clarity needed - and may my own Red Sea part when the time comes that I'm facing an ocean of concern.

Thanksgiving is the tool I use to treat the wound that this world has given. 

I give thanks for the sleepy eyes of my little loves as they awaken and trudge off to their first day of school and give thanks for sunsets that make me grab my iphone to snap a pic to capture the beauty.  And when hard times come, as they certainly will, I give thanks to the promise found in scripture that declares "there is a time and season for everything" (Eccl 3). 

My prayer is that this song can be the cry of your heart if you are in a place where your hands can no longer lift to Him.  He loves you, my dear readers.