To let myself be broken and loved...

Every day you can do one thing that you wish you could do for everyone. We will be known for our actual fruits, not the intentions of our imaginations.

Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way, p. 207

The decision was made for me, or I probably wouldn't have gone.  

How could I justify such extravagance? It was too costly. Too complicated, and too far from here to there. I haven't been well in weeks and fatigued from recent back-to-back flares and a trip to Louisiana. For goodness sakes. Even on good days I need help just to open a bottle of water. It's obvious I can't travel alone, and a traveling companion would only multiply the costs. 

Even worse, what if I go and feel too bad to do anything? 

Just in case, I tell my girlfriends--the ones who meet with me weekly to study, There's a one percent chance I'm going to Canada to see my friend Ann next week so I might need to cancel Bible study.  

When Louis bought me a new camera three weeks earlier, I hadn't told him what I'd been thinking. How I'd secretly longed for a new camera and lenses, but the cost was simply too much. Afterall, I thought. I'm no spring chicken. There's too many years behind me and not enough ahead to justify that kind of expense. What would be the point? 

Escalating chronic health issues that aren't responding to the current treatment plan combined with an overall lack of physical well-being left me vulnerable to the lies, and I was sensing a loss of purpose. I concluded that my ability to contribute anything of real value to those around me, much less anyone else, had faded along with my old camera and lens. I hadn't said one word to anyone about wanting a new camera when Louis up and decided I needed one.

Two days after we brought that new camera home, I hadn't taken it out of the box. I probably should return it, I thought. It's a luxury I don't deserve. And Louis tells me to accept the invitation to fly off to Canada and to take Emily with me? 

My Emily makes all the reservations. Roundtrip flights from Ft. Myers to Toronto with layovers in Charlotte. A hotel near the airport in Toronto.

She manages my luggage, opens my water bottles, drives the rental car, and buys me lattes. She keeps me moving, and when my body simply won't keep up, she slows the pace and lets me rest. I'm sure she's embarrassed by her slow old mama with no sense of fashion, but she keeps it to herself.

In Ann's back yard, we sit on quilt-covered bales of hay near the tables of coffee, juice and muffins while Ann gives herself fully to each of her guests. I see how she loves. How she kneels and bends low, gently grabs shoulders and cups faces. She leans into, moves toward and gives everyone her undivided attention. Selfishly I want her all to myself. To sit close and tell her the many ways her beautiful words have changed me, but I wander out to the edge of the field where her writing cabin stands and pluck a dandelion seedhead out of the ground. I hold the downy globe up to the sun and thank God for the gift of this perfect fall day.

If just for that moment, I forget all the ways I feel unworthy of the gift and let myself be loved.

A few miles from Ann's backyard, a welcome sign leans against the outside wall near the doors to the barn. Once inside, Emily and I find seats in the back row of chairs facing the corner stage where Ann reads passages from The Broken Way and Jason Gray sings. They both say the same thing, more or less. The broken are healed by being the broken for others. Tables of hot coffee and cider, plates of cheese and crackers, bowls of apples and popcorn, and trays of sliced pumpkin bread spiraled with cream cheese line the opposite side of the room. It's the most generous hospitality, and Ann stays until the last guest leaves.  

Three days after leaving us at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, Louis returns to pick us up at midnight. Just six short hours later, my dearest, tired Emily is up and off to work, and I open the large manila envelope with a copy of The Broken Way that arrived while I was gone. 

I read late into the night.

As long as I've known Ann, I've believed that she loves and lives like Jesus as much as anyone I know, but I haven't just believed it. I've seen and tasted the fruit of her sacrificial giving and serving and the wholeness she experiences as a result. Ann doesn't preach Jesus, she aims to live a cross-shaped life, and it's Jesus I see in Ann.

Those who claim Christ aren't only saved by a crucified Savior; their lives are shaped by Him. 

The cross isn't some cheap symbol of faith; it's the exact shape we embody as the life of Christ. When we won't see the suffering--who are all of us--we never form our lives like our Savior's.

The Broken Way, p. 268

In The Broken Way, Ann dares us to live #thebrokenway the same way she dared us to count One Thousand Gifts: by tenderly sharing her own brokenness and daring herself to live the cruciform life -- the only path to abundance.

A week ago I went to Canada and let myself be broken and loved...

...by God who whispered in Louis' ear that maybe he should buy me a new camera and send me to Canada, and Louis who heard God's voice and sacrificial ly responds.

...by Emily who patiently cared for her old mama and gave me the gift of time and presence.

...by Ann and her family who opened their home to strangers and gave the gift of  hospitality and words of love and affirmation and a renewed sense of purpose in the dare to live #thebrokenway.

The only life worth living is the life you lose.

The Broken Way, p. 209

Join me on this path into the abundant life #TheBrokenWay? Click on the photo below and check out all the free gifts you'll receive by pre-ordering a copy of The Broken Way by Monday.

TheBrokenWay.com

I'm pretty sure there's one thing I can do today for someone that I wish I could do for everyone.

Still Saturday::Undone together...

In the relinquishing of independence, I discovered community. My brokenness gave me connection, relationship. I thought asking for help was an admission of weakness. 

Instead, I discovered it a declaration of strength. Like King Jehoshaphat, it was the laying down of my crown that I finally found my place. 

Our God is a refuge for the broken, not a shelf for the display of the shiny. No more pride for those who have it all together, or shame for those who don't. 

Only stripped-bare humility, crowns on the ground. Together.

Michele Cushatt, Undone - A Story of Making Peace with an Unexpected Life 

To love broken people...{A GIVEAWAY}

He's a mess. His six-foot frame stretches gaunt and frail under the hospital bed's starched white sheet, his bare feet sticking out the bottom uncovered. He's badly in need of a shave and long overdue for a hair cut. The tubing that delivers oxygen into his nostrils has rubbed the skin raw where it drapes over his ears too-large for his face, and the coke-bottle lens of his glasses magnifies the fear in his eyes.

And it breaks my heart.

I'm nearly fifty when Alzheimer's plays tricks with his mind and emphysema clogs his lungs and he tells me he's afraid of the nurses - afraid they'll take his oxygen away or be mean. I help him scoot up in bed, fluff the pillows, tuck in the top sheet to cover his feet and rearrange and loosen the oxygen tubing off the raw creases behind his earlobes, but I can't convince him there's nothing to fear. I reach for his hand, squeeze gently, and tell him I love him, and for the first time I can ever remember, he says he loves me, too. 

Within the year, my father died.

I know he always loved me - he just never knew how to say or show it. 

I was not a daddy's little princess. There were no bedtime stories, daddy-daughter dates, or the benefit of his counsel about boys or college. I've never known what it means to be loved, nurtured and cherished by a father - as a child or an adult.

But I also see that this is his story, too. 

I never knew my father's father or anything about him or his character - only that he divorced my grandmother when my father was young, leaving his mother to support herself and raise their four young children alone. We did not visit my grandmother often, but I did live with her for a while when I was in nursing school. She was pleasant, but private, proper, and aloof. I have no memory of receiving or seeing her demonstrate love and affection toward anyone - including her own son, my father.

It's so much easier to be angry than it is to forgive because forgiveness means dying to those angry feelings and not acting on them. And dying is hard, but resurrection is the easiest thing, because once you've died, only God can give you life. So it's not you doing it, but Jesus, and suddenly you're standing on top of a mountain seeing the world for its beauty. Emily Wierenga, Atlas Girl, p. 73,74

Knowing my grandmother, helped me to understand and forgive my father, which in turn, helps me to understand me. It doesn't erase the loss or the way my father was unable to give me the love and attention I needed, or how it affected the sinful choices I made in a futile attempt to meet that need. There's always the temptation to be angry and to pass the blame for my own brokenness on to my father, but in the lavish, extravagant love of Christ, I'm free to love, to forgive and to understand and honor the way my broken father lived and loved the best he knew how - because Grace fills the gaps, redeems what's lost, and earnest love covers a multitude of sins.

In her heart-rending, yet beautiful, memoir, Atlas Girl, Emily Wierenga weaves a series of riveting vignettes that describe, with captivating prose, the brokenness she experienced in not being able to receive the love she needed from her parents, her battle with anorexia, her "mum's" cancer, and her marriage to Trent. With fascinating detail, Emily takes us with her from Canada to the Congo, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Mexico in her search for love, faith, and healing - a journey that ultimately takes her back home.

I am thrilled to be able to send a copy of Atlas Girl to one of my readers. Just leave a comment below before Sunday night. I'll choose a winner at random and post it on Monday.