Psalm 100

(Amplified Bible)
Psalm 100
A Psalm of thanksgiving and for the thank offering.

1MAKE A joyful noise to the Lord, all you lands!

2Serve the Lord with gladness! Come before His presence with singing!

3Know (perceive, recognize, and understand with approval) that the Lord is God! It is He Who has made us, not we ourselves [and we are His]! We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

4Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and a thank offering and into His courts with praise! Be thankful and say so to Him, bless and affectionately praise His name!

5For the Lord is good; His mercy and loving-kindness are everlasting, His faithfulness and truth endure to all generations.

Thankful

In all this talk of valleys I think it's time to reflect. Yes, I know it's not an original thought, but let's do this anyway. Interestingly enough, when I begin to 'count my blessings', the valley doesn't seem so deep, so long, or so hopeless. To be honest, my position has not changed. My situation is still the same. Only my focus has changed. It's amazing how much this can affect your day!

Instead of looking at what circumstances put you in that valley, look at what (or Who) walks through it with you. Just to share my blessings with you, here are a few of them:

• Healthy parents who love me and each other.
• A sister who is my best friend.
• Brother, sister-in-law, niece & nephews who, while not with me, mean the world to me.
• A stable, Godly church, pastor and church family.
• A job & steady income.
• Friends who are less than a phone call away.
• A Savior who came to die for me.
• A Father who sent Him.
• A Comforter who is with me every moment of every day.

These are only a few of the many things I have to be thankful for. What things make your list? Celebrate Thanksgiving in Holland instead of Italy. That's where I will be celebrating.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear friends!

Welcome to Holland

Several years ago, I was facing a complete hysterectomy at the young age of thirty-five. Not only that, but I had never married or had children. This was and is one of the most devastating experiences of my life. Throughout this, I worked in an ob-gyn practice (lots of fun, dealing with pregnant ladies, when you are learning to face the fact that the person in the exam room will never be you). Someone, led by the Holy Spirit I know, told me the following story. I wanted to share it with you, my friends:

Welcome to Holland
Parenting a Special Needs Child
By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this:
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans: the Coliseum, Michelangelo's David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland
and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills – and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy ... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you many never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

There is so much truth in this that applies to every situation. Even infertility. I looked at my mother this afternoon (we are in this valley together) and we decided that it applied to us right now. We are going to celebrate through these coming days. We are going to find a way to enjoy the coming holidays. Even though it won't be what we had planned. Even though it won't be Italy, we will learn out how to celebrate in Holland.

Wrong Way

I had a strange dream this morning. REALLY strange. Let me tell you about it. A lady from my home church died and at her funeral, my friends and her brother were discussing an illustration she used to teach how to get to heaven. Now, as far as I know she has never taught this, so the only realistic thing was that her brother , whom I have never met, was there. We then struggled to cross a stream, the first of the steps, and began to try to 'work out our salvation'. For some reason, there was a time limit. Once you began the steps, you had to complete them within a certain amount of time. My sister, Lisa was struggling with one of the steps and we began to panic. I dropped and lost the things I was going to need for future steps. Panic was rearing its ugly head. I began to dig in the mud for what I had lost. Then I heard a Voice speak to my heart.

Why are you looking down?

Why are you digging in the muck and the mire?

In my dream, I recognized the Voice. My heart was lightened and I looked up to the sky. I spoke out, make that shouted out! "Stop! We are doing this all wrong! Each of us knows the path to salvation and this is not it! Our God is not in these works! Our God does not require that we dig through mud in order to be saved! He is with us and He is with us now! Look up! Let's get our eyes off of these tasks and off of all this mud! Look up!

We pulled ourselves out of the pit and the strange dream moved on to stranger and bizarre places. Then I woke up, groggy and still more than half-way in the dream. As I tried to wake myself up in the shower, I felt a drawing sensation to the dream. I didn't want to. I wanted to leave it behind and get started on my day. But I kept going back to the feelings I felt in the mud pit. I kept hearing that Voice. I realized that even in the Valley, He is with me. Stop looking and focusing on that valley. Stop focusing on how to get out of that valley. Stop focusing on the steps and the amount of time. LOOK UP!!! Stop looking the wrong way! He is with me. He is with you. Our way through and out of that valley is dependent upon nothing we do. It is all dependent upon Who we are walking with. The proper steps and clues that we have learned from this world are useless to us. We have nothing that can prepare us for this valley. That moves our dependence off of ourselves and onto our Lord.

Pursue Him. He will bring us through in His time. Breathe deeply of His Holy Spirit. Commune with Him. Let's take our eyes off of the mud, muck and mire. Take His Hand. He is a God of miracles. And even though there seems to be no way out, He will walk through this with us in His own time. He has chosen this path for us. And even though it seems to be a path of dread or pain, He walks it with us. Let us trust Him together.

Love from the Valley,

Lara

The Valley

I'm in a valley, right now. They can be such painful places, can't they?
This song, by Jars of Clay, has been a companion through some of the deepest, darkest vallies of my life.

Jars Of Clay

The Valley Song (Sing Of Your Mercy)

You have led me to the sadness

I have carried this pain

On a back bruised and nearly broken

I'm crying out to You

Chorus:

I will sing of Your mercy that

Leads me through valleys of sorrow

To rivers of joy

When death like a gypsy

Comes to steal what I love

I will still look to the heavens

I will still seek Your face

But I fear You aren't listening

Because there are no words

Just the stillness and the hunger

For a faith that assures

(chorus x 2)

Alleluia (x4)

While we wait for a rescue

With our eyes tightly shut

Face to the ground using our hands

To cover the fatal cut

And though the pain is an ocean

Tossing us around, around, around

You have calmed greater waters

And higher mountains have come down

(chorus) ...yeah

Alleluia (x4)

(chorus x 4)

Oh oh oh, sing of Your mercyMercy,

Your mercy.

Shattered Dreams

Last year, I felt the Lord prompting me to begin teaching a junior high Sunday school class. It only took a year to actually begin. Immediate response has never been a strong point of mine. While I have only taught a few lessons, I've enjoyed it so much. This past Sunday, Cindy, the girls' youth leader, was sick. Instead of my junior high girls and boys, I had junior and senior high girls. In getting together the lesson I had worked on through the week, I wondered if it would apply to all the girls. I prayed and asked the Lord to guide us. If He wanted them to hear that lesson, I would teach it. But I chose to be flexible. Not always easy for me!

In catching up with the girls, we talked about school, ACT's, and how both were going. One of the girls was worried. A mistake had been made and she couldn't see how it could be fixed. And the conversation went from there. I tried to explain to her that this mistake just gave her a way to watch how God works. All the Christian 'self-help' slogans preach that mistakes are just opportunities for God. But it's not just a phrase. It's truth. We forget that until the world comes crashing in. When health breaks down into sickness. When the money runs out and a pink slip comes in. When the ones we trust betray us. When all we've ever wanted becomes impossible. When our dreams lay shattered at our feet.

I told my own story. I cried. It's quite humbling when you're supposed to be leading and teaching and you cry. I tried to explain that God always makes a way and that I was learning that through my own experiences. Sometimes His way is a broken path. He doesn't always fix what we want Him to fix. But He walks that broken path with us. While we may feel alone, we never are. And He always replaces what we long for. Do I still miss those dreams? Yes. Especially at night, when the house is quiet and I'm the only one awake. But I'm not alone. And I don't mean my loved ones asleep in their beds. He is with me. And He comforts me. It's much easier to cry when you're alone and writing, by the way.

But I want you to know something. There are things and people in my life because of those broken dreams. I don't know if they would have been there had I not walked this path. I don't know if I would have appreciated them as much as I do now. Be encouraged, friends. He does have a plan through those 'mistakes'. And those plans can only be shown to His greatest glory through fractures.

UnGodly Decisions

In my years at Liberty Christian College (a LONG time ago), I took some counseling courses. One of the things I learned about was 'unGodly decisions'. These are decisions, or vows, we can make in response to hurt or pain. These pains can be real or imagined. We are faced with these choices in just about every aspect of our lives. One of my decisions from college was when I chose to show someone in leadership over me what my version of a bad attitude was. Sound childish? It is. But you don't have to be a child or immature to make that kind of decision.

I have found myself struggling with that response even in recent years. If I don't like someone else's judgement of me, my knee jerk response is to want to show them what their judgement really looks like. Now, either I'm shallow and immature, or I'm a sinner trying to learn from past mistakes. Wonder if the two really are the same thing? But that's a longer debate and for a future blog. To tell the truth, I thought I'd learned this lesson several years ago, but just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...

So what response does He ask of us? I don't think it's the one the little boy is having in this picture! In praying this through and receiving Godly counsel, I have questions that we should ask ourselves when faced with situations like this:

• Is this something that the Lord has been trying to tell you that you haven't been listening or open to? He is so gracious that He will never speak to you without first using His 'gentle' voice. Maybe it's something that needs to be exposed, that we've been trying to hide. If that's the case, take it straight to the Cross. Ask for, then receive forgiveness. Learn from it and try not to repeat history.
• Is this out of the blue? Did you have no warning? If this is the case, then examine yourself. Is it true? If it isn't true and you've been following your obligations to the best of your ability, then look outside of yourself.
• This may not even be about you! The person and issue that you are struggling with, could actually be their struggle. Sometimes we really are just innocent bystanders. They may be under stress and/or the Lord could be dealing with them in some area. If this is the case, them we have a huge responsibility. We aren't allowed to take offence. What we are allowed to do is to pray for and bless them. All the while continuing to fulfill our obligations.

None of these are easy or fun! I know, because I've done the opposite of all of these. Which also means that I keep running into the same situation. Same song, second verse. We aren't in a classroom. We don't have teachers who write a giant 'F' on our papers when we fail the tests of life. But our Father does 'hold us back'. He will repeat the same test, over and over, until we pass it. Makes you think that maybe a written test would be easier, doesn't it? These tests aren't fun, but He promises that the rewards are worth it!