Tag Archives: truth

the faith of my mother

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the faith of my mother

my beautiful Mama, in Alaska, when I was a little girl.

My mother never sugar-coated Christianity. She lived it raw, and hard, and glorious, and miraculous, and painful, and in such brutal honesty that I reached womanhood with a burning desire to know this scandalous beautiful Savior.

Her faith stills me quiet.

Her passionate existence stirs me to move and live and fight.

As a small child, I watched her move from New York and all her family to the towering mountains and strangers of Alaska. I saw her tears of loneliness and her sharp clinging to the true Comforter.

By the time I was nine years old, I had watched her face cancer with brilliant fearlessness, even while “what if’s” made her shake.

I remember her prayers– for anyone, everyone. The phone calls that ended with, “Can I pray with you?” Her feet pacing the kitchen as she called down the heavenly hosts to transform situations and lives.

She wasn’t perfect. That same passion that caused her to laugh and play silly games and adopt outrageous accents to make everyone else fall into stitches, also caused her to holler in frustration and anger when her four children tag-teamed to push her buttons. (She always joked that we must have secret meetings at night to sign up for what hour we were going to pester her. Just when one kid would get settled and attitudes dealt with, the next would start up.)

But I remember being 19 and having a woman look me right in the eye and say, “You honor your Mama,” she wiped tears and said with a shaking voice, “I would have aborted my son, my precious son, if your mother hadn’t intervened.” This woman spoke the story and I stood quiet, hearing the testimony of my mother’s passionate pursuit of Christ, even to the point of being the last thing standing between a friend and an abortion clinic. I watched the woman’s son play with trucks on the floor at my feet and reveled in the legacy I had been handed.

I was in my twenties when I stood in that church beside her and a woman walked up to us, holding a dancing toddler by the hand. “I don’t know if you remember me,” the woman said to Mama, “but a couple years ago you visited and came to our Sunday School class. I was pregnant but I wasn’t doing very well emotionally and you shared about God and hope and joy and… well, I want you to meet someone.” She turned to the little pixie-faced child and said softly, “This is my daughter, Cheri. I named her after you.”

And then there was Haiti. The time when I stood, translating the woman’s dire circumstances… the breach baby, the lack of hospitals or midwives, the complications… and my mother stepping up and laying hands on the 9 month pregnant belly and requesting a miracle from the God of the Universe. And the next morning, translating the woman’s awestruck words, “I think the baby moved.” I called Mama right after she arrived home to the U.S. to tell her I was holding a healthy baby boy, no surgery necessary.

Miracles. Beauty.

I remember Mama hurting. So many tears… And I remember her face of peace after months of heartache. “Forgiveness is always best, Tashi-girl,” she told me. I heard the words down deep. Etching truth where lies attempt to embed themselves.

Then this past year. Oh, this past year. Me, married and gone, still learning so much from her quiet strength and wisdom. It was cancer again. A different kind.

I stood in the hallway of the hospital, looking down at her wedding rings, nestled with mine on my left hand. You can’t wear any jewelry into surgery, so she slipped them on my finger and I watched her face until she disappeared through the doors, then stared at the rings until my gaze blinded with tears.

I was blessed enough to give them back to her, and we were all blessed when the scans came back with no sign of anymore cancer. But even if they hadn’t, even if she had left me, the legacy I carry is bright and strong and brilliant.

I want to have faith like my mother. The kind that sings the praises of God through fear, heartache, cancer, loss, emptiness, fullness, joy, pain, or sadness. To be a true woman after God’s own heart.

Tell me your story. Maybe it wasn’t your mother, maybe it was a relative or friend or neighbor. Tell me about the woman whose faith spurs you forward. 

 

natural fertility ebook bundle

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.

Living Water

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Do you ever have moments of pure grace? I had one this evening when I stumbled upon something I had scratched into a notebook five years ago. It was like a bucket of water given to someone dying of thirst.  

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Judges 6:15

“But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh and I am the least in my entire family.”

I serve a God who chooses the least. The weakest.

Perhaps, then, He will use me… with all my scars, my still-healing-wounds, my pains, my stumbling blocks, my desperate thirst… my agonizing need for Him.

And somehow, perhaps, I will be used to rescue a part of God’s Israel. Maybe, somewhere out there in the vastness of this world there is a person who is scarred, wounded, in pain, stumbling around, dying of thirst… and, not despite my weakness- but through it, another child of the King will be carried into the kingdom where they can finally quench their thirst by the side of the fountain of living water.

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Not despite your weakness, dear friends, but through it…

shining light in dark places.

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The hard days don’t come that often anymore, but they do come. Sweeping in and leaving me lost and trembling. The voice says, “It’s only because you’re lazy and don’t have enough money. If only you had ___________ then you would have what you desire.”

The words that fill the blank vary on the day but they all spell the same thing: F.A.I.L.U.R.E.

I’ve learned not to debate the lies anymore. It only leaves my ear tuned to the negative, only leaves my emotional state teetering on depression.

There is only one thing to do in the face of failure: cling to what is living and breathing and lasting.

My hurts are only bearable when they are buried in the Word.

On facebook last week, one of you mentioned memorizing Psalm 119. I opened there. The longest chapter in the Bible. Did you know that almost every single verse references the Word of God?

  • Your word.
  • Your law.
  • Your statutes.
  • Your promise.
  • Your commands.
  • His way.
  • His precepts.
  • His decrees.

It’s like one long song that points out the wonder of the voice of God.

 

“I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” vs. 32

“My comfort in my suffering is this: your promise has preserved my life.” vs. 50

“You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.” vs. 114

In the reading, in the loud words flowing through the quiet house, the lies are silenced.

The calluses on my palm scrape across the whisper-thin pages, evidence that “lazy” isn’t the correct term.

The glitter of my diamond engagement ring, nested in beside the wedding band, reminds me of the man who gave them to  me. The one who would sell anything and everything to take me to whatever doctor I wanted or needed.

And beside the diamond is the pearl. The one my parents gave me on my twenty-second birthday, days before I flew to Brazil for the first time. The gift with the note,

“You’re being made beautiful through the pain.”

Oh, that’s right. 

He is. And His Word still shines light into dark places.

Join me in reading Psalm 119 today?
Then come share your favorite verse?

Of Stray Voltage {and soul-wounds}

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We’ve been a bit discouraged. Three crops of great-looking calves have died. The vet says we’re deficient in some mineral so we’re giving shots and praying that these ones live.

I stop to get milk, same as every day. Except this time there is a cut on my thumb. A touch to the stainless steel pipeline and the stainless steel bucket and I feel a jolt to the tips of my toes.

Years ago we had trouble with stray voltage but we thought it was fixed. Cattle are extremely sensitive to electricity so stray currents will kill calves and cause the cows to give less milk.

One cut, the protective skin torn away– and it became glaringly evident that it was all a mirage.  It wasn’t a mineral deficiency. It was the same old invisible problem. One that was costing us on every front. And a wound healed our blindness.

Yet, do you know my first thought?

“That cut hurts! I wish I didn’t have it.”

Yes, the sliced thumb caused pain but the greatest pain had been there for years. I just hadn’t realized it. And I do the same thing in life.

Something appears that cuts away my protection, pain curls my toes and I stare at the blood and curse the wound. But sometimes, most times, the greatest issue lies deeper. So much deeper.

All of life changes when I stop thinking that my wound is the source of my pain.

I can’t have babies.

And that wound causes me to shiver in pain.  I’ve struggled with it, blamed it, cursed it, hated it but God has been tearing off my blinders. Forcing me to dig deeper.

I’m good at lulling myself into believing mirages. Really good at it. And infertility stole that ability from me.

If I hadn’t faced this trial there would be a far deeper cause of pain that reigned free in my soul. So, I’m learning to whisper thanks. Thanks for the use of physical-wounds to open my eyes to the soul-wounds that bring death.

My soul-wound? (tread carefully, friends, it’s still raw)

I don’t believe that God will truly take care of me.

My infertility hurts because I can’t have children but the deepest hurt is that it feels like proof that God won’t take care of my needs.  I need a baby and God says, “No.”

But what happens when I stop looking at the physical-wound and start looking for the soul-wound?

I see deep into a sinful-bleeding heart. One so thirsty for power that I dismiss my God as ruler of my life. I want to dictate my needs and they are wrapped pretty tightly with my wants. 

And God says, “I AM” and I’m laid low. I have to trust Him. I have no other choice. He is.

I don’t know about my future. But today {in this moment}, God wants to heal my soul-wound. He wants the mirage to be gone, the infected thinking torn out, and trust to spill through me.

And I’m learning to thank Him. To taste His redemption. Because if a little blood on the outside opens my eyes to the gushing wound inside—my heart says, “It’s worth it.”

It’s worth it to know Him more. It’s worth it to have my eyes opened to that which is bringing death. It’s worth it because I am desperate for life and life is only found in Him. 

desperation meets God

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Sometimes life tears wide-open.

I spent a day this past week in the insurance office trying to straighten out a mess that I didn’t make. That was directly on the heels of a two-hour wait in the radiology department of the hospital. The question of cancer in one of my dearest people sending shivers down my spine.

The bitter taste of a fallen world.

Evening comes and I’m teaching a lesson to a crowd of fifth-graders. We’re squished inside a tiny building, talking about the crowds that would come to see Jesus. The people who pressed in, desperate to be healed by Him.

We hear the cries from outside, “Jesus, we need you!” the shuffling of feet. The men try to break through but the crowd is large enough to keep them out. There is no way to get the lame man to the feet of Jesus.

All around me eyes are widening in wonder as the scraping and pounding echoes. They brighten in awe as the roof tears away. The sling lowers and the “lame” man is set at the feet of Jesus.

And my soul is crying in agony, “Please, Lord, let me find a way to your feet.”

What roof must I tear off?

What crowd do I need to outwit?

Then night comes and I walk into the barn and smell the metallic scent of blood rather than hay and manure. My husband is running and I follow and cringe at his ashen face as he turns toward me.

It’s bad. A new mother cow went crazy. Stomped her beautiful heifer calf to bits. I’ve never seen such a thing. It’s bloody and putrid and one.more.thing.

God?!

I’m going to crumble.

I am.

But I don’t.

I work and cry.

Words start running. Wrap themselves tight. I asked her, you see, for words of wisdom about facing infertility. And this isn’t, really, about infertility—it’s just about life. The messy, bloody and sad of life.

But that’s the wonder of God.

The One who sends what we need; the thoughts, the pieces of freedom; through the most unexpected places.

She wrote them true. A testimony.

“I do not need to feel guilt or condemnation, if sometimes, in the midst of the wind and pounding waves all I can do is hang onto Jesus by the tips of my fingernails and determine in my heart that I won’t ever let go.” – Rhonda Freed

I’m spreading fresh straw and bright red is seeping through crumbling stalks, and fingernails are tearing, but I won’t ever let go.

Because there is only one man who commands the wind and waves.

And the fact rings true:

I can’t control Him.

I can’t.

But I won’t ever let go because no one else, no one else, has the words of life.

When morning comes the messages arrive. A text, an email, a facebook comment, “Hey, thinking of you. Praying for you.” I haven’t said anything. My words stayed whispered deep. But God is answering.

The feeling of clawing the edge of His robe fades. Arms are wrapping—and I don’t even have to cling because I’m being held.

Are you feeling desperate as you cling to Him? Are you hearing His whispered comfort? Is there any way I can be praying for you? (drop me an email if you don’t want it posted in the comments section, natashametzler at gmail dot com) 

“After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” I Kings 19:12

the greatest lie Satan will ever tell you

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You’ve heard it, I’m sure. Whispered in the dark of night or under the bright light of day or into the desperate places of your heart.

I’ve heard it in crowds of people and locked in my bedroom with the curtains pulled tightly shut.

I’ve felt it in the deepest places of my pain and seen it echoed through my sorrows.

Sometimes it slips in quiet and makes itself comfortable on the edge of my mind. Other times it is so loud I cringe as it reverberates through my life.

But I hear it. Over and over.

It sounds like me talking but it’s really him. The Enemy of my soul.

The words?

“I’m all alone.”

Sometimes other things link to it. I’m all alone in my pain. I’m all alone in my hurt. I’m all alone in my life. I’m all alone with no job. I’m all alone with no friends. I’m all alone in my marriage. I’m all alone in ___________. God left me all alone.

And here is the reason the Enemy loves this lie:

If you believe you’re all alone, no one can empathize with you.

If you believe you’re all alone, then no one is there to help you pick up the broken pieces of your life.

If you believe you’re all alone, no one can call you to account for your sin because “they don’t understand your pain”.

And if you believe you’re all alone, dear friends, no one can give you grace.

I know a beautiful woman who faced a horrendous tragedy. The birth of a stillborn son.

It was heart-shattering.

Week after week she sat in my Sunday School class saying, “I don’t want to be here but I am.” And week after week she had to fight the lie with every possible weapon. She had to choose to say, “I’m not all alone” even when it felt like she was.

The day came when she whispered, “I know I should be over this by now…” and because she was there and fought the lie, even when it felt like truth—she sat in a room full of women who “didn’t know” and grace poured over her.

“You just buried a baby,” someone whispered in return, “I don’t think you need to ‘get over it’.”

We hurt with her and cried with her and tasted grace together.

When she was pregnant again, my heart filled and my prayers deepened. And when she told the story of her son crying as he was born and nothing sounding so beautiful—of the doctor and nurses and her husband all crying and how she couldn’t because all she could think was that he was alive! everything in me danced.

And this girl who has never buried a baby and that girl who has never faced infertility—together we’re not alone.

When I reach out from my pain to offer her comfort in hers—and when she looks up from hers to comfort me—

Satan’s lies are buried in an avalanche of truth.

                                               And none of us are really alone.        

One of God’s greatest gifts to his children is community.    

What have you done lately to foster community?

linking up with Life-Unmasked
and Women Living Well