Sleepless nights

My life has been consumed with sleepless nights.

Spiritual Warfare, meeting satan’s minions head on, as a child, in the dark, at night.

I have fought for years, trying to find the perfect rest of God’s peace. I still fight, as I write this at 3am, struggling to sleep. My mind wanders into places of hope and love, trying to find the peace, but I am awake with a vengeance, my body aches with restless motion.

Terror struck me in the dark, and I fought. Alone and wondering how to escape the realities of the nightmares, awake… in an unaided battlefield, no one taught me how to overcome.

Then I grew up, became a woman, a wife and a mother… and the sleepless nights persisted with a fiery, as I refused to allow my children to fight the same cold battle alone. So I walked the night in my home, praying and wrestling with the fear and anxiety the followed since childhood.

Still, more terror… 3:30 visitations from workers of darkness surround my home and I stay awake to battle. Not knowing the perfect rest that come from peace in my God, because I did not fully trust Him. I lay in bed, jumping at every sound and creak, every whimper my children made in the restful slumber. I suffer silently in the dark, fighting for peace.

The weight presses in and depression finds its way, but still I fight. I will not give into the terror, the fear of the unknown. Then my grandma and mom die in the same year and sorrow overshadows all of the joys and fears I possess. Not long after my father dies and sorrow looms a little longer. My exhausted body carrying the evidence of sleepless nights in physical weight, I struggle to lose. And then I break. My entire existence falls to the ground, like a tree struck by lightning, and a monstrous thud reverberates through my life.

I am a stump, a heap of broken flesh, on the ground, at the bottom. Nowhere to go, no more fight in me. I am shattered and torn from the life giving roots that sustain me. I cannot function and my life is consumed with sleep. I can barely move, my body is drained from life and all I can do is sleep to escape the pain of a childhood that stole my rest, in a place where I was not safe.

But the stump was not dead and in my rest, new life began to grow. New hope began to show and sprouts of joy overtook the stump until it was covered in growth. I was born again, into a place of healing and peace that I had never experienced before. I delighted in the reality that I could sleep, through the night, rest.

It was a time of bliss and wonder as fear no longer inhabited my life and anxiety fled from my atmosphere. But like most things in life, it was a season. A season I am afraid has ended, as my sleepless night persist again.

But all hope is not lost. In my sleepless phenomenon, I still have peace. I still experience rest. It is not that which my physical body benefits from, but my soul and spirit are at peace. I am finding a new understanding and definition of rest in these “new growth” sleepless nights. I find they are consumed with prayer, study, research, dreaming, hope and worship. Even on this sleepless night, I sit her, in the mountains, surrounded by God’s handiwork, listening to Julie True’s Healing Soaking music and reading Psalm 139…. And I am embracing rest. I resist the temptation to force myself to sleep and get up to find the rest. I am making every effort to enter into rest, Hebrews 4, so that I can experience the fullness of God’s glory.

So… I sit back, drink my Sleepytime Tea, and try to find the rest in the midst of my sleepless night. Knowing that there is purpose in it, knowing that “the darkness shall not hide from Him, that the night shines as the day; because the darkness and light are both alike to YOU,” Oh God. 

Playing in the mud

Life is messy.

It is not a neat organized, well planned event.

No matter how well we fake it, present it, package it- it’s a mess.

It is messy in our childhoods, messy in our love lives, messy in marriage, messy in parenthood, messy in friendships, messy in extended family, messy at school, messy at work.

It is the way the world works. Broken, falling apart, always dying. There is no hope in this world that can fix the messes. No joy in cleaning up the messes.

My life is a mess. It has always been a mess. From the moment I was brought into this world. Parents, not long after marrying, barely hanging on. Yelling, screaming, fighting; my father’s unfaithful heart broke my mothers. Messy. Divorce, depression, fear; my mother’s broken heart began to break ours. Messy.

At a young age, my innocence was stolen from me. Messy. Trying to find love and acceptance. Messy Falling in love with the wrong person, at too young an age. Messy. Giving too much of myself away. Messy.

I believed that life, was a fairy tale and that my prince would swoop me up from the messes and take me away to a castle far far away and all the messes would stay far behind me. My creative imagination captivated me and allowed me to live in Wonderland. My time there lasted only a year, but I found my Prince. His name is Jesus and he rescued me for the messes of reality.

In steps the man I was to marry. I was not attracted to him, I did not love him, yet the Lord told me he was my husband. I trusted my Prince and stepped into an adventure likened to Alice in Wonderland, falling down the hole into a place I could not even imagine in my mind.

For a moment in time, I felt safe and calm, brushing all the messes of my life under the rug. And for a time, a short while, we presented a clean, well-organized front.

The messes of my life and his, began to seep out from under the rug and our life became messy. In our most noble attempts to follow the Bible, trust God and believe Jesus, the messes of our lives created havoc in our marriage. Arguments, disagreement, words that can never be taken back. Forgiveness, repentance, washing our hands in the redeeming love of Jesus. Finding a way to live in the mess.

Not long after, children adorned our life and the messes from our own childhoods began to make their ways into our family. Fighting hard to keep the messes off our children, we became more of a mess. The arguing-refrained, turned into fear; the disagreements-kept quiet, turned into depression. Still the messes grew and grew in our little family. On a physical front, emotional and spiritual.

Trying to look good for church, we brushed the mess under the rug, smiled and waved at the perfect, plastic church people who maintained a clean, tight, organized life. Inadequacy wrecked our lives. At work, at home, as parents and lovers.

Then one day, as if a messenger from heaven came to deliver the message, hope came. The day was hot and miserable. The water was rushing form the hose and the kids were staying cool. Slowly the planter box filled up with water, as they played. I sat there, watching them slip and fall in the mud, laughing with a deep contentment. Mud flying everywhere, they giggled and slipped and threw the mess everywhere. Splats of mud smashed on the outside of the house, water spraying up into the air and spotting their dirty faces with hints of clean. Mesmerized by the beauty of innocence, wallowing in the mud, transfigured my mindset. Their joy spilled over into their us, thier parents, who threw off the image of clean perfection. We indulged in the simple wonder of contentment.

That was the day I began to delight in the messes. I began to delve into the messes. My vantage point was altered and the messes became an opportunity to play, to laugh, to be content. It was a life moment that would become my life motto. It was as if God was preparing me for the next part of my life. For not long after we encountered the messiest time of our lives.

Following dreams, losing dreams. Facing reality of poverty and loss. Insecure, angry, hopeless. Fighting, not arguing, fighting and yelling and screaming. Homelessness, fear, death. Being swallowed up in the abyss of grief, sorrow overtaking me. Oppression, continued poverty, more death. Guilt, shame, regret.

In the middle of it all, were my children. The ones I wanted to spare from the messes of this life. Standing right in the middle of it, my children experienced an indescribable mess. And, as if prophetic, I watched them play in the midst of it. The mess saturated their being, but it was just mud. It was just a time. The mess is still very present in their lives. It covers them from head to toe. But they have learned to find the joy in the mess, it is not debilitating. They have learned to be content in the mess, it has not destroyed them. They have learned to make the mess fashionable, and walk around without explanation of the mess.

In my attempt to keep my kids from the messes of this life, they were immersed in it. In my passion to give them more, the Lord reached down and showed me that “Life is the messy bits!” It is the stuff that defines us, that grows us, that shapes us. It will never be clean and tidy, it will always be a mess.

And so I delight in the messy bits of life. I find ways to play in the mud. I do my best to see things from the vantage point of my little children, who took the dirt of life and made it an adventure.

Life is a mess, but Jesus cleans us up. He wipes our faces so we can see, He cleanses us from the filth.  We will get dirty again, because this journey is long. But there is a promise that in eternity, the messes will no longer exist. Everything will be neat and clean and orderly as Jesus cleanses us from the filth.

Until then, I will trudge through the mud, finding new ways to play. New ways to make mud pies and mud baths and mud castles and mud art. I will embrace the reality that life is a mess, and I, I was made to play in it. 

The deep waters..

June 17, 2011


“He reached down from heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters.” -Psalms 18:16

Thank you Lord, for rescuing me from the deep, dark places of my heart. Thank you for giving me hope, by setting my feet on solid ground, so that I do not sink into the quiet abyss of pain and suffering; into the deep dark corners of the unseen heart of depression and hopelessness. Thank you for reaching out your hand to me. To me, this broken woman who is trying to BE all I want to BE and think I should BE.

I wonder how we get to the “deep waters” that consume us. How do we get to the place of needing to be rescued by the Living God? We are all there, or have been there, in some way in some capacity. I wonder how many of us have pushed the hand of God away and told Him, we can do it on our own; or even worse, I would rather drown. I have been in the place of almost drowning, the place of wanting to give up, because I became to weary to tread water. It was at that place, when death was upon me that I knew the only way I could live is if I stopped treading water and let my Savior save me. He watched me intently; to be sure I did not drown, as I stopped trying to do it on my own. And just as I began to sink into the dark deep waters, the Lord reached down from heaven and rescued me.

He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me” Psalm 18:19

Once he rescued me, He brought me to this place that looks a lot like freedom; open and big and filled with love and joy and peace. Not because he had to, but because He wants to; because HE delights in me. The creator of the universe delights in who I am. He delights in who he created me to be, flaws and all. The concept is something most of us desire. This unconditional love that covers a multitude of sins is overwhelming and is hard to grasp. All we have to do is receive it. Just open our hands, let go, begin to sink and receive the love our God has for us.

So here I am Lord, STANDING on solid ground, in this spacious place. Things look different, smell different, and feel different. It feels very dry and I am a little wobbly in this place, but I am determined to live here. I am determined to live under the shelter of your wings, so that I do not have to build my own fortress, to protect me. In my vulnerable state, I will trust that you will protect me.

I breathe a deep cleansing breath and look out to this spacious place where I now stand… I move my legs and take my first step.