When your heart's busted

How do we know if our heart's busted?

There's probably a good chance it's been busted, is busted, or will be busted.

But what I know, is that a busted heart is an opportunity. A grace opportunity.

Isn't it true that life is hard. Most of the time. And isn't it true that we cannot control other people's bustedness. And sometimes all this bustedness spills over and busts us. Breaks us. Brings us low and hurting and broken in bits.

Every day I see kids whose hearts are busted.

The young woman whose family is breaking right down the middle and in the middle is where she's caught. Heart: busted.

The young man whose mom is tired and worn and whose dad is disengaged and unavailable, leaving this boy's heart busted.

The girl whose dad had a CAT scan the other day, whose stomach fills with fluid, who battles hard the cancer. She's struggling to be strong. Heart: busted.

The friend whose marriage is teetering on the edge of gone. Who's tired of battling apathy and complacency. Who sees few options. Heart: busted.

There's a difference between a broken heart and a busted heart. It's this:

Broken hearts can fill back up, they can mend with time. Broken hearts are coming of age loves that go awry and disappointments that go deep or the path of life that goes bonkers.

But a busted heart. That's different.

It's a very slight connotative change between busted and broken that speaks to the woundedness we all carry. Bustedness is a result of the burdens we end up carrying for others. The woundedness of others that then spills onto us and leaves us wounded.

Busted is harder to put back together. Busted hurts deeper and leaves bigger scars. And needs bigger band-aids. And even when it seems we don't need band-aids, the tracks of all this running and carrying and the burden of all these heavy yokes runs deep and is harder to wash away.

It's overwhelming. All these busted hearts. They walk around me every day. They quietly soldier on while the busted bits swirl and sway and taunt and tease and they soldier on, wounded and weary.

The busted don't volunteer their brokenness. They don't play the victim card or place blame on anyone. They resign themselves to being busted and take one more step. They are the ones life knocks down hard, and though they aren't quick to get back up, they get back up. They are the ones whose souls stoop heavy and weary.

They are the courageous hearts who dare to believe that the next step might be easier than the one they just painfully labored through when there's no reason to believe it. The busted are the ones for whom my heart aches and cheers.

The stats drown us. Teenage suicide, drug use, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, violence in general. It takes courage to face all this bustedness. And sometimes, most times, it's straight up sad.

The world shouldn't be so hard. Life shouldn't be so hard.

But I have to believe that God's grace is bigger than all of this.

I have to believe that He can make something good, something beautiful from all this bustedness. That there's meaning in the madness and God's sovereignty trumps all.

Busted hearts are God's specialty. He's got grace enough for all the busted, broken bits in all of us. And wouldn't it be wondrous, if we grabbed each other tight and true, and together walked all of our bustedness straight to the cross?

And wouldn't it be wondrous if we saw these busted pieces as soul-cracks for God's grace to fill and shine bright through?

And wouldn't it be wondrous if we dusted ourselves off for the umpteenth time and believed that those pieces that went missing, that were smashed to smithereens and then scattered to the far corners, that those pieces God has made new because He won't ever snuff out a smoldering wick and He won't ever break a bruised reed.

I believe God has big plans for our busted hearts. Our bustedness can reach more dark places because really, aren't we all the walking busted? And when God's grace shines through our cracks, we light up the shadows and bring healing to the dark places. When our bustedness becomes a vehicle for God's glory, for God's grace, it suddenly seems different. Like we're not so busted as we were just a minute ago.  

Here's the truth: Our cracks, our bustedness, our brokenness are calling cards for the immeasurable vastness of God's unfathomable grace.

May my life, my bustedness, my brokenness point others to Jesus and shine brightly in dark places. And may we grab on tight to each other and let all that Jesus-glory light shine boldly through the chinks in our hearts.

Grace Always Rises,
Jamie

When your day goes sideways

Sideways is often a challenging direction.

So my day went Monday.

My twins first day of preschool: I drop them off. I give them kisses. I tell them to be good, to be kind, to be patient. I should've told them to be careful. Silly me.

My day was forging forward. Strong. Purposeful. Meaningful.

I'm talking at lunch with a colleague about life and kids. I see the preschool is calling my cell phone. I answer.

"Hi Jamie, K fell off the monkey bars and there is something visibly wrong with her wrist."

"Wait. What???"

"She fell. Her wrist...something is not right. You need to take her to the doctor."

Sideways. I wasn't prepared for this. At all. I can't say I'm all that surprised, but I'm not prepared.

I'm not surprised because it's K. I have written no fewer than three posts about her antics and the results of these antics. Jesus uses K to teach me. A lot.

So my colleague graciously, kindly volunteers to cover my last class. I call the doctor and get an appointment. I sprint out of school.

I pick her up and yes, something is not right with her wrist. As in there is a bend in her arm that would indicate that something is not right.

And it goes sideways. My day. Straight into sideways.

Off we go to the doctor. He knows us well because I am bringing him my expensive child, again. She operates at Mach 9 all the time and when one operates at Mach 9 all the time and doesn't wear body armor, hard things are just bound to happen.

Dr. W is a nice guy. He looks at her wrist. Confirms it's not right and sends us off to x-ray where the tech also confirms it's not right.

So since where we are can't cast her arm and since the kind of break she has dictates a sedative to set it, we head to the ER.

My sideways day just went sideways.

The ER people navigate us through hallways into our room. K jumps on the bed and situates herself. The Doc comes is and gives us the rundown. Broken radius. Sedative. Precautions with the sedative. Side effects with the sedative. What happens after the sedative.

The Nurse comes in. He's a walking miracle. You'll see why I think this.

He explains to K that he has to put an IV in her wee, little hand for the medicine. I lean close on the other side so I can distract her. He smoothly slides that needle in and she starts to cry and then she's done because he's already putting a bandage on her hand. My only complaint is that this man was not my nurse, putting in my IV, when I was pregnant with the twins and in the hospital on three separate occasions. But I am so grateful he is K's nurse.

The Nurse then proceeds to hook my baby up to every monitor known to man. She's got an IV, 3 sticky things on her chest measuring a variety of bodily functions, a canula, a blood pressure cuff, a fancy band aid thing on her index finger measuring her CO2, the crash cart in the hallway, and the IV in her hand. I am freaking out a little on the inside. And I quietly tell him so. And his response, "You can't get any safer than this." Oh, well then I'll just stop my freak out. And save it for later.

It's hard to believe the miracles that our bodies are. What they can do. What they can withstand. What can be measured and how. I'm speechless, really, when I stop and dwell on how God has made us. Our bones break. And He provided for that by allowing them to grow back together. We get sick. He provided for that by allowing our bodies to have immune systems that battle the bad cells and conquer them. We may lose a limb or a sense. He has provided for that by allowing the parts that are well to compensate, grow stronger, and be more adept so we miss the limb or the sense less. And God knows each of us intimately. Our bodies, our hearts, our strengths, our weaknesses. And He doesn't just know our physicality, that knowing also translates to our spirituality. That kind of knowing requires, even demands, a fathomless kind of loving. And this is but a fraction of how deep His love is for us. 

But I digress.

The Doc comes back. She has several friends with her to make sure all is safe and precautions are in place. There's a nurse with her who has a daughter who broke her arm just like K. And she's been in my shoes before and she tells me this. And I want to hug her because she's honest and authentic and doesn't beat around the bush when she tells me I probably shouldn't look when the doc sets the bone because it's kinda rough. And she tells me that K's eyes will probably go funny and they might roll back in her head. And this is normal. I appreciate her wisdom and I take a deep breath.

But I start freaking out again on the inside. Because I'm notorious for what iffing a situation to death. I see the crash cart in the hallway and I know what it's for. I hear the beeps of all these monitors and I know what it means when they beep louder or faster or not at all. And I know she just has a broken arm. And I know it's a just a sedative. But what if....

I am so quick to forget my faith and allow my eyes to dictate the state of my heart.

The Doc gives her okay to the nurse who administers the sedative. There are just a few things more alarming than watching your small child go under...and not even all the way under...only part way under so her eyes don't close. It's disconcerting. And I don't watch the Doc set her arm. But I do watch the Doc and the nurses as they monitor K's vital signs. And the computer hooked to all her vitals is doing funny things and one nurse grabs K's face and kneads it a bit so she will breathe. My heart beats a bit faster. And I work really hard to keep the what ifs at bay. To trust in a Jesus bigger than my what ifs.

This goes on for a few minutes. And so I start talking to her. I am so proud of her. She is such a brave, brave little girl. And her eyes are vacant and wide and staring at nothing. And yet I know she can hear me because her sweet face turns in my direction when I tell her to breathe deep and she breathes deep.

As she traverses out of the dream she is locked in, she starts to cry. Loudly. Uncontrollably. And her cry is not at all soft. It's scratchy and high pitched and hurts my ears and pierces my heart. I move next to her so I can talk in her ear, touch her cheeks, rub her arm. Her eyes are still not focusing and I know she's lost in that scary place between awake and not awake. The medicine is trying to pull her under again and she knows she should wake up so she's fighting with herself. And she's scared. And all I can do is touch her and whisper to her and tell her I love her. Over and over and over.

Her eyes try to focus but they can't. She hears my voice and then panic overwhelms her. She cries for daddy. She cries for her sisters. And then she calms for a moment. We repeat this cycle for an hour. Until I see her eyes focus on me. And she responds when I ask her to look at me and to tell me who I am. And I smile into her big, brown eyes and she crinkles her nose and tells me she wants a hug.

In hindsight, it's almost comical. She comes out of the sedation screaming. An hour later she's laughing and joking and being silly. My girl is back. And my right-handed girl has a huge splint on her right arm and it doesn't faze her. It doesn't slow her down. She takes it in stride. In fact, on the hour drive home, in an hour well past her bedtime, on a day that was traumatic at best, this girl animatedly chit-chatted the entire way. I thought she would sleep. I was wrong.

K with her Grandma, who sat with me the whole time. I am so blessed.

I learn so much from this girl. I am so proud to be her mama. That Jesus trusted me with her. Sometimes, though, she straight scares me, and I admit that I don't know quite how to parent this reckless abandon she has for living. Despite this, she makes me want to be brave and courageous. She makes me want to run through life at break neck speeds, take risks, and take chances, though maybe I'll wear body armor. She makes me realize that sideways is sometimes good.

Sideways stretches us, makes us trust Jesus more. Sideways makes us lean more heavily on Him. Sideways causes us to need Him more. Sideways forces us to surrender our illusion of control to Jesus because as we are sliding sideways, it's clearly obvious we were never in control.

Sideways makes us see life at a new speed, in a new light. Sideways makes us appreciate flexibility and modern medicine and precautions, even if they are scary. Sideways is just a direction, a slight veer on the road to the destination we were headed.

It's just a bump. A little obstacle. A broken arm.

And at the end of the day, as long as sideways leads us all home, I'm good.

Grace Always Rises,
Jamie

For that mama in the doctor's office...

To that mama I saw Saturday. Cautiously, awkwardly pushing that double stroller through the doctor's office...

I remember. How scared I was when my babes got sick--how worried I was.
How my heart froze a little a lot inside my chest and I couldn't draw deep.
How taking two wee babes to the doctor was not twice as hard as taking one--it was four times as hard as taking one. Because you only have two hands and when they're that small, and your mama heart is tired and worn and they are sick, two hands is not enough. 

It was Saturday and so I know it's not a check up that brought you to this second floor. And so it's more. And I just wanted to hug you tight and tell you it would be alright because while you smiled quick and bright when I asked you how old your sweet boys were--and you answered--your eyes were anxious and swift and careful to not catch mine. And I remember doing that too. 

Because I remember thinking what if I saw kindness in some stranger's gentle gaze. What if I saw deep compassion and empathy when I was trying to hold it all together? What if someone who KNEW because she'd been there, was there, saw too much--too deep--and offered me a moment of grace and truth and beauty in just a look? I would've cried. Right there in the second floor doctor's office. Dissolved straight into a puddle of beautiful mess.
And I would've sobbed all my angst right onto that poor stranger's shoulder.
And in hindsight, besides being maybe just a wee bit awkward,
would that have been such a bad thing?

And so this sweet, worn mama has haunted me all weekend.
This brave mama whose boys are sick.

As she rolled that double stroller filled with all her love by me,
I asked her how old they were--her boys.

3 months, she answered. Just teeny tiny people.

I asked her if she's getting any sleep.

She laughed--and not a funny laugh, but that laugh that says she really wants to cry and really wants to sleep and this is her lot and she's in it for the long haul and so yeah, all she's got is a laugh--
and said not really.

And she was almost gone by then, rolling her babes, rolling her very heart, down the hall,
but I called after her gently, "It gets better. It gets easier."

And I saw relief as she answered, "I hope so."

It does. Get easier. And harder.

They grow so quickly. Your babes. They grow and get bigger so when they get sick it doesn't make your heart clench as quickly or your mind spin into what ifs. They learn to sleep through the night and so do you. They learn to feed themselves and you suddenly regain the use of both your hands. They learn to use their words and you suddenly find your sanity returning. They learn to walk and hold your hands and sit in chairs. Going to the doctor with twins becomes less a monumental feat of epic proportions that should win all sorts of awards and more of a nuisance.

Time is a swiftly running river that we are swept away on. 
Sometimes we find ourselves hanging on for dear life as we toss and turn our way through rapids
and other times we find ourselves floating through gently swirling eddies.
There are both quiet lagoons and raging waterfalls.
And both have beauty all their own.
And all of it flows by so quickly. so. quickly.

We can spend our moments wishing for the next, easier moment, that next quiet lagoon, 

but then we miss the truth, the beauty, of this moment. 

And even when this moment is ugly and hard because our babes are sick 

or we are sick or sad or grieving and we think we just won't, just can't, 
make it to the next moment, there's beauty there. Right there. 

 Because sometimes the hardest part of living, of loving, 
is just to be in the hard moment.

This kind of beauty is hard fought and harder won. 
It's the kind that rides out the rapids or the waterfalls. 
It's the kind that springs and blossoms from somewhere way deep inside and 
is rooted fast in the Creator. It's the kind of beauty that weathers 
the scariest storms and age and wrinkles and scars just make it even more beautiful.

But we have to be brave mamas, brave women, to ride that river. 

And we have to weather it together.

To that mama I saw on Saturday--I know. I know. Remember this too shall pass. Hold on tight because they won't always be this small and it won't always be this hard.
But soak in all the beauty of this moment. Because it's right here. And it might be hard.
But it's so worth it. And you won't get this moment again.

And I'm praying for you and your boys.

And one day down the road, you'll be standing with your boys, older now, and you'll see a sweet, brave, river-worn mama awkwardly maneuvering her double stroller through a doorway and your heart will clutch tight for her. And maybe you'll rush to help her through the door because you remember. 

You remember.

And maybe you'll ask how old her babes are and maybe you'll offer her a moment of hope, a bit of grace, a glimpse of beauty.

Because sometimes we just need to know we aren't alone in this river.

And you aren't. 

Alone.

Grace Always Rises,

Jamie

What to do when your "yes-es" aren't enough

I used to be a "yes" girl. If you had a thing and you asked me to help, I said yes. Didn't matter if I had time. I said yes anyway. Because that's what nice people do. Right?
Maybe not always.

It's so easy to forget who we are--whose we are--because we are so busy trying to be all that we aren't.

Somewhere along the path of life we come to believe the lie that who we are is not enough--not good enough, not nice enough, not funny enough, not kind enough, not pretty enough--simply not enough.

Who can possibly thrive and live a life full of grace and truth and love when she believes she is not enough? The lie of the enemy creeps and cripples us so we forget all that we are.

I spent years saying yes to a multitude of things because they were good things to say yes to. And I believed if it was a good thing, you should say yes to it--even if it wasn't necessarily the right thing I should be saying yes to. Because isn't that what good people do? We do good things. Lots of them.

But good and right are not always the same things. Good things are not always good if they are not the good things I ought to be saying yes to. You know what I'm talking about. The commitments, the obligations, the activities, the play dates, the meetings, the groups, the committees--so many things until your calender is over full to brimming and you are spent from all these yes-es.
And all these yes-es become the things that control your days and ways until you are certifiably over-committed and undeniably overwhelmed.
And Jesus is hard to find because He's buried in all this stuff.

I thought that I had to prove that I was enough--good enough, spiritual enough, smart enough--

But I forgot who I was.

I forgot that I was loved simply because I was and not because of anything I could do.
I forgot I was His Beloved. That He called me beautiful. Even in my nothing.

Ironically, I had lost my way saying yes to all the good things. And all those yeses meant I said no to many of the right things.
I believe there are those things that sure, we could say yes to, but maybe we shouldn't. 
We have a check in our hearts, a sense in our spirit that maybe we should pause and think about what that yes means.
In terms of time. In terms of investment. In terms of  family.
Because that yes could mean a lot of no's down the line.

I don't have to say yes to every good thing. Sometimes no is a right answer.

But I had bought into another little lie that the things I was really good at weren't good enough, glamorous enough, fancy enough--or maybe I was selfish and thought that they weren't good enough because they weren't the gifts I would have chosen to give me.
 

Isn't that the point of a gift, though? It's not what we would have chosen.
It's the gift-giver's prerogative because the gift-giver wants to give it. And often it's what we would have never dreamed of asking for ourselves. And aren't those the very best gifts?
The most perfect gifts?
And the perfect Gift-Giver always gives the most perfect gifts.

But instead of gratitude for my gifts, I said yes to a thing that maybe I wasn't really equipped to complete; but since it looked good, I said yes, disregarding my gifts and simultaneously wishing for another's.

I had no margin, no room for the unexpected, no space for grace or surprise or spontaneity because my life was chock full of all these yeses.

I swallowed a hard pill of humility when I saw how all my striving to do good was really not doing much good at all.

I had to prune back all these crazy branches of yeses and let myself be stripped bare so I could remember who I really was. Whose I really was. So I could be clothed with the gifts the Gift Giver had for me, especially for me.
So I could be wrapped up in all this Grace and Love and Wonder.

Spreading a heart too thin is like walking on thin ice. Spreading a life too thin impacts more than just my life. My kids, the husband, bear the brunt or the blessing of my yeses.

When the roots of my life are too thin, too shallow, too close to the surface, there's no deep roots to keep me grounded and safe when the hard winds blow. Too many shallow roots make it too easy to be uprooted and tossed right around crazy. Thus the pruning. So my life, my heart, could grow deep and strong, so the sparseness now might bear witness to more of Him later. 

So that His priorities would become my priorities.

It's hard--we mamas see how other mamas are doing this or that and we qualify it as more or better than how we are doing it.  
Or we Christ followers watch what she is doing and we measure and come up short when really, you can't measure what's not yours.
All I can be is me.
The loud, clumsy, Jesus-loving mama He has planted and pruned and watered and grown.

I'm not gonna be a quiet, gentle mama like my friend N. I'm not really wired to be quiet or gentle.

I, in contrast, am loud and boisterous and somewhat clumsy. My house is often loud. My kids are often loud. And I have learned to be alright with that. Though an investment in ear plugs sometimes seems very attractive.

I'm not ever gonna be a beloved Kindergarten teacher where the students bring you presents at the end of school because they love you like my friend K.
But stick me in a room of high-schoolers and I thrive.

I am still learning how to say yes to those things that the Lord speaks into my heart, to His priorities. It is not every thing. But they are the right-good things. I have learned to pray for wisdom before making really big commitments.  

And sometimes life happens and the stuff of life has to be shuffled around and I say yes to things because they are people things, and people are eternal so they are eternal things--like taking a meal to a new mama or a sick friend, watching another friend's kids so she can work on her new house, taking coffees filled with caffeine to my friends who are spending sleepless nights at church with the youth group while the youth serve our community.

And that's okay because when I've checked and curbed and pruned all my yes-ing,
there's space and margin and room for the unexpected, for the spontaneous, for the surprise.
And then all these moments, all these spaces, instead of being the last straw or the icing on that proverbial cake, can be wrapped in grace.
And love.
And wonder.

Grace Always Rises,

Jamie

How to be enough

Last week was Kids Kamp at church--our church's version of Vacation Bible School.

It was a crazy, beautiful, amazing week!

My friend Miss K and I have been teaming up for the last 6 years to co-lead this week and every year, God does some nifty stuff.

We are so blessed. And so humbled.

We had 134 kids on Monday. A record. We had 143 kids on Wednesday. Another record. We gave away more than 25 Bibles to kids who either had no Bible or who accepted Jesus. That's another record. That's not counting the more than 60 youth and adults we had volunteering their week to love on kids.

I know records aren't terribly important in the realm of eternity. But they are indicators of God's hand at work. They are beacons of hope that He is moving in our kids and in their hearts. And when it comes to little people who have asked Jesus into their hearts, it changes their eternity.

All photos taken by our awesome Kids Kamp photographer Sam Ferrand!!!!

I'm always amazed at what God does in my heart during this week every year.

I'm always humbled by His faithfulness despite my faithlessness. 

I'm always overwhelmed by His grace even when I yelled at my kids to hurry up on our way out the door that morning.

I'm always washed away in His love when my heart soaks up the lesson, even as I speak the very words that are ministering to my heart to the kids.

Every year we have always wondered if we would have enough help. Every year God has brought more than we need right when we need it...most often Monday morning.

Every year we wonder if we are doing enough, if we have forgotten something big, and every year, we have kids decide to ask Jesus into their hearts. And making Christ followers and discipling Christ followers is the whole point so nothing else really matters.

Every year we are astonished by what God does, how He shows up, and our kids are watching and our kids somehow manage to open our eyes wider because they see Him bigger.

The whole theme of our Kids Kamp week was teaching our kids that God has made each of us a masterpiece. We are that special just how He made us. And we don't have to try to be someone or something else. We just have to be who He made us to be. He carefully crafted and molded all of those little things that make us unique and different, and which so often can separate and make us feel strange and weird because, well, we are different.

One of my professors in college equated the body of Christ to a very large wheel. We each have a spoke on that wheel. If I spend my days trying to be the spoke over there because I like that spot better, then my spot is empty and the body of Christ isn't functioning as it should because I'm trying to be like someone else and noone can be me quite like I can. Not only that but I can't be that spoke over there nearly as well as the person to whom that spoke belongs.

I know it seems like such a simple no brainer, but in a world that exalts money and power and physical beauty and materialism and not being different or weird or quirky, it becomes very easy to fall into the trap of I'm not enough.

And I think it's the same on a smaller scale for our kids. Whether it's size, color, shape, or skill sets, kids know when they are different.

They know when they can't run as fast or read as well or throw as far.

They know when they are rounder or taller or skinnier than someone else.

They know when they aren't like everyone else, and their little hearts feel that alienation keener and deeper but they don't have the words to explain it. So maybe they withdraw. Maybe they act out. Maybe they overcompensate. Maybe they misbehave.

All because they feel as though they don't belong.

And doesn't it grieve the Creator's heart when the very nuances that He impressed into us become the things that divide and cause us to measure and cut and come away believing we lack something, or yes, that we aren't enough.

When the truth is He is enough. He's always been enough. More than enough. And when we walk in confidence that He is enough, then suddenly our imagined lack disappears and we move confidently in His footsteps. And we realize we are enough because we see who we are through His eyes. We are enough because we are His.

Last week we celebrated our quirks, our foibles, our idiosyncrasies because that's exactly how God made us. And He calls the very things that make us different beautiful. And when we believe we are beautiful because He has made us beautiful, we make those around us feel beautiful too.

There's nothing quite like the person who, because she is free to be who she really is, unconsciously allows others the freedom to be who they are as well. There's nobody quite so, well, nice to be around as someone who embraces and speaks the truth about the very quirks in me that I feel self-conscious and insecure about. As though she is Jesus with skin on, teaching me what beauty really is and what love really looks like.

Oh, to be that person.

Oh, to live in a world full of those people.

Grace Always Rises,
Jamie