waiting

A friend recommended the book “Resurrection Year” by Sheridan Voysey a while back and I finally got around to reading it last week. This is the story of Sheridan and his wife Merryn who tried for years and years to have children. They dreamed of welcoming children into their home whether that was through biological birth, foster care, adoption, or other means. They prayed. They waited. They wrestled with God. This book outlines their story along with a year they now call “Resurrection Year”, a year in which they began to find healing from the hurt they experienced through this journey.

While I finished the book over a week ago, I’m still not completely sure what my own thoughts and reflections are. I loved the book, but it also is forcing me to consider and process some things in my own life and faith.

I will say this: I appreciated reading a book that ended without “the bow”. So many stories try to make it all pretty by the time you flip the last page, Voysey didn’t try to do that here. Loose ends still remained. Questions still lingered. Hurt still needed healing.

And that’s how life works.

Reading this challenged me to consider some of my own dreams and how God works in them. It strengthened some things I already thought and made me question some other assumptions I had about life and faith. It pushed me to lean in and trust on a deeper level. Seems like perhaps it did just what the author hoped.

Other Books I’m Reading or Finished Recently:

Red Letter Challenge by Zach Zehnder (Day 2 of 40)
A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa (4%)

Standing in the Fire: Courageous Christians Living in Frightening Times by Tom Doyle (82%)

Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard Swenson (87%)

Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be by Rachel Hollis (Finished)

Bekah's Heart

One of THOSE days

April 30, 2012April 29, 2012 Rebekah Freed

Have you ever had one of THOSE days… I think you know the kind I’m talking about:

Those days when nothing bad really happens, but from the moment your feet hit the floor (and perhaps before) you realize everything is going to be a battle.

Those days when it seems Satan got a head start on the day… on your heart.
Where every lie, distraction, or frustration possible makes it in, and God’s request for us to “guard your heart” (Prov 4:23) becomes harder with each passing moment.
Oh you want to believe the truth: you are beautiful, you are enough, you are Mine! But each truth seems to be countered with a million lies.

Those days when you’re in the Word and you’re in prayer but the battle still just feels too big.

Those days when you long for the comfort and care of another human being and God says, “look to me” Yet we fight against that, telling God, “that’s not good enough.”

Those days when God shows up in amazing, perhaps even miraculous ways, and our response is all too often… “Thanks, God, BUT…”

Those days when the only way to describe yourself is as “in a funk”… unsure of what that means, how you got there, nor when or how it will end.

Those days when finally, you turn to God and say, “I JUST CAN’T FIGHT ANYMORE!”
And He simply replies, “I will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Ex 14:14)

Slowly, THAT truth is one you can hold onto, one you can trust, one you can rest and wait in until the funk passes…

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:28-30)

And the paradox rings true in Christ: our strength builds in giving up.

The battle is too big … for me to fight alone. But our God is the everlasting God, the Creator of the earth… nothing is too big for Him.

Bekah's Heart, Life Lessons Learned in the Kitchen

It’s Kinda Like Making Bread…

February 2, 2011 Rebekah Freed

Upon returning home from work today, I decided I would NOT try to go out to volleyball tonight. The roads weren’t too bad but after almost getting stuck 3 times going in/out of the church parking lot today, I decided not to press my luck (for lack of a better phrase). Instead, seeing multiple unused yeast packets in my fridge, I decided to make some bread.

As this process has gone on this evening, I’ve realized that sometimes what God is doing in our life is kind of a lot like making bread, especially the process of kneading the dough.

There seem to be a rhythm to it… a process… repeated… necessary … for the bread to turn out.

Knead. Rest. Rise. Knead. Rest. Rise.

I feel like we’re constantly somewhere in this process as God shapes us into who he wants us to be. As I look back over the past few months, I see God working in my life like a baker works with dough. There have been some areas of my life where God has come and said, “Let me knead some Truth into that, Bekah.”

But kneading it’s not always a pleasant process. Some descriptors in the kneading section of the recipe I used tonight were “punch,” “squeeze,” “stretch,” “pound,” “twist”. When we think about the possibility of God doing these things in our lives… to our hearts, it does not sound like a very fun process.

Oh, but God understands the need to knead.

He’s got to work that yeast, His Truth, through our whole lives. Sometimes that truth comes like a punch to the gut. Other times he needs to stretch us out of our comfort zone. Sometimes it comes as a pound on the door of our heart simply saying, “Something’s not right here. Let me fix it.”

As God continues to knead our lives, it hurts, but it’s good. It also takes time. Those 10 minutes (or 10 hours, or 10 months, or 10 years) seem like forever, but God knows the perfect amount of time needed to knead.

I also realized that the process isn’t exactly the most exciting for the Kneader as well… the punching, the squeezing, the stretching, the pounding, the twisting… it’s hard work. And maybe that’s what it means to know that we are His “workmanship”.

And then, in the perfect time, the kneading ends, at least for a while, and the dough is shaped and placed in a ball in a bowl, covered with a towel and left alone.

Sometimes when God’s been working on us for so long… for those 10 days or weeks or months or years, it kind of seems weird for the kneading to stop. I mean it seems in my life that just when I get used to the kneading, and finally believe the Baker for its necessity, that’s when He says, “Okay, now it’s time to rest.” Sometimes it even feels as if I’ve simply been beat up and left alone. But God does not leave, he only knows our need to rest and let His Truth do its work… to rise up in our hearts and bring healing to the areas where he’s punched, squeezed, and stretched us.

But again, that’s often not the end of the process. After the certain time… known by the Baker alone, the process begins again…. the punching, the pounding, the twisting, the shaping. Again, it’s crucial, it has to happen. There is a need for our lives to be kneaded… shaped again and again by the Master Baker.

And then He tells us to rest once more, letting Truth rise up in our hearts.

Again and again this process takes place.

Knead. Rest. Rise. Knead. Rest. Rise.

Through the process we just have to trust that He knows what He’s doing. The dough doesn’t knead itself… the dough doesn’t know how long to wait in the resting period… the dough doesn’t know how many times it needs to be kneaded before going to the oven. But the Baker does.

Lord, teach me to give in to Your kneading… Your pounding, Your twisting, Your stretching and squeezing… and help me to rest when I just need to let your Truth rise up in my soul.

Poetry/Songs

Perspective

February 1, 2011 Rebekah Freed

5:01am

Sitting at the gate at the Wichita airport.

10 feet away

A uniformed man holds back tears

As his parents say “goodbye”

Hopefully not for the last time

They leave

Embraced in each others’ arms

He fidgets .

Alone

Adjusting his uniform

Glancing around nervously

Trying to be strong

Seconds later

One more comes around the corner

This one with a wife

Her shoulders already shaking with grief

57 minutes till our flight departs

57 minutes of agony

Followed by months, maybe more

Of separation

And my biggest concern on this snowy day is whether or not I’ll make it to Buffalo or will have to work from Wichita, around my family, in a safe, warm house, for an extra day or so.

Perspective.

Bekah's Heart, Devotional

Questions

November 30, 2010November 30, 2010 Rebekah Freed

Questions. They surround us everyday. Some arise over trivial things that really don’t matter much. Others pound at the door of our hearts begging for answers.

Questions like “What now?” when one loses his job.

Questions like “How long?” when a loved one hears that dreaded “C” word, “Cancer”.

Questions like “WHY?!?” when a loved one is taken from this earth “too soon.”

Though, as much as we desperately want answers, maybe we’re not supposed to get them…at least not now. In a conversation today, Sue she shared with me this quote by Rainer Maria Rilke:

‎"Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer"

I think maybe Jesus was trying to tell us something similar when he spoke these words:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life… Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? … So do not worry… but seek first His kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own.”

Each day will have it’s trouble.

Each day will have its questions.

Maybe instead of pounding at heaven’s door

demanding answers,

we can simply

come,

rest in our Savior’s embrace,

and let him quiet us with His love.

My dear child, I know you have questions… questions that your heart longs to have answered. In my time and in my way, I will reveal those things. But for now, just live. Don’t beat yourself to death trying to find all the answers … just live in me. Live in my love. Live in my GRACE. And I will keep giving you more grace…. and more grace… and more grace. … and one day, you will have lived yourself into the answers and will forever live in a place with no more questions. I love you, My child. Come. Let Me quiet you with My love.

31 Days of Hope

Hope {Day 26} – Hope When You Just Don’t Understand

November 8, 2010November 8, 2010 Rebekah Freed

Why him?
Why her?
Why me?
Why now?
I just don’t get it, God!
I don’t understand

I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we just desperately LONG to understand God’s reasoning behind a situation. I know I have. Like when a kid in my youth group back home was killed in a car accident 3 years ago this month. Or when my little buddy, Nicholas died of cancer at only 9 years old. I ask for understanding when I see a friend struggling with more burdens than anyone should ever have to bear or watch as another friend gets the news that yet another surgery is in the future.

We long for understanding. This makes me think of a story I once read. The author had just adopted two boys from Africa and was trying to adopt a little boy named Sergei, an orphan from Belarus (below Russia). The little boy got to come for a five-week visit but then had to go back to the orphanage to wait for paperwork to go through.

Here’s the story from there:

"At the writing of this book, the process had already taken more than a year, and we still don’t have him home. It has been a hard year of wanting and waiting, feeling hopeful and at the same time quite helpless. We’ve only been able to get a couple of packages to him, a few e-mails and one phone call.

When we were working on arranging the phone call with Sergei, I asked some of the officials to please provide an interpreter… I wanted Sergei to know that the adoption was being delayed not by us but by the red tape of two very different governments. When no interpreter was available, my heart sank. So much time had passed since Sergei had communicated in English with us, I doubted he would remember enough to make the conversation meaningful.

The lady helping to arrange the call, one of the few Christians involved on their end, knew I was disappointed with the news. So the day before the call was to take place, she sent me an e-mail to encourage me: "There will be no interpreter as nobody knows English as Ryasno. But you will tell him that you love him, and that he will understand."

The Belarussian lady’s comment reminds me so much of what God continues to teach me about trusting Him. When I grieve over the bummer things in life and cry out to God, I can imagine God instructing the Holy Spirit to say something similar to me. … "There is no way to interpret this event in a way she can comprehend, but tell her that I love her, and THAT she will understand.

Isn’t God amazing? Yes indeed, God is good. Even when I can’t understand His timing and His ways, I do understand his love, and that IS enough!"

It is my prayer that in those times that you "just can’t understand" that you will find hope as God says to your heart:

"There is no way to explain to you what is going on, why it is happening, or when you will see any change, but know this…
I LOVE YOU."

Tag: waiting

Resurrection Year {What I’m Reading Wednesday}