Often my readers write to me and ask me how they can pray for me. I don’t always know how to answer them. That is not a problem as I write to you today. My list is long and the need is great, but….my heart is full. So full of God’s peace and so fully His. I’m a girl who is lost in God’s love. You see, a hard summer of stormy trouble has taught me to walk on the water. Before I plead for your intercession, might I tell you the secret of wave walking?
It started with a betrayal. The kind that leaves you numb and in a shocked state of disbelief. Do you know the kind? Maybe a roommate has failed you or a boyfriend has rejected you. Or your mom has proven yet again that she cannot parent. We often pay the bill for another’s greed or selfishness.
At the beginning of the summer, I was already wrung dry and empty from overload. How would I work 14-hour days?
But I did.
And I tried so hard to be good. I said good things about others even when it was hard. Held my tongue when I didn’t think I could. Intended to make righteous decisions. And choose integrity when I didn’t feel like it. But I grew more and more weary. My emotional bucket began to crack from the weight of dryness.
One day, I decided God already knew what was in my heart. Why not let it out in front of him, if no one else? As C.S. Lewis once said, “Bring to God what is in you; not what should be.” That settled it: I decided to barf my emotional heart out. A shouting matching with God ensued in my living room. It might have sounded familiar to him. Like Job questioning. And God gently but firmly answering. Always so very right. Always wiser than my wonderings.
I was losing this shouting match.
There was nothing left to throw at him. Everything had been answered and he just wanted my obedience. My contentment. Nothing would change. Would I believe he was enough. That God was sovereign as I’d written about. Did I know in my deepest being that he works all things together for good?
With nothing left to ask, my shouting match with God came to accusation. And there really wasn’t much to say but this: “Well, you could have at least sent $5000 more in my Kickstarter campaign. You could do that in the next five minutes. Why didn’t you do that?” And then, I slammed the door to my house and stomped my way to the barn.
The horses looked at me as if they knew. Surprise in their eyes at the anger they felt steaming off of me.
I could not go back in that house. He was in there. In all His rightness and fury, I had mentally left God in there. What had I just done?
Quietly, I hung my head in surrender and apologized. I asked God if he might forgive my childlike tantrum.
He invited me back in to my home.
Inside, my phone was lit up with the familiar glowing of a recent text. It was from my faithful teammate Eileen, “We just got $5000.”
Really? My thumbs punched out a confession.
“I don’t usually open the mail at this time of day,” she wrote back upon hearing of my shouting match. “But God pressed me to open it NOW. And then, I don’t usually text you with every donation, but he pressed me to tell you NOW!”
I saw him then. Walking to me in the storm. His hands were stretched out to me in love. For a moment, I was ashamed. But who can look into that love and feel shame. Let no one…and I mean no one…ever do that. His arms are for all. And how firm the hold.
I stepped on to the water right then and there.
In the black.
In the night.
With the waves high above my head.
And it has been peace since that moment. I’ve wrapped myself in His presence like never before. The storm has only grown in fury.
That new Crazy Hair Tour wasn’t easy to produce and it got a little…well, hairy! Still working out details.
My dear precious Lexi is sick. Fatigue. Dizziness. Nausea. No diagnosis. A mother’s heart can barely hold the weight of not knowing.
Then, the darkest day. The eye of the storm. My beloved husband stricken with a mini-stroke. He needs rest. I see none in sight. But on that day—he at the hospital and me with my baby girl at a doctor—I knew how very held I was. I looked down. I was still standing on the waves. How unsteady they were, but I felt none of it. It was then that I knew how much joy and strength I’d been walking on since my shouting match. How getting it all out, invited me to be all in. How the Word had been my daily food and worship my drink. And my body was not weary. My soul was not fearful.
At midnight that very day I took a walk in the moonlight to sing:
“Never once did we ever walk alone;
Never once did you leave us on our own.
You are faithful, God. You are faithful.” (Matt Redman)
The secret to wave walking seems to be admitting how dark the night is and how high the waves have come. It’s then that we can understand how desperate we are for Him, that only reaching out for him…no matter the risk…will quiet the storm in your heart.
Please pray for my ministry and my family in this season of great need for it. But before you lift up a single request on my behalf, rejoice with me. Thank him for his presence and his ability to calm the storm the very moment he knows I’ve learned all he has for me. For us.
Please ask him to heal my Lexi. And my sweet husband.
And pray not that he would protect my name or my ministry, but that He would protect His name as I honor it.
