His Mercy is More ~

 2024 was a waterfall of evidence that our God is a promise keeper!  All the way to the very last day of the year, the Lord has reminded me that he is doing a new thing and fulfilling the promise he gave me.

 Isaiah 43:19-20

Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Just a few of the visible gifts that are overflowing from a grateful heart:

• My soldier and his beautiful and gritty awesome wife finished their military assignment and moved home!
• My Samarah Jo graduated with a degree in agribusiness and moved back home from Wyoming!
• Corban excelled in college classes and landed a 4.0 with a full load!
• We found our community and started attending the Collective
• My dahlias grown for our Annaelise Noel, who we have yet to meet, were so prolific that I could share a bouquet a day while they bloomed through the summer.

But the less visible gifts are the ones that just melt me as I stand in awe of what the Lord has done and is continuing to do in the life of our family!

            

   

         

     

                  

                                         

    

• Wholeness, accountability, health, and renewed purpose for my soldier.
• Spiritual depth and growth for every single member of our family
• Rededication and baptism for Jeff, Samarah, Corban, and Spencer!
• Jordan finds healing in forgiveness
• Holding Halle and Nathan - the Lord is restoring our hearts and bringing so many into our circle to love!
• We learn to worship differently and spend all kinds of time in a house of prayer!
• We celebrate community with a dress up Christmas Party!
• The love of reading, pictures, and words is restored through Naomi Deola, new gratitude journals, restarting Evidence of Grace postings, and chapter books!
• The fear is gone 

As the New Year dawns, the Lord is impressing on me that this is a year of learning and practicing the love of mercy.  I listened on repeat to the song by Selah through the month of December "Wonderful, Merciful Savior" and K.& K. Getty's song "His Mercy is More." Both are beautiful reminders that as we learn to love mercy, we have the privilege of:

• extending forgiveness to those who have wronged us
• offering help to someone struggling
• being patient with others' mistakes
• performing acts of kindness even to those who have not shown kindness
• actively looking for opportunities to support those who might be overlooked

I'm inspired by Micah 6:8 - What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.  How can we do that? By leaning heavily into Jesus and seeking him with all that we are!  

        Lamentations 3:21-25

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope; The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.  "The Lord is my portion," says my soul "therefore I will hope in him." the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Here's to a New Year of chronicling evidence of grace through the daily ups and downs as we look for ways to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

And if not...

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior ~ Habakkuk 3:18.  That little word "yet" means still, even now and with the time remaining.  How fitting to follow a verse that talks about lack.

Though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior. Habakkuk 3:17-18

What precedes our yet often is the means to reflect the goodness of God through our broken places.  God is good, not because of what I have or don't have but because of who he is.

God. Is. Good.  Not because of what I have or don't have but because of who he is.

Thirteen years ago I started a gratitude journal at the prompting of my cyber-mentor Ann Voskamp.  In her book 1000 Gifts, she outlined the importance of maintaining an attitude of gratitude unrelated to our feeling of circumstantial control.  The very idea that God's goodness in the hard ugly is as evident as in the beautiful is a concept I wrestle with deeply.  Ann is absolutely right though.  Everything from the hand of God is a gift and we need to exercise the discipline of gratitude no matter what.

About three years ago I put that "stupid journal" on the shelf.  I was unconvinced that there was very much to be thankful for in the face of horrible pain and loss.  It felt like a ridiculous "Pollyanna" facade listing thankfulness for blooming flowers when I felt like I was all shriveled up on the inside.  That journal gathered dust, got shoved to the back of the shelves and just plain irritated me.  God's gracious patience with my hurting heart is immeasurable.  He never stops pursuing us.  His patience is unending and slowly, snail's pace slowly, I started to reconsider the idea of gratitude journaling again. That 'yet' verse kept rumbling around in my heart as I wrestled with lots of questions.

If I was unwilling to be grateful when my circumstances were not what I would choose, was my gratefulness when everything was going "my" way sincere?

Did I dare to think I was the decider of what was and wasn't a good thing?

If my gratitude was circumstantial than was I doomed to a rollercoaster of contentment based on life's inevitable highs and lows?

Back to that verse - though the fig tree does not bud and no fruit is on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the sheep are cut off from the fold and no cattle are in the stalls...

So the prophet Habbakuk was using a yardstick of failures and losses to depict the current scenario - no fruit on trees or vines, no crops in the field, and no livestock!  Basically no means of securing the necessities of life.  With this grim picture in mind, I began to take a personal look at my yardstick of losses and to be very honest, I am coming up short on loss and long on grace.  That gratitude journal needs to be dusted off and the discipline of counting must begin again.

One of the ways of recounting grace and living through the lens of gratitude is our Evidence of Grace albums that are posted every Friday.  Getting knocked flat from loss and grief has taken a toll on the discipline of consistent counting.  Every once in a while these past three years, I would attempt to get back on my feet and throw a half-hearted single shot on Instagram every now and then as an attempted rekindle.  God is restoring me and though I walk with a limp, I am determined by his grace to diligently count with gratitude the raw and real of our days.  And if not - God is still good.

Milestone Moments

So, I am pretty sure I was wrong.  I have always thought that the actual graduation ceremony wasn't all that important.  I didn't walk, wear the traditional attire or throw a mortarboard in the air for my high school or college completion.  I am pretty sure I missed the mark.  I didn't realize how important these milestone moments were until I was excluded from my oldest daughter's walk.  The memory flood raged with glimpses of teaching a chubby-cheeked little lady to sound out words, making salt dough geography maps, handing over the family checkbook for a finance class and countless late nights helping with college classes.  I wasn't present to celebrate that day of completion and it crushed me.

Moriah Noel - wearing her favorite "glasses" for reading :-)

Missing that moment in time has required more heart work than I ever anticipated.  God is in the business of redeeming all things and in the quiet repair of a wounded momma heart, He is giving back more than I ever dreamed.  My tall boy will walk next month as he graduates from high school and college.  He says it really isn't that big of a deal to him but he is selflessly offering me this moment in time to celebrate a job well done. It's a redeeming gift to me.

Then there is this over and above phenomenon, God does when we surrender tender places to him.

I am making plans to walk too!  In less than a year, the late study nights and sweet support of my family will be marked by a graduation ceremony for my Bachelors in Nursing in Terre Haute, Indiana.  This impending stake in the ground is not only a chance to celebrate the completion of challenging goals but the investment of friends and family who have cheered from the sidelines all along the way. 

                                     

Sometimes a milestone isn't just about the completer but about those who have made the dream or goal a reality.  Opportunities to mark milestone moments are important- treasure every single one!

Scar Cultivated Resilience

There are two words that I have come to love deeply because they are synonymous with stories of survival marked by grace.  They are also my Corban words and this momma bear could not be more thankful that a young man loaned to us almost 13 years ago embodies what it means to thrive with Scar cultivated Resilience.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness.  The grace of this word is that Corban has claimed ownership!  As he has wrestled with the hard ache of loss and rejection over the past several years he learned about resilience a year ago in Miss Flagel's 5th-grade classroom. He was so enthusiastic as he jumped in the car after school and announced that this word was his.  Oh, I love that!  He just plucked it, claimed it and marked it as a definer of himself.  GO CORBAN! 

Scars form when the deep thick layer of skin is damaged. The body forms new collagen fibers that mend the damage, resulting in a scar. The new scar tissue has a different texture and quality than the surrounding tissue.  Just like a scar, we often respond to life's challenges with a different texture and quality because of the experiences that have hurt and remodeled us. I love that scars only form on the living after a wound is completely healed as a kind of natural ink that says "I survived."

Corban at Seattle Children's after heart surgery.

Maybe this word, scar, is especially dear to me because it epitomizes the evidence of grace.  To this day, the silvery map lines running all over Corban's chest tell his scaring story of resilience both inside and out.  So many "remember when moments" have been like off-roading over Ebenezer stones with the man whose name means "set apart for a holy purpose."

 "I remember when you got that extra star-shaped scar on your side! Your lungs were collapsing from a surgical complication and we scooped you out of the hospital bed and jogged down the hospital corridor so they could put a fourth chest tube in your tiny body. Jesus was protecting you through the watchful eye of your daddy who noticed the problem" 

"Oh, and I remember when you won that scar the size of a quarter below your collar bone? It was where your skin came off right along with the transparent bandage they used to peer inside your chest cavity after they fixed your broken heart."

Although it’s not healthy to live constantly in the past we can use our scars to help others. We honor God when we reveal the beauty in our brokenness. There is a rugged, gritty grace in scars that have stories.  

Nail Scarred Hands by bccollective

It's Holy Week - an ideal time to recount the grace of scars.  Christ is our perfect example of the redemption scar story. Don't hide your scars - inside or out - but wear them as proof of God's redeeming love for us.

Graceful Limping

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.   ~ Aeschylus

This picture was taken on the day of Moriah's wedding.  This day should

have been joyful but instead marks the beginning of a season of wrestling with personal rejection, character assassination, false accusation, spiritual abuse, the loss of dear friends and most significantly - the loss of relationship with one of my dearest friends - my firstborn daughter.

It feels like an insanely long stretch of learning through hard days which are far from over.  As I write this, it has been over two and a half years since my daughter has been home to visit. The truth of Aeschylus' quote above has been my heart cry and a glimmer of hope that the hardest hard would yield some wisdom and growth. 

 Because of my brokenness, I felt I had nothing to offer others.  I was terrified that if I in any way indicated knowledge of how to navigate this hard thing called life it would be fraudulent.  Through lots of tears and now years of looking at life through a shattered lens, it has become evident that the most common craving in every one of us is to feel a sense of connection.  We all want to look across the room and be able to say "you too, I thought it was just me." The broken places are where the light shines through and where we can find that common connection. 

In this quiet pain of learning through suffering the Lord has been impressing on me the importance of resonance and reflection.  If pictures and words are a means of reflecting Christ in the messy middle than withholding them would be wrong.  The vulnerability of raw life is a concept I have come to love these past few years.  What better way to contribute to a connection than by chronicling the raw and real of our imperfections.  God's grace has been evident every single raw day. I am quite content to stay in my comfort zone of high emotional walls and surface conversations but out of obedience, it is time to step back into the arena of vulnerability through pen and lens.  

When you don’t give up, there is a blessing for you on the other side, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a limp. ~ Kyle Idleman

Here's to limping along with you my friends, and praying that the evidence of God's grace would resonate through words and pictures as I vulnerably post again.

This God—His way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? The God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. Psalm 18:30-32

Family Friday - Flip the breaker with us!

We have entered a fantastic but extremely different season.  Our oldest leaves for several months of work in Belize in just a few short days.  Our oldest son just got his driving permit and between Driver's Ed, Biology, Search and Rescue, Trap and Skeet Club, church and skiing the guy will have all the drive hours he needs within about three weeks.  Our Samarah Jo just got a phone so she can talk to her big sis in Belize and Corban just received the surprise of his life - a 6 week old Brittany Spaniel puppy just in time for Christmas morning!

I am sure the pace sounds familiar to many....but sometimes it feels like too much of a good thing!

A few days ago, during a winter storm, we lost power for a couple of hours.  The sound of nothing at all was incredibly peaceful and refreshing.  We sat around as a family and just talked in the warm glow of the wood stove.

We used to gather around with all the busy little bodies in this house and read chapter books.  We read over 125 of them when the kids were growing.....one hundred and twenty-five!  We used to read the Picture Bible every single night and then tuck littles into bed with a kiss and some prayers.  We used to sit around every evening to a hot dinner prepared by mom with the kids helping whenever possible.

Lately, we find it a rare moment when we are all under one roof with all of our different schedules.  We find ourselves eating dinner at different times, with different preferences, in different locations and we really have to work for unity.  We struggle to stay up long enough to tuck the youngest in since we have raised a pile of night owls.  We have been trying to get through the last chapter book for an entire year - one whole year.  At that rate, it would take us over a century to read the amount of books we read in the past 12 years...depressing to say the least.

Through many circumstances lately, I am amazed again at the redeeming and restoring plans of God.  He has our best in mind though we often don't see it clearly.  So, I have been asking God how to redeem our family moments knowing that they can never look like they did when we had sleeper-clad, chubby-cheeked cherubs running through the halls.  By God's grace we are going to aim for some focused family time - Givens style.

Family Friday Nights will begin January 8th and we are going to do our best to make them happen for an entire year.  In trying to recreate the relaxed feeling of the unexpected power outage, we will be flipping the breaker for two hours.  When the weather turns warm again we will aim for the outdoors for sure!

We are planning finger food dinners, favorite cheeses and summer sausage, maybe little sandwiches and apple cider.  We are planning to just talk, laugh and catch up from a busy week.  We are planning to read - maybe we will be able to get through more than one chapter book this year.  We will end our Family Friday night by flipping the breaker back on, playing great music and games or watching a favorite movie.  Want to join us in this Family Friday challenge.  Let's make lasting memories and have the kids look back on the year that we flipped the breaker ever Friday night :-)

7300 Days

How can I even begin to accurately acknowledge God's grace of 7300 days - 20 years!!

Twenty years ago today, Jordan and I stood before over 400 of our dear friends and family and pledged our commitment to each other.

 As I have been thinking about these past two decades, there is a theme that keeps running through my mind ~ prayer.  My husband has faithfully followed in the prayer warrior footsteps of his grandparents and parents and for that I am overwhelmed with thankfulness! 

 Jordan has prayed with and for me every single morning before he begins his shift.  It is always dark when he leaves for work and I wake to Jordan praying over our family before the back door closes and he heads to the the fire station.

 He has prayed over our babies - even before they were born.

I recall one evening in Ellensburg almost 18 years ago.....

Moriah Noel was due to arrive soon and that little sweetheart was breech.  Jordan placed his hands on me and prayed for our little one.  He prayed that she would "turn around", that she would love Jesus and that she would someday have a godly spouse. That little one turned as Jordan was praying over her!

Those of you who know my praying man can probably recall meals together where the subject of prayer as we gathered was every child in the room...

Can you hear him?

"Lord we pray that you would give us wisdom in raising these children"

"Lord we pray that you would provide godly husbands for our girls"

"Lord we pray that you would provide godly wives for our boys"

"God give us wisdom to be good stewards of our time and our resources"

As we celebrate 20 year today we are reminded of God's faithfulness, his provision, his guidance and his love for us.  Praying for many more years together!