4 WriteStuff

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life… Proverbs 4:23

My heart is weary with all the grief of the year… but yet I will praise You, Oh Lord, for through it all, you have been there… holding me when I could not stand. As I reflect back over this year, I had a couple things I went back to on my facebook page to find and process… are not our words reflections of the issues of our life?

I see this as I look through my page… our page reflects the priorities and the treasures of our heart:

I see pages that are all about the things – possessing

Some that are all about children/grandchildren (guilty)

Some are political,

Some are about drama and point often to how others have wronged or are wrong…

While I pray that my page would be about this Jesus Journey, in reality my hope is that it would be a Joyful Jesus Journey, and sometimes life throws a few curveballs that make the joy part more of a goal than a reality.

Often joy is more than a feeling, it is a choice, and action. Joy often look like beginning with thanks, with appreciation, and this year I have not fully lived and expressed the appreciation, the blessing we have experienced through the amazing experiences, friends, family and people God has brought into our lives this year. Sometimes grief fogs our vision, our focus… I think of ancient sailors navigating the seas by the stars… God puts those stars, those points of light in our life to help us navigate through our darkest nights. I prayed so often for focus this year, but my eyes were not always clear under the tears of my heart, and I sometimes missed those bright points God put to guide my heart.

Even now, during this Holy-day season, I have often been silent at a time when my heart is should be focused on Jesus – the joy of the season. I get on track, then get derailed by the busyness of the holidays. I know my page reflects this too… there has been a lot of push/pull where we have been pushed and pulled several directions and I am a great survivor in seasons where I have an opportunity to be a thriver instead. These Holy days – holi-days lead me to lay everything out at the feet of my beloved savior, to allow His love, His honesty, and His unchanging truth to wash over me and free me from the weight of my faltering steps and stumblings to focus on the beauty of the journey ahead. I will trip again, the road is difficult and I am human. I get tired, I get short-sighted, I am stubborn… yet every time I fall, Jesus reaches out that loving hand and says, “are you ready now to walk in my steps instead of trail-blazing?”

I have too often

chased problems when I should have been focused on God’s answers;

Meditated on the actions of others when I should have been meditating on the actions of God;

meditated on slights and injustices when I should have meditated on God’s blessings and the many things I have to be thankful for…

When I grow weary, I often expect disappointment when I should hold on to hope, embraced joy and prayed all the harder; and

focused on wrongs rather than rights

As I poured out my heart for God to chase those shadows out of it, I ran across as quote by Maya Angelou, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”

I have thought about that a lot this week. I agree and disagree with it. There is freedom when you quit trying to belong where you are cast out, an outcast, an outlaw. When you cease to chase that people group, that place, where you can not belong, then you are free to belong where you are and with those you are with – because that moment, that place, that person is where God has placed you and that is where you belong… not chasing life in the shadowlands where things are not as they appear and belonging is based upon momentary favor bestowed by others living in the illusions of their own shadows.

Children of God are children of light… I belong in and to the light – to Jesus – and the darkness has no power over me that I do not give it.

As I meditated , I thought how we have the option to CHOOSE: We can write a different ending than that which focuses on what we deserve or get or don’t get and focuses instead on those moments of light by which God led us on the path He set before us… some nights that path is lit up like Christmas, other times the stars are hard to see, but they are still there, and the story is the middle, not ‘THE END”. Our story does not have to end based on our last breath of oxygen, but can be the never-ending story through the things we teach our children and grandchildren in the way that we live… we become a point of light which reflects the true light of salvation, of peace, of love, and yes, even of hope in darkness through Christ Jesus.

This is the gift of the season… not a momentary gift which fades with time, but the neverending story of the love of Jesus Christ who IS the gift that was given at Christmas and continues to give throughout eternity.

My hope, my promise, my joy, my peace, my salvation is in Him. May I not lose focus on that when shadows fall… for I am a child of light, and that is where I belong.

LIGHT IT UP, Jesus! Shine your light on this weary heart and light up that relationship which I’ve been trying to sustain out of my own weary heart instead of the power of You – Your heart, Your mind, Your joy!

You are the Light of Christmas – Shine, Jesus, Shine in and through me!

You are the hope, the light, the promise, the joy that never ends.