Tag Archives: God

Tuesday’s Prayer

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I filled the house with smoke for the second week in a row. You would think that after five and half years, I would get the hang of this oven. Alas, it seems to not be so. The coconut oil that spilled into the bottom last week (which started quite the fire) apparently was not all burned up.

The coffee cake this morning? Not the best. Sorry, dear Pioneer Woman, but it seems your tastes are a bit sweeter than mine. It felt a little like inhaling spoonfuls of sugar. (Maybe I’m just sensitive to the stuff.)

There is a bag of trash that has been sitting by my front door for three days. (Ew!) It, unfortunately, has blended into the woodwork and I keep forgetting to take it with me when I go to the barn.

I was kind of hoping that no one who need to use the restroom while they were here because there is a huge pile of laundry in there that never got taken care of.

And I was actually praying that no one would need to open the fridge for anything. There is something dead in there. Probably that container of chicken stock that I thawed two weeks ago but forgot to use.

What I’m really trying to say is neither my house, nor I, am very well put together at times. 

But it never fails. When I open my door, open my home– God shows up. He pours blessings on me.

He empties out the pride, forgives the sinfulness, and wraps me tight in grace.

We decided to have prayer meetings on Tuesday mornings. It is the evidence that God has been stirring things up because my husband hates mornings. Yet, it was his idea to invite people up at 5:30AM to drink coffee and pray. It was originally going to be a one-time thing– he just felt the burden to pray for a friend and invited some others to join in.

But then it was so wonderful– meeting God in community, right first thing in morning– so we’ve had a few more. And now, for this season at least, I don’t think we’ll stop. 

God created community. He designed us for it. We are made to have a personal relationship with Christ and at the same time to share our walk with those around us. And the more true community you have, the more you crave it. Even enough to stumble out of bed at ridiculous times in the morning.

(Seriously, when we milked cows we didn’t get up at 5:30 (we milked at 7 and 7) but for prayer and community and the presence of God? Absolutely.)

I challenge you, friends, to establish community. No matter what your house looks like. No matter if you can cook (*ahem*) or if your floors are clean. Because it’s not really about all that stuff anyway. It’s about Jesus. Living. Moving. Breathing. Changing lives and forgiving sins and transforming hearts.

And if you live in the area, come on up next Tuesday morning. For reals. We’d love to have you. (And hopefully by then the trash will be taken out, the laundry cleaned up, the house smoke-free, and breakfast edible. But you never know. I make no promises. There will, however, be coffee and prayer.)

Community/prayer

Infertility Changed Me

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I met Jessica a little over a year ago now and feel like I have known her all my life. I have her family picture up on my fridge just to hear people exclaim, “Wait, how many babies do they have?” After facing infertility, their family experienced the joy of a daughter and then TRIPLETS. Joy upon joy upon joy. I know you will be blessed by her thoughts on the years before her babies arrived. 

Infertility Awareness Week

For three years we tried to have a child: Womb, arms and rooms all empty; hearts growing even more so, faith becoming even harder. Three years of not knowing, of not understanding, of not being understood. Three hard years….

And yet, three years filled with unfathomable grace from our Lord. Three years that strengthened us, our marriage, and faith. Faith untested is the easiest faith to have, faith born out of simplicity and near perfection lacks credibility. But faith through adversity, there in is true integrity. How willingly would we accept God’s absoluteness if all the stories in the Bible were hunky-dory, happily-ever-after tales?

Those 3 years dealing with infertility were some of the darkest, hardest, most miserable, life changing, devastating years of my life. Hands down I have NEVER experienced anything as horrible as those. We were beyond angry at God. We felt betrayed by Him, by everything that we thought we had known. If children are a blessing from the Lord, why was He refusing to bless us, what did we do to deserve this punishment?!

Can I share something with you? It may seem obvious, but still…..

God is big. Big enough to handle your anger at Him, your confusion, your tears, your pain, your sufferings. He longs for you to come to Him, pounding your fists against His chest, beating out your heart-ache. Only then can He wrap His arms around your shoulders, quelling your shaking body. Soothing your soul with His very words.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 (NIV)

But God is faithful, just as he was with Job. We weren’t being punished for wrongs unconfessed, but tried. There is sin in this world, and it is of Satan and of ourselves. It is God that is the goodness that brings us through those things and restores us to Him. It is God that will determine how we perceive the trials in our life.

It may not be infertility that you’re going through, it may be something else, but God is big enough for you. No, he may not answer the longings of your heart today or tomorrow, or ever, but He loves you. He doesn’t want to see you in any kind of pain. He didn’t create these hardships for us, because He wanted to punish us for being sinful. It is these hardship that can return us to Him, understanding and loving Him more deeply, but unless we come to Him, we will remain lost.

We often think that things in our life are outside of God’s jurisdiction, somehow beyond Him. That this issue or that resolution is the only “right” one, that by doing something else we are “outside of God”. Who are we to try and box God in, to say that He is only in specific circumstances? That only this way or that, is His way. To put a limit on Him. God is so big, that there is no beginning or end to Him.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” Job 38:4 (NIV)

It is when we try and pigeon-hole God that we are wrong. Whether we do it by not seeking His presence and wisdom during our trials or by passing judgment on His allowing us to be afflicted. It is when we deny His omnipresence that we will incur His anger, just as Job did (read Job 26-31 and 38-42).

It is God’s own son who was treated more dreadfully than anything we could endure on this earth, doing so without complaint and it is because of that, that we are able to even dare approach God in His Majesty. Our God is big enough to take our anger, our pain, and confusion and restores us once again to Him, but only if we come to Him.

Just as Job was changed by his ordeals, infertility, no matter the outcome, irreversibly changes us. While God restored Job’s riches to him and gave him 10 more children, those children were not his first. In the restoration, I can’t help but feel that there must have been some bittersweet feelings on Job’s part. For us: Yes, we now have 4 beautiful children, but we are not the same as we were before, nor should we expect to be unchanged. But, through the struggles and trials we have come to know our God and just how BIG He is; so big that He has the power to resurrect the dead and give children to the barren.

 

Wife, to a hard working man, mom to 4 of the craziest kids she could have never imagined. Living the life she never thought she would and lovin’ it!

Jess writes from Upstate NY at LifeintheWhiteHouse.com.

the year I stopped being a proper-church-attender and learned to just be with God

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I always loved Sunday mornings. Up early, my hair pinned and primped with frizz tamed. Long skirts that flowed around my ankles or knee-length ones, paired with colored tights and high heels. It was often the only day of the week that I wore makeup, not overly done but a bit of eyeliner and face powder to make myself presentable.

I loved seeing friends and family, singing, playing piano, talking for hours after the service…

Yet, somewhere in the turning of time a sliver of something ugly began to creep into my heart. In the midst of a society that was quickly becoming more and more relaxed in dress and interaction, I knew how to look and act acceptable. I became a proper-church-attender.

Oh, how I cringe at that truth.

I was always presentable. I always looked proper. I always sang the right notes and talked to the right people. I did everything right but something was very, very wrong.

Soon I was working full-time and doing ministry full-time. Tired is a pretty accurate word to describe that period of my life. I quickly learned that Sunday had to be a day of rest… but I had conditioned myself to make it a day of presentation.

I wanted to look and act how I thought in my head that everyone should look and act. But I no longer had the strength or fortitude to continue.  I was tired of dressing up.

I mean that  figuratively but also physically. I dressed up for work and then went directly into ministry-mode and spent all day in heels and pantyhose with my hair pinned up. I was exhausted and was sorely tempted to just start skipping church all together, even though I knew, so clearly, what Scripture says about not giving up meeting together.

I was wore right thin and when I went to God and said, “I can’t handle this much longer.” He told me a very interesting thing.

“Stop dressing up, Tasha, and just be with Me.“

For an entire year I wore jeans and a hoody sweatshirt to church. Comfortable. Soft. I wore slip on shoes and spent most of my time out of them.

It wasn’t about what I wore or didn’t wear at church. It was about stopping the presentation and stopping the sinful pride that had crept into my heart. It was about giving up my picture-perfect ideal and settling into the reality.

Reality was that I needed a day of softness and dressing down and just being with God. It was a time of soaking in tight and worshiping with abandon and giving up on any pretense of “looking right” and just leaning hard into Christ and my base need of redemption and grace.

It was the year I learned to be with God, right at church. Which might seem like a no-brainer, but for this church-attender-since-before-my-birth, it wasn’t.

I sat quiet in the back row, after a lifetime of front row sitting, and closed my eyes tight and only sang the songs that I believed in. I kicked off my shoes at the door, curled up with my feet under me on the bench, and prayed prayers of devotion and love to my God during the service.

I stopped teaching, stopped singing or playing piano on the worship team. I retreated, far back, and used Sunday mornings as a time to breath deep.

Sometimes I even left. Slipped out softly and walked the streets of town, stopping to talk to people sitting on their porches or walking the same sidewalk as I. Often our conversation turned to the Creator and I was humbled right quiet by the holy worship I heard from these random people whose names I never learned.

Other times I would hide under the big apple tree in the church’s side yard and lean my head back, watching the way the tree limbs moved in the breeze.

I lived out the year and I built an altar. One of jeans and hoody sweatshirts and barefoot toes on the church carpet. One of softness and closeness and a God who whispers gentleness into my quiet moments.

He is a God who brings peace and rest into the midst of our busyness. And I had allowed my desire for approval from men to close my ears to His grace. How thankful I am that He never gives up on me.

I try to return to that altar at times. I leave my elegant skirts and colored tights and high heeled shoes at home. I slip into jeans or a hoody and break the mold of dressing up for Sunday mornings. Not out of disrespect for God, or as a judgement to anyone, but simply as a reminder of the time when I learned deep that God doesn’t look at outward appearance. He looks at the heart.

And what He desires most is a heart that is willing to stop the madness of presentation
and simply be with Him. 

I Samuel 16:7

one thing you can do when it feels like control has been ripped from your grasp

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Living in Haiti brought all kinds of challenges. Learning how to stand on my own two feet in another culture was a lesson all in itself. One that was much harder than I anticipated!

I am a giver– In other words, I give way long before I stand firm. Literally. In Haiti, people will push (without malice) and crowd and my tendency is to take three steps back and give whatever they ask. At times, this left me standing at the side of the road while my husband accidentally drove off without me.

Oh, how he scolded when this would happen. “Hold your ground,” he would say in frustration, “tell them no! and don’t let go of the vehicle.”

Nice idea but not very applicable when it goes against the very grain of my existence.

Finally, he gave up lecturing me and turned on them. I was slightly behind in my Creole-speaking abilities but I caught the gist, You are all personally responsible to make sure my wife is taken care of when we are going places. You will not push her, squish her or otherwise cause her to move away from a secure place. She is my WIFE. I will not drive your ambulance or run your errands if I have to worry about her being knocked off the vehicle.

Turns out that worked pretty well.

Willim and Arnold, teenage boys who hung around the mission regularly, made it their personal responsibility to take care of me on trips. They stood on both sides and pushed others away. I thought they were a little rude. My husband thanked them and actually paid them money for the fine job they did.

But even I hit a cutoff point eventually.

It was during church (which grated me to the core) that someone walked by my kitchen window, sliced through my screen and stole… my dish soap.

And I cried. Huge blistering tears.

I could try and defend my over-reaction… after all, it was rather hard to come by dish soap. The Haitians in that area use mostly ivory bar soap to wash their dishes and it was this one luxury that I insisted on. And trust me, I didn’t insist on much! It was this silly thing that kept Haiti from being completely foreign and difficult.

And, we didn’t have money to buy more. We kept ourselves on a strict budget and gave away all the extra of the allowance the mission provided for food and monthly expenses. I know the Haitians could not understand that we were literally living broke, our personal income barely covering the expenses back home, but I sure knew it.

But the truth is that it was just dish soap. 

Somewhere in the middle of my tears, I felt the Lord speak. He just asked this question but it left me wrapped tight inside.

Tasha, why are you so injured by this event?

It took awhile for me to understand the reason. It wasn’t the dish soap, as nice as it was to have it. It wasn’t the inability to buy more for the next two weeks. It was the feeling of lost control. 

I had stiffened my back at being pushed out of the vehicle more times than I could count. I was used to the eyes watching me every minute, even while I was in my own house. I adapted well to the climate, to the social changes… but this broke a line that I had unknowingly set: this thief stole more than just my dish soap, he or she had stolen my ability to control what was sitting in my own house. 

And with this realization came a deeper, truer, more difficult reality:

I was withholding control from God. Still. 

I had left my home, gave up my job and my friends and my family– claiming so strongly that I was giving all control to Christ– but I was still withholding. Still clinging tight to my rights to control my own life.

And there is only one thing to do when your eyes are opened to such startling facts:

Wipe the tears of self-pity and kneel.

Of all the lessons I learned while living in Haiti, I think this was the most practical.

I lose control of life all the time. It is constantly, repeatedly, ripped from my grasp. Each and every time my mind flashes back to my sobs over dish soap and the feeling of those tile floors when I knelt in my kitchen and surrendered again.

Because the only way to regain control is to surrender. 

When You Lose Control of Your Life @natashametzler

why you should read your Bible {even when you’re mad at God}

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Bible

It was spring. The snow was melting and forming puddles in the driveway, curling little trails toward the dip on the edge where it disappeared into the brown grass. Sunlight filtered off the muddied piles of leftover ice and warmed the skin on my face. But I couldn’t feel it.

Icy hardness still reigned in my heart, even after all this time. I was filled up tight with anger and frustration. Mornings would come and I would wake up crying. Afternoons passed and I would curl into a ball on the couch. Evenings would be soft and painful until I could escape to bed, where I lay quiet and fearful, muffling my sobs and letting my tears soak the pillow under my head. Spring held no joy that year.

Days came when I stood alone in the kitchen and spoke loud at the heavens. “God, where are you? I follow, I serve, I give. Yet, still, I hurt and hurt and hurt.”

Silence spun anger into my heart.

She wrote words to me that summer, while the grass grew tall and deep. Purple paper and a calligraphy pen, one torn and the other dipped in black, black ink. She said I was blessed and highly favored.

I laughed at the absurdity.

I knew the words of Scripture. Knew them well. Over and over I had read through the Bible, as a teenager, as a young adult. I had memorized and studied. Greek and Hebrew words were scrawled into the margins of my Bible.

I thought I knew His words so well, thought it high time He listened to a few of mine.

I left my Bible to gather dust on the corner of the desk and spoke my words into the blackness.

Summer slipped away and fall began. Orange and red leaves covered forest floors and I toughened and bit back my tears. But then as winter once more lifted her icy fingers, I knew I could not survive another season.

I peeled back the pages and began reading again.

The stories danced, the Word deepened. What I thought I knew so well seemed to change shape before my eyes. The book of Genesis, the story of creation and the foundation of Israel, turned into a narrative of heartbreak. Jeremiah, the tale of a weeping prophet, became the journal of a crying God.  Job, that book full of depression and confusion, the one that went on and on and on… It became a window into my heart and God’s words from the heavens shook me to my core.

The Word of God never changes. Ever.
But I do.

My circumstances and experiences draw lines under words. They highlight thoughts and translate ideas.

To think that I could live today on what I knew from yesterday was a foolish and empty thought. Like manna, the Word is new every morning. We can only eat enough for today, this moment. Tomorrow we must return and dig deep again.

Isaiah 55:3 @natashametzler

By the time I watched spring again, I had tasted spring in my heart. I felt the morning sun, bathed in rays of delight. She was right, you know, the one who penned those words on torn paper. Blessed and highly-favored. Me.

I laugh at the beautiful absurdity of it all.

If all my writings put together could do but one thing, I pray that it be this: You will open your Bible and start reading. Even if you’re confused. Even if you’re angry. Even if you don’t understand it. Because the Word builds up and builds up and builds up. And what makes no sense today, will painted pictures of redemption tomorrow. 

Have you experienced this? How has your understanding of Scripture changed with your growth and experiences?

To read about what God spoke to me as I journeyed through Scripture that first time after struggling with depression and infertility, just sign up for my newsletter and receive a free copy of the my ebook, Dying of Thirst at the Side of a Well. {tomorrow the March edition releases, so hurry!}

a gift for you

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So, guys, I don’t know what’s been happening in your life, but mine has been crazy. God is mixing us all up and around and backwards and it’s really good but also quite disconcerting.

There is a verse that says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Pr. 19:21) I’m holding tight to that promise. I know He has good things in store for us, beautiful redemptive things.

Preparing to speak on the subject of my book for the first time brought up a lot of thoughts, a lot of memories. It stirred up the reality of what my journey really was: a wandering through the desert, dying of thirst. I was empty of the ability to heal myself, but God…

I’ve been seeing those two words around quite a lot lately and they catch me right tight.
But God, in His graciousness.
But God, in His mercy.
But God, in His justice.
But God, in His overwhelming, unrelenting, glorious love. 

…but God poured truth into my darkness.

I am ever so humbled and ever so thankful.

I created a little ebook just for you. It isn’t long. Perhaps not even profound, but it is me… with all the honesty and rawness I can muster, laced right through with the glory of a God who meets us right smack dab in the middle of our sorrows.

Based off the talk that I shared at the Spring Banquet, it is a manifesto of how God healed my deaf ears and brought sight to my blind eyes.

It is true that I was lost in a desert but there was more going on than just that.  

free ebook @natashametzler

The cover art is by Brianna Siegrist (didn’t she do a marvelous job?).

I’d love to send a free ecopy to each and every one of you.

All you have to do to receive it is sign up for my newsletter {in the sidebar or by clicking here} and the next edition will contain a download link.

 Thank you, dear readers. I pray you will be blessed. 

p.s. consider sharing this with a friend?

tracing the promise (of Kings and Chronicles)

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Have you ever noticed that Kings and Chronicles are similar?

Same story, same characters, different writer voice.

In fact, Chronicles repeats many of the previous books, starting in Genesis. As a young girl, I would read and wonder. Why did God repeat himself?

I was around ten years old when I overheard the answer. I was sitting in the library (my favorite place in the whole world) at the Bible School we lived at, and listened to several students discussing their recent class in Old Testament Survey. I grabbed my pink Bible and scribbled a note at the top of 1 Chronicles.

1 & 2 Kings were written to show the Israelites why they were taken into captivity. 1 & 2 Chronicles were written to trace the promise and show why God brought them out.

At ten years old, my stomach jumped at the words. Tracing the promise. I would read through the thin pages and realize it was true. Chronicles tells the redemptive story. And now, a lifetime later, I still get excited. Only today it’s even more glorious because I can trace the promise through Scripture and I’m tracing it in my life too. 

Through my sorrows, through my failures, through my sin, through my shame, and through the heart-stopping glory of my redemption. 

The promise can be traced and I tremble in humbleness.

We all may bear the history of the Kings in our past, but have you searched out the Chronicles? Have you stopped and traced His promise? It’s there.

This year, I want to make sure that I’m doing more than rehearsing my captivity. I want to take time to focus on the redemptive hand of God and the promises that have set me free.

tracing the promise// natashametzler.com

Oh, Faithless Heart.

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I’m not sure why that day was so hard, but it was. A day when the thoughts of all-that-could-be got lost in the reality of all-that-wasn’t. My husband kept asking what was wrong and I kept opening my mouth but not finding the words.

Is it possible to explain that the “wrong” is only a complete and total lack of faith?

Someone mentioned the other day that they admired my faith and I almost choked. Here’s a secret: my “faith” leaves me, more often than not, described perfectly in James chapter one.

8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

and I’m not saying that with a false sense of humbleness– I’m saying that with horror.

I wandered around the barn doing chores, with my mind trapped in faithlessness. I knelt to put a milker on Rosie and tears dripped onto the golden straw at my feet. I hate this part of me, I thought, I hate weakness and feeling lost and panic attacks. Why can’t I just trust that God really will take care of me?

It was my soul-wound tore right open again.

It was my mind scrambling to remove my walk through pain. [maybe we should just forget trying to renew our homestudy, then adoption is just out of the question. Maybe I should go on birth control- then the chance of a baby is just gone.]

Oh, God. Here I am, still trying to take your place. I’d rather lose my deepest dreams by choice than trust you with the ability to answer my prayers with a “no”.

Oh, faithless heart!

In my book I talk about finding God in sorrow– but here’s where the knowledge hits home: it has to be a daily searching.

It doesn’t matter how many times I surrendered to God in the past, it doesn’t matter if I filled a whole book with the story, I still have to kneel today. 

And when my face bows low, He comes. Faithful every moment. 

And He whispers comfort that seeks me out through the words of a friend and pulls back my blinders with love.

“Return, O faithless sons;
I will heal your faithlessness.” Jeremiah 3:22 ESV

Oh, what a promise! Oh, joy! Oh, hope! Oh, redemption!

He heals. Even my faithlessness. 

My tongue tastes glory. My soul trembles. And once again, I find wholeness.

where are the miracles? {a broken wondering}

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I woke up early that morning because the donkey that Willem tied outside our bedroom window started braying. It was still mostly dark but the tiniest splinters of light were peaking over the mountain surrounding us. I rolled out of bed, slipped bare feet into flip-flops and wandered down to the bathroom. Using a flashlight, I searched for tarantulas, scorpions or any other strange looking insects before washing my face and preparing for the day.

By the time I finished, my husband was hard at work on my morning cup of coffee.  If a Starbucks coffee is worth $4 then a mug of Haitian coffee should be worth about $10.  My taste buds were already dancing at the thought. I waited impatiently for him to slowly strain the boiling water through the folded paper towel filled with coffee grounds. There was a coffee maker in the other mission house but we were almost always up before the generator started.

I tipped a spoonful of dried whole milk into the mug, stirred and then grabbed my Bible and a sweatshirt and slipped out to the front porch while my husband went to get dressed for the day.

Mornings in Haiti are glorious. The air still cool from the night, and you can feel the world around you waking up. Some mornings I read Psalms filled with praise and some mornings I wept for the return of Christ and the healing of the nations, but either way, mornings never grew mundane or tiresome.

It was Willem, coming to get his donkey, who told us the news. A man grew angry at a woman and hired a voodoo priest to cast a spell on her. She couldn’t walk and was so weak the doctor’s thought she would die. Her baby would die with her.

I searched out a layette and went to see the mother and baby. The smooth cement of the hospital floor allowed me to slide along almost silently. I stood outside the woman’s door and watched the nurses work at preparing her for the doctor’s visit. After a moment a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. There, in a bassinet lay an infant. I stepped closer and bit my lip hard.

His eyes were staring but not focusing. A makeshift diaper was wrapped around him and all the visible parts of his body were covered with tiny sores. Some oozed liquid and some were scabbed over. Instinctively, I reached out a hand but a nurses began to lecture me in Creole. I understood enough to know that they didn’t know what disease he had and I shouldn’t touch him.

I left the blanket and clothes for him and asked the nurses if they needed anything. They informed me that the woman had no family and would need food. That I could handle. I went in search of Millen and gave her rice, beans and a few cans of MCC meat.

I don’t remember at what point something in me snapped. Perhaps it was later that afternoon when I saw the nurses feeding the child without touching him, or the next morning when I found out that everyone was scared of what had happened to her. What if the curse affected them as well?

All I know is that I went from praying in a chair beside the baby to holding his tiny hand and whispering words of healing over him. After that day I boldly touched his delicate skin and asked God for a miracle. There was no doubt that his affliction was some type of STD but I also had no doubt that God created babies to be touched. Something happens when skin touches skin. And it happened again. His floundering, hooded eyes began to meet mine. His hands began to reach for my voice.  His lips stretched into a smile.

I wrapped him in warm flannel blankets and rocked him on the edge of the hospital bed several times a day. I brushed my finger down his brown cheeks and sang Scripture over him.

Every day when I went to leave, when I stopped to press a treat of some kind into the mother’s hand, she would blink away tears and whisper, “merci”. And I would whisper back, “Jezi remen ou.” Because He does.

The other day at church we were discussing why we don’t see miracles like they did during the early church. Here and there, yes, but not with the boldness of those days. My husband said, in broken wondering, “There was this woman in Haiti…” and he told about the curse and said that he prayed, believing so strongly that God would heal her, but when she left the hospital, she still couldn’t walk.

I don’t have answers. I don’t know why.

But all I can picture is that baby, the one that no one would touch, and the way he smiled when I walked into the room. I can picture the woman coming in her wheelchair to the house to say goodbye, holding him nestled in her arms. I can picture the clear skin on his face. And I still remember the smile that turned a poor cripple into beauty.

I believe that God does miracles. I have watched Him pull people back from the brink of death. I’ve heard first-hand accounts of blind eyes seeing and crippled legs dancing and cancer disappearing.

But I have to wonder if, before we see the obvious miracles, God is asking us to recognize and label the hidden ones.