joyfuldomesticity – Page 32 – Joyful Domesticity

April 3, 2015March 30, 2015

A Little Bit Broken

A little bit broken.
That’s how I feel on my best of days.

Rough around the edges. Stained on the inside—and sometimes on the outside. Cracked here and there, a chip or two gone missing. Things leak out, sometimes because I spill them and sometimes because I am incapable of holding them in.

A chipped teacup with some leftover flecks of dried out tea leaves nestled in the mar—parts of my story that rest mostly in these shadowy cracks. Add some water, swirl me around, and you will see my beauty mixed with my pain. Which parts are the most lovely is difficult at times to ascertain. The dark bits swirl around, and eventually settle on the bottom. Take a sip, drink the water—it is flavored by what came out of the chips & cracks that had been hiding, but it is the water that carries it to your tongue and that flows into you and satisfies the parts of you that were longing to be quenched.

I am useful despite my imperfections. Perhaps all the more because of them.

2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

The Lord meets me in my brokenness and comforts me. And then He gives me the ability—the empathy—to reach out from my own chippy cracks to meet others in this same place and comfort them. He gives Himself to me in a measure that is truly immeasurable, and then He makes my cup overflow so that I can give a measure to someone else. We pour into one another, often from the lip and more often from the cracks.

Sometimes I wish I were a perfectly kept, shiny, whole teacup without stains and chips, no hidden leftover tea leaves and no cracks threatening to leak little drips or big splashes. It gets messy—I like tidy. But I trust in the Lord my God, who created me to be His vessel, and He holds my broken self in His loving hands even now. (Psalm 31:14, 12, 15) Who is it that made me? Who cares for me? Who numbers my days and has already prepared the good works that I shall do? God my King, the Potter who forms us in His clay—who creates us, molds us, changes us, uses us, and even chips us—as it seems good to Him. (Jeremiah 18:3-4)

When I remember these things, I am reminded and comforted—all over again—that sometimes it is the chips and the stains that bring Him the most glory, that do the most to reach His people, that give me opportunities for greater good for the Kingdom, that make me useful and beautiful at the same time.

I am not meant to be left on a shelf. Beauty does not mean untouched, unchipped, unstained, unused. I am meant to be used for His glory, poured out for God’s people—after all, I am made in Their image, I came from clay, but I am a reflection of Him who poured out all of Himself for His people (Isaiah 53:12), and in the little ways He has prepared for me, I imperfectly image that pouring, that dying, that bleeding & brokenness. And that imaging and imitating is perhaps the most beautiful of all fragile things.

Brokenness doesn’t automatically bring us to the thin place,
the sacred place where God’s breath and touch are closer than our own skin.
Heartbreak brings us lots of places—
to despair, to bitterness, to emptiness, to numbness, to isolation.
But because God is just that good,
if we allow the people who love us to walk with us
right through the brokenness,
it can also lead to a deep sense of God’s presence.
When things fall apart,
the broken places allow all sorts of things to enter,
and one of them is the presence of God.
~ Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet, p94~

April 2, 2015March 30, 2015

Exercise of Faith in Suffering

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

I know this passage. I know it well. I have memorized it. I have memorized a couple different song versions of it. I have sung it in church before. I have clung to it through years of trying to have a baby but finding the blossoms & the fruit failing. I have used it as a frequent reminder that regardless of my physical situation, my soul’s stability remains unshaken — my joy and my strength being grounded in the One who created the mountains and the trees and the animals, storylines and climaxes and rainclouds, life and laughter and suffering and me.

But until last week, I don’t think I had ever gone to the length of putting my own fears, my own troubles, my own sufferings and shadows and dark corners by the means of words into this form.

“Though the _________________________________________________ and there are no ___________________________, though the ___________________________________________ fails and the ___________________________ produces no ___________________________________, though there are no ________________________________________ in the __________________________________ and no __________________________________ in the ____________________________, yet I will rejoice in the Lord….”

So when Mr. Palpant suggested, at our final Lenten lecture meeting last Wednesday, that we fill in these blanks according to the story we are each currently living, I might have (okay, I did) melted into a puddle of weeping at the table in the back of the room. Boy, did it ever hit home. In good, painfully sharp & cutting to the bones, Christ-be-with-me kinds of ways.

In your own path of suffering, of doubt fighting with hope, of walking with the Lord on the heights as well as in the valleys, passing by both sunshine and dark shadows ~ what would your own version of Habakkuk 3:17-19 look like?
This is what I came up with that night, and what the Lord has challenged me to claim with joyful confidence rather than with fear every day since.

Though the miscarriages continue to come and there are no more living children for my arms to hold, though the medical treatments and the prayers for life fail and the pregnancies God puts in my womb produce no more little redheads to nurse on my breasts, though there are no end to the longing in my heart for my family to grow in the home God has given us here on His earth and no more siblings for our children who beseech the Lord for babies in the beauty of their own childlike faith, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.

April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

Break Bread

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The poor man may envy the rich their houses, their lands, and their cars; but given a good wife, he rarely envies them their table,
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p25~

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To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p40~

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I do want you to love what you eat, and to share food with people you love, and to gather people together, for frozen pizza or filet mignon, because I think the gathering is of great significance.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p17~

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God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.
~C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity~

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March 31, 2015March 30, 2015

True Friendship

Friendships are vital to the life of the Body of Christ. They warm the heart, rejoice in victories, and give empathy, understanding and support in trials. Friends are great to chat with and to have fun with but my best friend must be God and after that my husband. Nurturing the children comes next. These are the priority relationships that the Lord has given us, and these are the ones that we will have with us all of our lives. After God, husbands, and family comes the church. We are to extend hospitality to other believers, edifying each other. If our friendships are taking away from those priorities, then we have adjustments to make. Don’t let other people take precedence over your husband and children.
~Kim Brenneman, Large Family Logistics, pg91~

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True friendship is a sacred, important thing, and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give something up in order to get friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us.
~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines, p50~

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Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and manage it and manufacture it, then it’s something else, but if it’s really love, really friendship, it’s a little scary around the edges.
~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines, p50~

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

Hosanna in the Highest!

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
Thou art the King of Israel, Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’ name comest, the King and Blessed One.

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
The company of angels is praising Thee on high;
and we with all creation in chorus make reply.

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
The people of the Hebrews with palms before Thee went;
our praise and prayers and anthems before Thee we present.

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
To Thee before Thy passion they sang their hymns of praise;
to Thee, now high exalted, our melody we raise.

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
Thou didst accept their praises, accept the praise we bring;
who in all good delightest, Thou good and gracious King.

Ride on, ride on in majesty! Hear all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue Your road with palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, Your triumphs now begin o’er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on in majesty! The host of angels in the sky
look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on in majesty! Your last and fiercest strife is night.
The Father on His sapphire throne awaits His own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die,
bow down your meek head to mortal pain, then take, O Christ, Your power and reign.

Yesterday in worship, I got to say my son’s name a lot. Hosanna. His name means save Lord and is a cry to the only One who can save to the uttermost. The service began with the choir, pastors, and dozens upon dozens of children processing through the sanctuary with palms in their hands while we all sang to the Lord of His glory and honor, lauding Him with our praise. We cried out to Him beseeching Him to save us! And since we are on the other side of the story, we know with confidence that He is the Savior! He has saved us! He did triumphantly bear our sins and conquer death, saving us from the holds of those shackles! Amen!

But we are still in the midst of the story.

I sat there with my family, in the midst still of our own story of asking the Lord to save and preserve and give us life in place of death…
In front of us was a family whose daughter suffered a terrible cancer some years ago, and the Lord preserved her precious life, and there she sat with parents and siblings, with health glowing in her cheeks and hair and the saving presence of the Lord spilling from her eyes as she sang…
In front of them sat a family who buried another son this very week, the Lord saved Gilead by ushering him to heaven, and now He saves this family every moment by upholding them even in the midst of horrible grief…

I cried repeatedly.

Suffering everywhere I looked. Sometimes already redeemed. Sometimes not yet.
It is hard to wait for the redemption, and wonder whether we will see it here in this life, or whether we will be yet waiting to see it in the next.

And then the sermon came. And Pastor Sumpter spoke on hope & joy.
He said, so much of joy is bound up in hope.
How painfully, purely accurate.

Jesus came to restore the places where suffering and despair have reigned.
He came to save.
He came to give us hope.
~Toby Sumpter~

And so as we begin to walk through this week leading up to Easter, where we consciously focus on the work of Christ in His final days, I am also focusing on His current work even now as His Spirit continues to save and give us hope.

Romans 2:1-5
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

This week, I will be reminding myself day by day to be joyful even when I don’t know the end of the story. Because that is why Christ came. I rejoice in hope ~ and this hope is not bound up or settled on the things of this world. This hope in which I rejoice is bound up and settled on the glory of God. And because of this, because of God’s glory, we can rejoice fully! Even when suffering comes. Even when endurance is necessary. When character is tried, tested, affirmed.

This hope is not foolish. Hope that is grounded in God’s glory will not put us to shame. He died for me. So that I could have hope. So that I could rejoice. So that as I remind myself of these things this week, walking toward Easter, I will remember the joy and the hope along with the suffering and the grief. It’s the dichotomy of living the Christian life. May He give us the strength and peace to glorify Him this week through all of this.

We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
~Toby Sumpter~

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

Blitz Trip Grace

By God’s grace, the Holy Spirit’s fruit of patience and gentleness swell and ripen in these times.
God gets the glory for giving me the strength I need
to be kind to my children when I feel hurried or annoyed at the end of a very long day.
And in times when I let the Spirit’s fruit rot because of my sinfulness,
the Lord gives me the grace I need to apologize to my kids
for my hastiness, insensitivity, and unkind words.
Bedtime is a maturing experience for all of us.
~Gloria Furman, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full, p111~

Other maturing experiences might be long drives in the car and blitz weekend trips that are so packed with fun busyness that naps & bedtimes kind of go by the wayside… So on mornings like today, I am extra thankful for grace, and am asking Him for extra measures of kindness, patience, gentleness, and joy today as we readjust to being home and as we reach for good things like naps & bedtime.

But man, aren’t weekend blitz trips with long car rides and occasions for grace just marvelous for the family!? Love it.

March 29, 2015March 30, 2015

The Lord’s People on His Day

This morning we have the joy and privilege of worshiping at Trinity Reformed Church, where a longtime dear friend of my family is pastor. It is the liturgical church that has continued to deepen our love of and desire for beautiful old church liturgy. While we were looking for a new church home a year+ ago, we were able to visit Trinity Reformed Church a little more regularly (it’s a 2 1/2 hour drive each way, so not exactly a place we could call our own church home unless we moved), but we have been settled at Christ The King Church now (and it’s only 50 minutes away, so very reasonable for being our church home) for so long that we have not visited our friends at Trinity since July! Until today. What a joy and blessing. The Lord is good.

And just because these two blog snippets from Pastor Sumpter were so liturgically pertinent, I have to share them.

You have not been summonsed here to make a respectable appearance in a religious assembly. You have not been summonsed here to go through the motions of some ritual. You have not been summonsed here to mechanically repeat your lessons. You have not been summonsed here to compete with others, to gossip, to envy, or to worry. You have been summonsed here this morning to worship. You have been summonsed here to make a joyful noise to the Lord. You have been summonsed here to serve the Lord with gladness, so sing to Him with all your heart and mind and soul. You have been summonsed here so that you might remember and know that the Lord Jesus, He is God. He made us: we are His sheep. You have been summonsed here to thank Him, to bless Him because He is good.

and

…in Ephesians, [Paul] says that our inheritance is in Him, and in Him we have forgiveness, and in Him we have the Holy Spirit, and in Him God is uniting all things. In other words, we can’t move or think or breathe or eat or drink apart from Him. Our identities are completely bound up in Him. This is what it means to be a Christian: that we no longer live for ourselves but now we live for Him because we live in Him. But this means that all of our human interaction is also in Him. We talk together in Him, we walk together in Him, we eat together in Him, we work together in Him. This is why Christian friendship, Christian marriage, Christian family, Christian business, Christian community is all about sharing Christ in and through the various activities we engage in. And this is not just a way of speaking; we are confessing fundamentally that God is here with us. God is present in us and around us. He is here.

So, on this Lord’s Day, worship the Lord because He is good, and may the Lord be with you all. Amen.

March 29, 2015March 24, 2015

Sharp Regard

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At the root of many a woman’s failure to become a great cook
lies her failure to develop of a workmanlike regard for knives.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p56~

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Properly edged and skillfully used,
a cleaver will prepare whole meals without the assistance of another knife.
But it does more.
It bolsters your ego as a cook.
Parting chickens with aplomb, you begin to believe you really might make it.
And so does everyone else.
A woman with cleaver in mid-swing is no mere woman.
She breaks upon the eye of the beholder as an epiphany of power,
as mistress of a house in which only trifles may be trifled with—
and in which she defines the trifles.
A man who has seen women only as gentle arrangers of flowers
has not seen all that women have to offer.
Unsuspected majesties await him.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p61~

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Blessed is the woman whose husband surreptitiously touches up her knives
It may cost her a few surprise cuts now and then, but they are a small price for perfection.
Thrice blessed, though, is the woman who does the job herself.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p61~

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