Day by Day - Part 2

Before we left Rio in early March, we were able to have one last group of visitors - two couples we love, dear friends from Kansas!  The 6 of us had a blast exploring the beauty of Rio - playing at the beach, seeing the sights,  hiking, and eating yummy food! 

Visiting Corcovado and the Christ

Drinking Agua de Coco - Coconut Water

Getting Rained on in the Rain Forest on the Canopy Walk

The boys playing in the frigid mountain waterfall in Teresopolis

Sitting on the Arpoador Rocks overlooking Rio and Ipanema Beach

Eating at Porcao - of course!!!!  (This is after we gorged ourselves with meat.)

Eating at Aprazavel Restaurant in Santa Teresa - overlooking Rio at night

One of our favorite days was spent at our favorite beach, Grumari, on a gorgeous and sunny, clear-water day.  We parked the car, then walked through white sand to park our stuff on the beach with a few umbrellas before heading to the water with our boogie boards.  As usual, we played hard and enjoyed a few hours of waves and horsing around.  We came in for lunch and that's when Greg realized he couldn't find the car key.  He remembered putting it in his shorts' pocket and clearly, since it wasn't there now, it meant it was out there...in the ocean....way out where we'd been playing in the deeper waves...somewhere.

Boogie-boarding in the clear water and big waves

Now, we were about an hour from our apartment, clear on the other side of Rio, at a beach that is so remote the taxi cabs don't bother.  But of course, this was just another chance for us to practice our faith and for God to get the glory!  Immediately, I felt my faith rise up and started declaring that we would find the keys.  A verse immediately came to my mind - the one in the New Testament where the Lord tells Peter to catch a fish, open it's mouth, and there within to find a coin to pay his taxes.  If the Lord could make that happen, then I knew a little key wasn't any bigger of a challenge!

At the same time, Greg spotted a parked taxi!  Upon inquiry, he found that a taxi driver was simply spending the day at the beach with his wife.  God must have moved this man's heart with compassion because he changed his mind and agreed to drive Greg into town to hopefully find a branch of the rental car company we were using to see if they could help us pick the lock.

The rest of us ate lunch and prayed.  Since we knew the key was a good ways out, we decided to wait about an hour and then start looking.  We were looking for a single key attached to a small green faab.  My friend Becky put down her book about an hour later and said she was going to start looking so I immediately followed.  She was about 20 yards in front of me.  I saw her reach down into the water, but nothing.  I thought, "oh well, I guess she saw something else."  Then I saw her reach down again, but still nothing.  The third time she reached down, she attacked the water with such aggression that I knew she'd found it and I waited to see her reaction, knowing her body language would confirm or deflate my hope.  She pulled out the key and spun around with the hugest smile on her face.  We started screaming and jumping up and down and praising God!  He had done it!

Not only had the key miraculously come to shore, but it had come to shore so close to where we were and was perfectly positioned for us to find it effortlessly!  It was as if God had served it up on a glistening silver platter right in front of us.  The lifeguard at the beach who was aware of our predicament couldn't believe it.  I'm not sure how well my Portuguese came out, but I understood from him that in all his years he'd never seen anything like that.  I kept saying, "Gloria a Deus, Obrigada a Deus!" "Glory to God, thank you, God!"

All screams & smiles as we praise God for a FOUND KEY!

As soon as we had the key back in our hands all I could think of and say was, "I knew you could do it, God!  I knew you could do it!  If you can restore a tiny key out of the ocean, then you can enable us to conceive and have a baby!"  My faith was on fire.  During church on Sunday morning, it shouldn't have surprised us that the pastor used the verse about Peter finding the coin he needed in a fish's mouth as an intro to the offering time. 

Some days I have to encourage myself in my faith - I just speak God's word over our situation and it has to be enough...it is enough, theoretically.  And thank God His Word is always enough - He is always enough - even when we're on auto-pilot and in faith-perseverance mode.  I've been in this mode since our return from Rio.  Days, weeks, months have passed of  simply encouraging myself in the Lord by His Word.  Some days I don't want to.  Some days I just feel numb or angry or tired or...  

But then some days...some days God reaches down into your world, in a specific moment, and speaks to you in a deeply personal way that fans the flame of your faith and renews and refreshes you in the journey.  Some days God restores your key out of the ocean.

Just when I think I might go off the deep end if I don't hear Him speak, He speaks.  To me.  In a very specific way.  He's really just reminding me He hasn't forgotten about me.  And boy, when He speaks, it's not just a quick "hang in there" with a hug or pat on the back!  When He speaks it makes me stop in my tracks and think, "He is FOR ME!" and I'm compelled to acknowledge His undeniable, unrelenting love...for ME!

God spoke to me in such a way recently.  I needed it.  I desperately wanted it.  But I didn't see it coming.  It still baffles me to think of it.  It's just what I needed at this exact season in my life.  And only God knew the intricate, hidden yet burning desires that, when He brought it all together, would speak life, comfort, hope, and joy to me.  It has encouraged me and renewed my energy to keep fighting the fight and to keep trusting in His Word and in His promises. 

And the next time I blog, I'll tell you all about it!  :)

P.S. Read Matthew 17:27: “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
Isn't this amazing?  It's hard to wrap my mind around what happened.  Why didn't He just manifest and hand Peter a coin then and there?  This clearly had to involve faith at some level on Peter's part...was he nervous as he pulled up a fish, wondering if he caught the right fish?  Wondering if there'd be a coin in his mouth, and if so, how did it get there?  And how did Jesus know which fish he would first catch out of all the fish in the lake?  But it was just as He said.  The lake, then the fish, then the coin, then paying the temple tax.  Nothing is impossible for HIm!

Day by Day - Part 1

As you can see, it's been awhile since I last posted - 5 months to be exact. There are a few reasons I could give for this such as an international move, becoming a first-time aunt, driving or flying to at least 12 different locations for business or travel, selling tees at 3 different conferences (Corpus Christi, KY, IL), celebrating my birthday, celebrating our anniversary, Greg starting a new job (so proud of him!), and in general trying to get back into the swing of things after our amazing 6-month adventure in Rio de Janeiro, but really, I've known the only reason that mattered...fear.

I didn't realize how vulnerable it would feel to have a blog dedicated to a faith-journey...of openly sharing that I am being sure of what I hope for and certain of what I do not (yet) see...when I still don't have in the physical realm what I've set my faith on in the spiritual realm. I didn't think about it much in the beginning, but things have been hitting closer to home lately with the arrival of my nephew and, very soon, another neice & nephew! I love being an aunt, by the way. Little Reuben Joseph has stolen my heart...and any day now, I'll have another nephew and a neice to adore! 

Sweetness itself:  Reuben Joseph - 10 days old

It's been 6 and a half years.  This walk of faith and hope has become easier and harder simultaneously as time goes by, day by day.  Easier, because as you go with God you become completely vulnerable before Him as you continually lay your heart open to reveal every emotion and desire that makes up YOU!  (Okay - that sounds like the "harder" side of things - but hear me out.) 

This kind of real-ness creates an intimacy so deep that you know you couldn't retreat from your position even if you felt you couldn't stand any longer.  The relationship is too involved and the dependence so great that to stop, to give-up, would be next to impossible.  This is because, along the way, you have invited Him in.  You've learned, or simply decided, to trust Him, and there's such an entwinement of His life in yours that you're not even the same person as in the beginning.  His spirit within you has transformed you.  How can you make a cake go back to being egg and flour and milk?  You can't.  It's a new creation.  

When I chose God at age 11, I became a new creation.  And I can't go back.  I don't want to.  As I see God meet me, even in little day to day things, and as I hear what He's doing in the lives of those around me, my faith is bolstered and the wait becomes easier.  Hope portrayed by others spurs on my hope.  God's faithfulness encourages my faith.  There's no plan B for me.  That makes it easy.

At the same time, the journey FEELS harder because the longer the wait, the greater the desire grows and the ache that comes with it.  And when you're not sure how and when things are going to come about, it's so easy to become weary, doubtful and fearful.  If you're experiencing this type of "wait" that makes you feel faint with longing at times, it's not because you're waiting for the latest and greatest cell phone or a chance to visit some exotic island...it's because there's something deep within you that's crying out to be fulfilled.  And that thing is as much a reality to you as anything in the physical.  Do you have a parent, a sibling, a child who has wandered from God?  Is there a talent, a vision for ministry or work burning within you to be released?  Are you single and longing to find that person who will love you "til death do you part?"  Do you ache to see restoration in the marriage relationship you already have?  Are you longing to walk with God instead of against Him?

No matter what it is, I bet you have a vision of what your fulfilled desire looks like...you can see the scenario playing out in front of you - it feels so real, you can almost perceive it with your senses.  This vision of what COULD BE can stir up feelings of desperation over what STILL ISN'T if we don't set aside our emotions and stand strong in God's Word.  And the amazing thing is that God has told us that He has given us all we need for life and godliness in His Word.  Sometimes the reality we're waiting for is just one good decision away.  Sometimes it's a process. 

But when we remember to say what God says, this vision of reality can bring HOPE!  So I say, "Children are an inheritance from the Lord."  "He makes the barren woman to be a joyful mother of children."  "God's Word does not return to Him void."  When I bolster my faith with what God says about my situation, the vision of my baby feels like a sweet gift from the Lord.  At times I feel I can almost see her...I can feel her skin, I can see her smile and hear her little noises.  She's already so real to me and my arms ache to hold her.

This is my hope.  This is what I'm looking forward to.  This is my faith being made real.  Day by Day.

What are you waiting for?  Ephesians 3:16-20  "I pray that out of the Father's glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled with the fullness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!  Amen."