Thoughts From The 3rd Trimester

                  That thing, that call, that ministry, that movement, that baby, that future that God has put in you to carry; to birth into the Earth, is going to make you so uncomfortable.  It's going to stretch you in ways you didn't know you could stretch.  It's going to wake you up in the night with an ache in your side.  It's going to cause every step that you take as the days go on to get heavier and feel more weighty.  Your face will glow, but your appearance will change so drastically that all people will begin to see is the seed that was planted in you grow to a size that consumes you.  Your heart will begin to pump two times the blood it once was able to handle.  You will become so desperate for relief that like Jesus you will say, "Lord, let this cup pass from me."  You will cry out and say, "God, I can't carry this anymore it's too hard."
        There is an ache, a cry, a desperation in the heart of God for the people of the Earth.  He longs to know us, to meet with us, to heal us and to simply hold us and be intimate with us.  Since the fall of man and the separation from God took place in the garden, an ache has grown in the heart of God.  Across centuries, across time, he has carried this weight, this desire to return to a place of intimate fellowship with us.  He has placed this heart within His people, so that our hearts too would break for the lost, the broken, the hurting, the sick, the wretch, and the outcast.  You are birthing hope into the Earth...
           Hope is Painful! Wait?  What do you mean?  I need hope to get out of my painful situation!  I need hope to stop the pain.  This pain is killing my hope!  In my deepest darkest situations in life something was born.  Hope was born.  In my lowest of low, the most painful places in me; I met hope there.  When everything falls apart I can look at the ruins and say, "He will rebuild."  When I truly can't take a step further, because I'm buckling under the pressure I can actually fall and know that He will carry me.  I don't know if you can imagine the size I am right now at 34 weeks pregnant, but let's just say it's unsightly.  It feels painful just to look at me... and I still have 6 weeks to go!  I have this funny image in my head of that cliche story of the footprints in the sand where there are two footprints walking along the sands of life.  One was mine and one was Jesus'.  In my hardest moments there was only one set of footprints, so I questioned Jesus.  "Why did you leave me to walk alone in my hardest moments?"  He said, "I didn't leave you; in those moments I carried you!"  Except all I can see in my head is my huge fat prego body awkwardly draped across the arms of Jesus as he struggles through the sand to carry me to the end of my pregnancy.  I don't even know if my own husband could pick me up and carry me very far at this point.
                In pregnancy and in the birthing of a new season or a new life there's a dying process that coincides with the birthing process.  It is the death of self, the death of an old way of doing things, the death of outdated hopes and dreams, the death of the old man, the death of an old season or pattern of thinking.   How do I know that He will rebuild when I look at ruins?  Because demolition is always the first step of rebuilding.  Until something breaks we often don't know how to look for the thing that needs to be fixed or even know that it needs fixing.  When you already have a structure like a house or in our case we can say like the person of us, yet it's old, falling apart, weak, or otherwise not sustainable, you have to tear parts of it down.  In some cases you have to completely level it.   When something is being torn down it is the first sign of rebuilding.
               My scripture theme for my life right now is "[...] His strength is made perfect in my weakness" 2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV.  The Passion translation says "[...] My power finds its full expression through your weakness."  Hope is formed, captured and realized in your weakest moments in life.  It grows up out of the deadness, the dryness, the loss.  The greatest hope the world ever found was in that moment when Jesus hung on the cross and DIED.  Don't be fooled to think hope is lost in death.  For we know that He will rise again, He will come again.  Every time something dies it carries a promise of resurrection.  If you feel like things are falling apart, let them fall.  If you feel like you're grasping to hold on to a life that's dying, let it die.  If all you've ever known is disappearing before your eyes, let it vanish.  If you've lost everything, don't go searching for what's gone.  "[...]  For he that loses his life for my sake shall find it."  Matthew 10:39
               When you go through 9 months of pregnancy and then birth an actual child it feels like everything that was you is gone.  Your body is gone, your plans are gone, your privacy is gone, your time is gone, your choices are gone, your sleep is gone, and often your strength is gone...but what is born?  Not only is a baby born, but a mother is born.  Hope is not gone, hope has simply changed.  Hope has revealed itself.  Life takes on a new rhythm.  Dreams change, visions change, plans change, methods change, and time management becomes your only hope for survival.  Mothers, can I get a witness?  Listen... Hope does not disappoint! Romans 5:3-6 says, "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character, and character hope.  Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."
When I was still without strength...
when I was still weak
when I still couldn't pull it together
when I was still a blubbering mess
when I was still in the pit,
still broken,
still hurting,
still in pain...Christ died for me!  That is Hope.
        

Give Me Back My Confidence

                  I wrote this I'm guessing by the looks of the faded legal pad and the dates of the preceding writings in the notepad, sometime around late March of 2012.  I eventually adapted this free-write into a poem called Penny Billionaire which I published in my first and only book (thus far) of a compilation of 26 poems that I had carefully picked from over the course of the 26 years of my life, at that time.  Now 32, fast forward 7 and 1/2 years and today is September the 24th, of 2019 and I woke up early this morning, very early.  I found myself in my attic looking for a legal pad to write a letter on because half of my stuff and Zacs' stuff is in our attic since we moved into a very tiny, very charming 768 square ft. house this past April.  While sifting through boxes, AHA!  I found a legal pad with very few pages written in, and it was already flipped to this page.  Nostalgia led me to sit on the floor of the dusty, dim attic around 5:30AM and read:

"Give Me Back My Confidence

This is for you...and this is for me...that we would RISE and become a generation FOUND, out of everything lost, formed from the scraps and pieces of broken and forgotten hopes.  We will build with what we have and we will tear down what we're NOT, and RISE out from the cracks and scams we let one another fall into.  If I do not care about the lowest of men, I hate humanity and have doomed its death.  I am you and you are me.  Lest we love each other, we will kill the only true life we have.

From the worlds lost change
I became a billionaire
through the worlds forgotten dreams
I formed a whole new universe
I collected dirty napkins
scribbled with chicken scratch
and formed a literary masterpiece
At every moment in time
when someone lost hope
I was there, catching tears
sweeping up the remains
of what they let go
and my house is a palace filled
with rooms and rooms and rooms
of deserted dreams
the treasures reach the ceilings
the ideas, I hardly have room
the hopes, the generous acts
I can hardly keep track
On the darkest of streets
I found diamond rings
along with hope deferred
I picked up melodies
that no one ever sings
and sang a SONG
that set fire to bones
these bones boiled blood
that soon burned
muscles and tendons
this song became fingers pressed
on empty chests
breaking through
skin and burning flesh
MY CONFIDENCE
WAS RESTORED
It began with pocket change
just dimes and pennies
I filled jars
that soon filled drawers
then cabinets, and closets and entire rooms
The eloquent words
the tiny sparks
that spoke of reason for living
I told you already
I traveled the world
collecting what you lost
So I could meet you at the opportune moment
and restore to you lost confidence
The words that you've been missing
I AM CONFIDENT that you will soon remember"

If you are reading this now, I believe this is a NOW word for your season of life, and it is a Word for this current generation and older generations on the Earth that have been wandering around aimlessly for too long! RISE up and fulfill your calling! Be inspired by my poetry and writings!  You can read  of this particular writing, and see how it turned into my poem Penny Billionaire; by checking out my book I Am an Artichoke and My Heart is Delicious!  🔽🔽↓↓↓Click the link below↓↓↓🔽🔽to find my book on Amazon.     

⏩CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY BOOK! I Am an Artichoke and My Heart is Delicious ⏪

The Dead Head Home

Wow, what a shame I haven't written much since having a child or even since I've moved to Georgia, or maybe it's since I became a flight attendant; I hope to revive and share that passion in the coming years!  Here is one hour of my life that I typed out on my i-phone on what we flight crew call a deadhead.  A deadhead is a flight that airlines use to re-position crews to a different location, so it's not a working flight leg and we actually occupy a passenger seat.  After a 4 hour delay in Boston my crew and I finally worked our flight down to Ft. Lauderdale and when we arrived and deplaned we had to literally run to our next flight, and they so graciously held the plane for us so we could make it home for a late dinner.  We were so grateful because generally they will not delay a flight for a working crew member.  The exhaustion had set in hours before our arrival and I was looking forward to not having to work this leg home. I planned on napping, but I was compelled to write instead.  So here is one hour of my life, because that's all I have time to offer you.      

  March 4th , 2019

If I could explain my life to you I would, but that would take a year possibly years of dinners and coffee dates and conversations shared over brunch. I don’t get much time to stop and think and write and absorb what has happened to me in the last month, week, day, or heck even the last few hours. My life is traveling as fast as this 505 mile an hour Boeing I’m traveling home on from Ft. Lauderdale. I woke up in a snow storm in Boston, slept in San Antonio the night before and my husband and I packed, moved and cleaned our entire apartment in the 2 1/2 days prior to that. I got straight off the airplane from a 3day long trip, drove home and began packing. Packing without knowing where exactly we were moving to. We put all our stuff in a friends garage and took what we needed to another friends house and set up camp in their guest bedroom. Did I mention we have a 1 1/2 year old that has been off and on sick for nearly 4 months while I’ve flown around the country also off and on sick, including having the flu since Christmas Day. But hold your assumptions just a little longer about where I’m going with this...this isn’t a story about how hard or bad life has been. This isn’t a pep talk about how to overcome life’s curve balls, it’s a testament to the God who knows everything when I have no idea what’s going on.

As I settled myself into the window seat, overlooking this massive Boeing 757 wing I relaxed up against the wall and my giant red winter coat, buckled up, turned my music on closed my eyes and tears began to effortlessly slip themselves out of my closed eyelids as the plane flew down the runway and lifted off the ground. I wasn’t sad, I felt alive, I felt held. I felt held up by Him, Him as in my Creator. I felt like just a shell, that has only been held up by something other than me, someone greater than me. I breathed a deep breath and relaxed into His presence that was right there with me in the unknown. At this point I know I’m not operating on my own strength, I know myself and I know I’m not that strong. I know former versions of myself would have cracked under the pressure, would have hid away, would have ran as far and as fast away from all of this. And I haven’t even begun to explain what “all of this” is. But that’s okay I don’t need to get in to what’s happening underneath the mom, wife, flight attendant roles...because let’s be real, we all know that there is so much more going on in all of our lives that most people will never see or hear about. Often even our spouses miss the multi-layers that make up us.

I am discovering that there is great strength found in my own weaknesses. When you can’t carry yourself any further, He does. When everything falls apart, He takes all the parts and puts them together. When we give up trying, give up planning, give up striving to make it all happen, He rushes in! We all have heard the scripture, when I am weak He is strong. He shows up so strong in my life, when I’m at the end of myself, when I’m on my last leg, literally and figuratively. I have to rest in His strength to continue forward many days. I have often felt overwhelmed like Winnie Pooh who said, “yesterday, when today was tomorrow, that was too much day for me.” Interestingly enough Jesus instructs us in Matthew 6 to not worry about tomorrow, for today’s troubles are sufficient enough.

As I look out over the wingspan of this plane again I am reminded of Psalms 91:4 “He shall cover you with His feathers and under His wings you shall take refuge.” I don’t get this view much as a flight attendant. I am usually standing up in the aisles or galley working and don’t have windows to gaze out of and take in this beautiful life I’m living, process the fact that my job takes place 35,000 feet in the air and contemplate the grace and protection God is pouring out on me daily. As we lower our altitude for arrival into Atlanta I can see the shadow cast from the plane traveling over the Earth below. I am comforted thinking, that is us below, that is mankind down there, and our Father is casting His shadow of safety and protection over us who need it. “He who abides in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the almighty” Psalm 91:1. I run to Psalm 91 on days like today, in weeks like this week and in months and months like the past several months, and even in years like this past year. What a place of refuge is this Psalm! It covers just about everything you could ever worry about. I know that this is a place I can run to that’s not an escape from life’s problems. It’s okay to hide yourself away in scripture, it’s okay, you can find sleep and refuge there in His words of life, peace and strength. We will forever be restless until we find our rest in Him. I invite you to read Psalm 91 before the day ends, to gain your own strength from its words.  

Now on our final descent into Atlanta I’m refreshed in one single flight of contemplating and getting wrapped up in the Bigness of God. We all have “all of this and that” going on, but it is there in our weakness and in our inability to figure it out, that He rushes into our lives and gives us strength. My life has two paces: flight speed, and baby speed. I let my heart and my arms prepare for the distressed baby with a chronic ear infection waiting on me to hold her tonight. I let my heart slow down, I relax into motherhood again. My life is complicated, it’s chaotic, it’s often a mess, and it's held together just barely by my husband, dry shampoo and of course Jesus. An abrupt landing and I’m back home for another 3 days, til I rinse and repeat all in God’s strength. As to where will I move, and when will my baby be healed completely? I don’t know, but I do know that Jesus is a healer and God is a way maker, a builder, and He is my House when I have no house. “Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established, by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Proverbs 24:3-4. I’m just along for the ride, if He is the plane than I’m just a passenger going wherever He’s flying...sorry flight attendant reference, I’ve been flying too much! Rest in the only One who offers true rest. Goodnight!