How Jesus Rocked our World at a Healing Conference: Part 1

You may remember from this post that back in mid-January, I had to cancel nearly all of my tutoring appointments because of how poorly my body was doing.  It could have been quite discouraging.  But thankfully, Jesus had been leading Corrie and me into a renewed fervor for seeking more of his presence and healing power.

And he was answering our pursuit!

At that time, I learned of an upcoming healing conference happening at Bethel Church in Redding.  By upcoming, I mean in a week and a half.  Keep in mind, this was during a time when we had a 4 year old, a three month old baby, a fast-approaching deadline by which we had to move out of our apartment with no place to actually move to yet, poor health for me, and Corrie's regular job at the church.  

With all of these things on our plate, it was not the ideal time for us to take a trip.  But this conviction to pursue healing and more of Jesus' kingdom reaches deep into our hearts.  So I told Corrie about the conference and she, being the amazing wife and passionate pursuer of Jesus that she is, was totally on-board.  And though it wasn't convenient or easy to take the trip right then, we had the "peace that surpasses understanding."  The peace that feels nonsensical to our natural mind, which wants to fix all the storms in our lives. The peace that focuses on Jesus, the source of calm in those storms.

So we drove all morning on Wednesday, checked in to our hotel exhausted, and mustered our energy to head down the street to the conference.  Corrie and I were excited and nervous this whole time.  We had no idea what to expect.  All we knew was that Jesus was urging us to come here, and that it would be different than what we were used to.

Where We've Come From

Corrie and I have for a long time now been hungry for more of Jesus.  Not that he has ever deprived us of himself, but we have felt him telling us, "There is more to my heart and my kingdom than you've seen so far.  Come after me.  Come and see."  Much of that hunger has actually been fueled by this sickness and our desire for total healing.

And that hunger has led us to his Word where we see the Holy Spirit working in power in the lives of the church.  The sick get healed.  The trapped get freed.  Lives are changed and forever different because Jesus has come.  That's what we want for ourselves.  A real tangible difference made by a real encounter with Jesus.

Our church experience for most of our lives was filled with wonderful believers, who loved and were incredibly loved by Jesus.  With wonderful and powerful teaching about Jesus and salvation.  With many very good things.  But the ways of the Holy Spirit and His kingdom are still relatively new to us. 

What all that adds up to is this: We've been getting more and more comfortable with the uncomfortable things that we usually associate with the Holy Spirit and "charismatic" Christianity.  At least in theory we were comfortable with them.  Things like falling down when getting prayed for, demons manifesting in people and needing to get kicked out, speaking in tongues, prophesying, maybe even laughing and dancing…and MAAYYYYBE even shaking under the power of God.

Even as I write this, part of me feels uncomfortable with those things.  And yet, I can't say "no" to them just because they're uncomfortable or messy.  Because, what if?  What if Jesus is in them and I miss that part of him because it rubs me the wrong way?  Or it threatens my dignity?  Or it's messy?

Jesus abandoned all of his dignity for the sake of winning me back.  So who am I to hold on to mine?

What if I let my own reasoning and clinging to propriety rob me of fully knowing a God who is not proper or safe at all, but good and loving nonetheless?  Not to mention powerful.

These were some of our thoughts leading up to this conference.  They're all easy enough to espouse when you're a week-and-a-half and a four-hour-car-drive away.  But it's a whole different story when you're in the auditorium with your wife and two little daughters, wondering, "Jesus.  What are you going to do?  And please let it be you.  And, oh yeah, please heal me also."

The First Night

We got to the auditorium eager for Jesus and healing while also watchful and a bit guarded…just in case.  There was a fantastic time of worship, during which Rebecca blessed our hearts by standing and singing and raising her hands and giving herself wholeheartedly to Jesus.

You could tell that Darcy would have, but, in her words, "I'm just a baby."

Pretty shortly into the service, after the worship, we started seeing "things."  The man leading the service that night, Randy Clark, asked people who needed healing to stand.  He asked others nearby to gather around to lay hands on and pray for them while he also prayed from the front.

All around the auditorium we started hearing people making many, for lack of a better word, uncomfortable noises.  Some yelled.  Some started laughing.  Some cried out in what you could almost call a scream.  

All over the auditorium people were lying on the floor, some even shaking in various ways.  

An Interjection

I want to throw in a couple thoughts here that I'll share in more detail in the later posts about this conference.  These different reactions that we were witnessing, the yelling and falling and shaking can be and were unsettling.  Our mind wants to come up with all the explanations for why this isn't okay, why it isn't God, why it must be at best the people making it up or, at worst, Satan.

You see someone lying on the floor shaking and you think, "Jesus doesn't do this.  Demons do."  But then you talk to that same person and they tell you that during their time on the floor, they were seeing Jesus look into their eyes.  They were feeling him touch their body with waves of heat and electricity flowing from his hands, healing them.

Or you hear someone nearly scream and think, "Why would Jesus terrify someone so much to the point of screaming?"  But then that same person says that they were screaming in pain because God's power was so heavily cleaning them out.  One person even had a vision that Jesus was sticking a flaming sword into his stomach.  And the strange thing is that these people aren't traumatized or damaged.  They're beaming, peaceful, joyful, made new even.

And though these things sound so weird, I am reminded that the Bible is FULL of God doing weird things to people that may have been extremely unsettling.  But the fruit of them was none other than Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  And Jesus said, "You know a tree, whether it's good or bad, by its fruit."

Our Initial Reaction

But that night, watching all of this for the first time, we were not sure what to think.  I was standing to receive prayer, but nothing like that was happening to me.  I wasn't feeling anything in my body like heat or electricity or healing…nothing.  No physical signs that God was actually doing anything. 

We naturally started to wonder, "What's going on?  Is this stuff real?  Are these people crazy?  Are they just stirring themselves into an experience but not really connecting with Jesus?"

By the end of the night, there were people literally all over the auditorium having supposed encounters with God.  But Corrie and I just weren't quite sure.  We got back to our hotel room not knowing whether we should stay and go back again the next day.  It was all just so uncomfortable. 

But you know, that evening turned out to be a fantastic opportunity for both of us to hear Jesus.  Not to go by our feelings or natural thinking, but to set those aside to listen to His voice and to see what HE would have to say.  And in the midst of both of our wrestlings, we each heard him tell us, "Stay. Don't leave.  If you leave you'll be leaving out of fear and judgment, and you'll be missing what I have for you while you are here.  Don't give up.  Not yet."

So, together, we decided to stay.  At that point, we didn't know if what we had seen was really Jesus.  But we DID know that Jesus, the real Jesus, was with us and wanted us to stick with him.

Intrigued?  Read the second installment here...

To read the other parts of our Healing Conference series:
Part Two
Darcy's Interlude
Part Three (coming soon...)

In Marriage as it is in Heaven

Apparently, I'm slightly behind the times because Corrie already wrote a fantastic post on this verse a couple years ago.  But I've recently discovered that the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6 has one of the most foundational verses for healing in the whole Bible. Jesus, praying to his Dad says,

"Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Jesus came, bringing the kingdom of God with him, invading the kingdom of darkness that had been reigning in the earth since the fall.  And here he tells us what that means exactly:  God's will happening on earth in a way that represents the way things are in heaven.

Jesus is telling us to pray--to fight--for God's will in heaven to happen on the earth.  So we have this commission then to go out and change the world until it looks like heaven.  And that's what Jesus modeled for us by healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching the gospel, rescuing the poor, loving enemies and friends alike, saving people from sin.

So when I see someone on the street with a cast on their foot, I can know that there will be no casts or broken feet in heaven.  I get to fight to change that right now.  I get to lay hands on the sick and see them recover, like Jesus promised.  Or when I have a friend with a stiff neck, I know there are no stiff necks in heaven.  So I can pray and see the neck healed.  That's what the Bible says.

But here's what's really exciting:  this goes far beyond just healing our bodies.  This extends into every area of our lives, including marriage.

Corrie and I just went to a fantastic marriage workshop/Holy Spirit surgery session, so marriage is fresh on both of our minds right now.  And our question is this:

What are we believing God for in our marriage?

One of the more common sentiments about marriage in our culture is, "Marriage is hard work."  And that's it.  It's often said with this look of weariness and relief-that-I've-actually-made-it-this-far.  It's a look that should be more fitting for a soldier having just returned home from war.  I know I've been there.  But Jesus is offering me this hope:  God is excited--eager--to give us more than that.  He loves me and my marriage.

I agree that marriage is hard work.  But I don't want to let the fact of the struggle steal my faith for the blessing and passion.  It can be easy to lower our hopes and goals for our marriages over time as disappointment, hurt, and difficulty creep in.  We start to think, "Well this is just how marriage is.  Maybe God is using it to refine me, to make me more holy.  Passion was good at the beginning, but it's not needed anymore."

Corrie and I love each other so much, but we have gone through some difficult seasons.  We've gone through seasons of feeling like just business partners, of not really liking each other, of causing more frustration or sadness than joy.  Especially during the last couple of years as God has been uprooting unhealthy and hurtful things from us.  For me, selfishness, et al!!!

Anyway...moving on...It has been easy at times to think, "Well, this is just us.  This is the kind of marriage that we get: hard with some sprinklings of awesome. "

What's up with THAT?!  That's not God's plan for us at all.  Proverbs 5 says that there is a place, in the kingdom, where I can REJOICE in my wife, where her love is intoxicating to me.  That sounds more like, "Awesome with some sprinklings of hard." 

I know to some of us that may sound impossible after __ years of marriage.  But the Bible says it's God's heart, his will, and Jesus told me to pray for that to manifest in my life.   I get to pursue it with all my being until it comes.  And I pursue it with the full force of heaven, the approval of my Dad, and the power of the Lion of Judah to move mountains. 

In my last post I mentioned that we don't want to let our experience of sickness overpower God's revealed will for healing.  So even if my healing doesn't come at a particular prayer time, we don't try to rationalize it, we keep pushing for more until it does. 

Well, Corrie and I are ready to apply this to our marriage too.  We're determined to not let the times of struggle steal what we know our love CAN be, and IS.  We know that Jesus has a vision for our love of each other that is more passionate, joyful, and fulfilling than we've experienced thus far.  And we've been letting God teach us how to love each other in a way that reflects his love for us and that creates such an intimate powerful connection between us that no power of hell can sever it.

So my prayer for us is, "Jesus, your kingdom come in our marriage.  In heaven there is no bitterness, no selfishness, no distance.  In heaven there is unlimited intimacy and oneness, giving, self-sacrifice, passion, and fire.  Thank you Jesus that the cross's redemption is so far-reaching, even into transforming our marriage."

Bodies don't have to be sick in the kingdom.  It's not what Jesus paid for.  Marriages don't have to be broken, full of pain, sources of strife in the kingdom.  They can instead reflect the oneness that Jesus has with us.  The passion that he has for us.  His passion is a fire that is constant forever.  And if we are called to be like him in our marriages, then I've got to think that passion for our spouses, true LIKING of our spouses, excitement about our spouses has got to be possible for the long haul as well. 

Yes it's hard work.  But it's hard work on the road to the wonderful blessing that marriage is meant to be.

Jesus, Healing, and Childlike Faith

 (I wrote this post a few weeks ago.  I plan to write another update soon.)

Jesus is good.

His love is close and real.

We've been experiencing that so much lately.  In fact, during these last few months, as my body has started to show more of its old symptoms (pain, swelling, fatigue) and even some new ones, our inner experience of Jesus and his reality has been so much greater than it's ever been before.

Yes, you read that correctly.  My body hasn't been feeling very well.  I've had a lot of days of pain and rest.  I've had to cancel my work appointments more often than I've been able to keep them .  I've even begun to see new damage in my joints (namely my ankles and toes).  It hasn't been easy for either of us.

But here's the beautiful thing.  We believe in healing at the hands of Jesus now more than we ever have.  We have to.  The more we spend time in the His presence, letting his Spirit speak to us, the more he shows us the full power of the salvation that he bought for us.

Unfortunately, we can sometimes let the disappointments, the tragedies in our lives shape the truth that we believe.  But in so doing, we cheapen the finished work of Jesus.  We strip him of his power, of his goodness, of his compassion.  And I understand why.  We don't mean to do it.  We just come up with explanations for why our experience doesn't match his promises.  "He hasn't healed me because he has a greater purpose behind this."  "I am still overcome by depression or anger or judgment because it's part of who I am.  Someday, we'll all be free."  It's very very natural.

But we are now called to be SUPERnatural.  And that sometimes means letting go of our explanations.  For we are to "lean not on our own understanding."  We are to instead "trust in the LORD" and his revealed will in his word "with all our hearts."  "For the righteous", we who live and stand confidently in God's favor thanks to Jesus, "shall live by our faith."

For us, with my health, that means that we choose to believe that Jesus WANTS to heal me.  It's easy for us to believe that he can.  Of course he CAN heal me.  He CAN do anything he wants.  That's not really faith.  It's avoiding faith. 

It stems from a mindset that says, "God is all-powerful and thus can heal me.  However, he might not.  In fact, it's more likely that he won't.  And since he won't, it must mean that he must not want to for some greater reason."

But faith that moves mountains looks at Jesus, since his is the "express image" of the Father, and trusts in his revealed will, his heart, his character.  Jesus never denied a single person healing.  When asked if he wanted to, if he willed it, he said, "I am WILLING!"  What's more, he promised that we who believe would lay hands on the sick and they would be healed! 

He didn't say only some would be healed.  Instead, he healed 100% of his attempts and then said, "Go do likewise."  "As the Father sent me so I send you."  "You will do greater works than these."

When the disciples tried to heal the epileptic boy while Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, they failed.  Did that give grounds for a theology of defeat though?  No, because Jesus came and healed the boy.  Their experience showed nothing about Jesus' desire to see the boy well, about his will.

It's not the Bible that stops at "God CAN heal."  It's our reasoning.  Our experience has seen people get sick and not get healed.  So we start to put on our adult-tinted glasses and reason ourselves out of childlike faith in the outlandish promises of God.  But we can't let what we haven't seen malign the name of Jesus.

So if Jesus walked into the room right now, would he heal me?  Absolutely.  His compassion compels him.  It's irresistible.  It IS his will.  The Bible says.  So we fight for that.  We push into that.  We resist the urge to reason, and we let faith in God's truth shape our experience. 

Adventures in Peru

Hola! Como estas? Now that the holidays are almost over, I figured I should sit down and go ahead and report on my trip to Peru and all that happened there. What a great time we had! Teresa, Hilary and I left on Wednesday evening of November 13th, arriving in Lima around 10:30am on Thursday morning. While still in the airport waiting for our ride, we ran into a group of women arriving from the church in Arequipa, a city in the south of Peru. Only one of these women spoke English – like, at all – so we got started right away practicing our Spanish! As Pastor Fabio drove us out of the airport parking lot he warned us to be ready for the infamous Lima traffic, and he was not exaggerating. It was quite fun. The city of Lima is very full with 9 million people in the main area of the city – and they all have places to go! We spent the remainder of Thursday walking around the district of Miraflores, and having dinner at La Lucheria, a “sangwich” shop. It was so interesting to Teresa and I the words that were ever so slightly different between Mexican Spanish and Peruvian Spanish, “sangwiches” being one of those words. The Peruvians did poke a little fun at Teresa and me for speaking “Espanol Mexicana”  On Friday, Pastor Fabio and his wife, Mariella, led us and some of the people visiting from other parts of Peru and Venezuela around on a little tour of historic Lima. What a beautiful city! The government buildings in the oldest area have a strong Spanish architectural influence, and are so ornate and lovely. We actually got to see the Peruvian Presidente as he stood on the steps of the main government building while someone made a speech. The locals seemed uninterested…but we thought it was pretty cool. And I did have kind of a fun time smiling at the expressionless, heavily armed guard until he smiled back at me. On Friday evening the Women’s Conference began, which was of course the main reason we were there. Both Hilary, my pastor, and Yerelyn, a pastora from Venezuela spoke at the conference, and both did wonderfully. Hilary had to speak through a translator, which made her job a little harder than usual, but her interpreter, Maria, was so wonderful, and really helped us all quite a bit throughout the trip. By Friday evening I was speaking Spanish fairly well, and over the course of the next 3 days I continued to get better. This was, as you may remember, one of my main prayer requests, and I do feel that the Lord really answered it. I took Spanish classes in high school, but…ya…haven’t used it since…and so I was worried that it would all be gone. But immersion really is the best way to learn it – and after the initial 24 hour period of the “deer-in-headlights” look, I started following what was being said, and verbs just kept coming back to me. There were even a couple times when I was around only Spanish speakers for a few minutes and didn’t feel totally lost. The openness and loving hearts of the Peruvian people that we met made a huge impression on me. They were so blessed by our coming, but also blessed us by really wanting to get to know us and hear about our lives. One of the times I was with all Spanish speaking women, I managed to construct some sort of Spanish paragraph about my little family back home, and I briefly mentioned that my husband had a chronic illness. Thank fully chronic is almost the exact same word in Spanish . One of the women, Angela, immediately stood up and said (I’m translating now) “No! Well, do you believe that Jesus heals?” I replied that I did, and that we have been asking for it constantly, and believing that He is at work. I shared with her one of our favorite verses (the verse that our blog title is based off of in Exodus), and they all started saying “amen” and “yes!” And then Angela started speaking very quickly to the other women, and they gathered around me and just started praying for me. It was very special. For a while I tried fully understand what they were saying, but after a minute or so, I just allowed myself to feel the love and care that they were expressing, and I was just praising the Lord that He and His love is not bound by language. A few days into the conference, both Teresa and I had an opportunity to share a little of our testimony with the women at the conference. After we shared, and Hilary finished speaking, we were all told to break off into pairs to pray for each other. I turned to a woman behind me who I had chatted with a little, but hadn’t really spent much time with yet. When I asked her if she would like to pray with me she blushed a little and said that she had really been touched by what I shared, and that she had wanted to pray with me but thought that maybe we didn’t know each other that well yet and I wouldn’t want to. I am so glad that I followed that inclination to pray for her. It was a great time of prayer for both of us. Over the weekend I was also able to connect with many of the young adult women who attended. Most of the younger generation knows at least a little English, and so we were able to communicate fairly easily. They were so eager to hear my life story, my thoughts, and even my advice for their lives. Many of them are now my friends on Facebook  One girl, who was from the church in Iquitos (which is in the northern Peru in the jungle) and did not know very much English, hugged me on one of the last nights and said in very broken English “I no entiendo ingles, but – we are friends”. I hugged her and said that was very true. I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to make all these sweet friends. I know they will pray for me as they said they would, and I think of them and pray for them often too. I loved hearing about their lives and finding out what we have in common. I enjoyed tasting Peruvian food, and experiencing their culture. I became good friends with my host, Silvia and her new husband from Venezuela, Pedro. We were so tired when we got home, but so full of good memories and testimonies of the Lord providing and going before us. He kept us safe, He kept our families safe, and He was, as He has promised to be, faithful. Thank you all for praying for me and

Off to Peru!

Hola y Buenos Dias mi familia y amigos!

This Wednesday evening I will be boarding a huge plane for my first ever mission’s trip and my first ever visit to South America! I am just so excited and honored to be part of this team I can hardly handle it…and I didn’t want to go without telling you (our faithful readers) all about it. 

A few months ago Hilary, my friend and pastor, was asked to speak at the National Peruvian Foursquare Women’s Conference in Lima Peru. Our senior pastors, Todd and Hilary have had a relationship with Fabio and Mariella, the couple who lead Foursquare Peru, for a few years now, and this trip has come out of that friendship. Since I am Hilary’s assistant, I heard about the trip pretty early on, and in my heart I thought “I wanna go I wanna go!” But I also wanted to be patient and see who Hilary had on her heart to take with her. So it was even more exciting when she asked me to go…it was a pretty easy decision at that point.

Matt was also SO very excited for me.  He is looking forward to some special time with Rebecca, and we are both incredibly grateful that his health is so much improved that me leaving for 5 days is possible. (More on that really needing to come soon in a post, huh?)

So the next step was to raise the money for the trip, something that I was nervous about. I have never gone on a mission’s trip before, and so I had never had to write a support letter before. While I love getting support letters from other people going on trips, me being the writer pushed on a vulnerable spot for me.  I didn’t want anyone to feel pressured or expected to do anything, and yet I know that every time we receive a support letter (and depending on the season in our life sometimes we support through prayer, sometimes we send five bucks, sometimes a little more), it is always such a blessing to us that we get to partner with that person and be behind them while they share what the Lord has done for them in another place. 

And so, trusting that the Lord would take care of the finances, I sent out the letter. 

And shattering my fears, and blowing my mind, BAM! Just like that I was fully funded. 

But more than that, I feel fully supported. I separate the two because the outpouring of love and prayer and excitement and questions and the “I’m so excited to hear stories” means so much to me. Of course just getting to go monetarily speaking is awesome, but the fact that my trip is on so many people’s hearts and to know that they are praying for me, whether they sent money or not, is hugely humbling and encouraging.

Dear friends sent me notes, deeply blessing me. Two of my previous students who are 4 and 6 years old, actually went and dumped out some money from their piggy bank because they were so excited that “Teacher Corrie” got to go to another country and tell people there about Jesus. Like the little boy who gave Jesus his lunch, these little boys just wanted to give what they could – but to me, it was treasure!  

And so, feeling thus supported and incredibly loved, I am fervently packing and list-writing and alternately last minute shopping and freaking out that I will forget something : )  (But it’s a good kind of freaking out…mostly)

I will write more when the trip is over about all that we actually did, and while we have been emailing back and forth with the Pastors there in Lima, sometimes the translation is a little iffy, so here is the run-down of what we will be doing – as we currently understand it : )

Hilary will be speaking twice at the conference of probably one or two hundred women. She has asked both Teresa (our third teammate!) and me to be prepared with a possible testimony to share at one or the other of those talks if there is time (This is Hilary’s first time preparing a teaching that will have to be entirely spoken through a translator…so budgeting time is tricky). Then, after the retreat, we will also be meeting in a smaller setting with women from around Peru who are in leadership of some kind in their churches. The focus of this meeting will be not only to encourage them and pray for them, but also to discuss what it means to hear from the Lord, and how to walk in faith, and also humility as we share with people what we feel is on our heart from the Lord to say to them. Again, Hilary has asked Teresa and me to be prepared here with a testimony of hearing from the Lord, and what we have learned so far about how to share that with others. 

I am so eager to see all that the Lord has in store for this trip. From the conversations on the plane in between trying to get a good night’s sleep : ), to the relationships we build with our host families, to the words we say, and the words we hear, to the health and the contrary-to-jet-lag-űber-energy we are believing for, I am trusting that the Lord will be in it all.

Things to please pray for!

• My hosts will be Pedro and Silvia, a newly married couple almost exactly the same age as Matt and me. I would love to be a blessing to them, and would love this to be the beginning of a lasting relationship. 
•  Confession: I get trip anxiety. It’s not usually during the trip, but more before the trip as I try to prepare for all the unknowns and then that’s not possible and then I try to think of the possibilities and then…and so on and so forth. So, ya, that would be a please pray for this right now! : ) 
• Please pray for our health. Traveling wears anyone out…and I don’t want to be worn out! Sometimes airplanes lead to little bugs in the recycled air (trying not to think about it), and I don’t want to be sick. Peru has different foods, and water-drinking “considerations” – and again, I don’t want to get sick. I want to be all there. 
• Pray for Matt and Rebecca. I know they will be fine, and we are so surrounded here on the church campus that I know if Matt needed anything he would be supported…and yet, I don’t want them to miss me at all. I want their time together to be so special and bonding that me being gone for 5 days actually added to their relationship. I love them both so much. Also pray that I don’t miss them too badly – a little missing is good…just not too much : ) 
• And lastly, please pray that my heart is open to what the Lord wants to do in me on this trip. I know there will be places where He wants to challenge and grow me, and in my mind I’m up for it…but sometimes it’s a little harder when it’s actually playing out…So I’m asking that my heart is soft and ready to hear from Him.

Adios y hasta proxima semana!

Thank you all! Love to you!

"I Want Jesus!"

Parenting is such a strange adventure. On any given day I can experience joy/tiredness when she wakes me up to snuggle – she prefers our cheeks to be touching while we snuggle – then delight in her cuteness while she plays with her animals, then annoyance when she baby talks to her animals (her animals fuss a lot), then noble, self-sacrificial maternal care when she asks for a snack, then frustration when she won’t stop asking for a snack (Mom just needs two minutes!), then love when she goes down for her nap all snuggly, then devastation when she wakes up from that nap just 5 minutes after I finally had a chance to lay down, then happiness while we play before dinner, then “mom-eyes” when she won’t eat her dinner, then exhaustion during the 30 step bedtime process (“Mom, I have to get back out of bed cause we forgot to brush my teeth!” How do you argue with that?), then back to love when I go kiss her before I go to bed (Oh my gosh, she stirred! Please don’t wake up please don’t wake up…)

I love all that the Lord has taught me through being her mom, and even through the things she says.

Lately we have been going through the “bad-dream” phase that a lot of kids go through. It has been so comforting to talk with other parents who say that their kids went through it too and they grow out of it etc…but it is still so hard to watch. 

There are practical reasons for it (ie growing awareness, being exposed to more info as you get older, trying to process that info etc), but I really believe that it is also a very early form of spiritual attack. Of course the enemy wants to make children feel scared, unsafe, alone, and confused. That’s what he wants to do to all of us.

I have battled with terrible dreams my whole life. I will wake up crying, or feeling nauseous for most of the morning. Often I can’t even remember the dream; I just know it was awful and dark. But that’s me. And it’s one thing if the enemy tries to attack me. It’s a whole other ball game if you come after my kid.

So when Rebecca started having nightmares that she would wake up crying from, or worse, the night terrors when she never even fully wakes up, just cries and refuses to be consoled, we just started praying over her while we held her at 3 in the morning (this is an attack on parents too, who aren’t the most lucid at 3am), and praying more specifically against that before she went to bed. 

Rebecca would also ask questions about the dreams and how to make them stop. So we would go over with her that Jesus is stronger than those bad thoughts and bad dreams. And He never goes to sleep, and never leaves her side, so she can call for Mommy and Daddy, and she can call on Jesus too.

One morning a few weeks later, I asked Rebecca how she slept.

“Oh not good” she said “Bad guys AND Jesus were in my room all night! And the bad guys were saying mean things to me.”

She went on to tell me that the bad guys told her to get out of her bed and that Jesus wasn’t there (vicious!). As my righteous-don’t-bug-my-kid-mom-anger burned inside me, I asked her as calmly as I could what she did about it?

“I said to them ‘NO! I want Jesus! You go away! My mommy and daddy love me!’”

Suddenly I stared at her. This tiny little person, just barely three, was doing battle.

“Wow, Rebecca” I said, “that is exactly right. You did the very right thing. Those thoughts cannot stand against Jesus. You are very brave.”

I was shaking with anger and excitement and a new wave of mom-unpreparedness. I was suddenly aware that while I am raising a little girl, who is naughty and silly and often at the same time, and won’t eat her spinach unless it is folded (!?), and blames her baby-talking on her animals, and bursts into manipulative tears when possible, and thinks she can read cause she has books memorized, and fights with her friends but also wants to sleep over at their houses, and will only be consoled by me after the most infinitesimal scrape on her leg – I am also the guardian of a tiny little spiritual being, who is already learning that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, powers, and forces of darkness (Ephesians 6:12). And this little child has the simple faith that I forget to have. The simple faith that Jesus challenged us to have!

The faith that just says: “No! I want Jesus!”

That little statement has such power in it. And I was acutely reminded that I am in over my head.

Lord, I ask you a lot to help me raise my child. But Lord! Help me raise YOUR child! You have plans for her, and you are making her a tiny little faith filled warrior. Show me how to mold her!

I get proud of my kid ‘cause she can write a few letters. She can recognize her name when written and she is ace-ing the little phonics games we play. I get proud cause the little “what doesn’t belong in this picture” SAT prep portion of her Pre-K workbook was so easy for her that she looked at me with the funniest “duh” expression ever. Call the Montessori schools people! I am 100% confident that I have a genius here! (Full disclosure: I just misspelled genius. yikes. Apparently Daddy will be teaching the spelling portion of the pre-k workbook…)

 
But I get really excited when my little girl believes, and acts on the fact that Jesus loves her, and is available to her. Because above ALL the hopes and dreams I have for that little future ballerina/Broadway superstar/athlete/Mommy/world renown artist, my biggest wish is that she knows the Lord, and that she gets to walk with Him, and hear from Him, and touch others along the way.

To the other side!

Good evening friends.  Thank you all for your excitement for our family over the last couple of weeks.  It sounds funny to thank someone for being excited, but I really do mean it.  You all have your own lives with your own concerns and dreams and schedules...and it really means a lot when you care so much to know how things are going and make it a point to pray for us.

Here I am, back in Carson City looking forward to my third full week of treatment.  I just got back here this afternoon after driving Corrie and Rebecca home.  They had come for the whole second week...and now I really miss them...A LOT.  But my heartsickness doesn't negate the fact that this is still such a huge blessing, a gift from the Lord that we are so immensely thankful for.

I know that we didn't write at all about how last week, the second week went.  We were too busy having family time venturing to Tahoe, getting our car fixed, making wonderful new friends, etc.  By the way, this is the baseball/Dad in me coming out, but Rebecca and I played whiffle ball for the first time while they were here.

I set her up with one of those fat plastic bats, a little plastic tee, and the ball...and she hit it.  BUT....then I thought, "I bet she could hit a real pitch."  So we got rid of the tee, and I showed her how to stand and where to put her hands.  Backing up to about 7 feet away I told her to watch the ball the whole way, you know the typical baseball advice.  I threw her a nice soft underhand pitch and she WHACKED it right back at me!  The first pitch she's ever seen in her life, and she makes contact...my budding three year old all star.

But all proud dad moments aside, I wanted to talk about something I could feel happening today on my drive up here.  I found myself worrying.  I started worrying that this opportunity from the Lord to come and receive such top of the line treatment would just be a flash in the pan that would eventually turn into another "nice try" with no lasting healing value.

Now, this worry is not from a lack of results.  I can honestly say that I feel far FAR better right now--after an exhausting weekend of little sleep and a LOT of driving--than I did on the day I walked in for treatment.  Good things are happening.  My body is being restored.  But nonetheless, the worry was there.  What if I wasn't receiving enough of a certain kind of treatment during my three week window of opportunity?  What if his plan for me when I go home won't be enough and I actually need months of intensive treatment?  What if it doesn't stick, and I could have done something differently to prevent that?

Then, the Lord brought to mind Paul's question in Galatians 3:3:

Are you so foolish?  Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

And I remembered two weeks ago when I was getting hit with fearful thoughts: What if I shouldn't be here?  What if they don't know my situation?  What if he didn't think I would actually take him up on his offer?

Back then the Lord showed me that it was all OK.  It was OK that I had no plan B because he had established my steps.  The "what if's" didn't matter because he was directing me the whole way.  My fear faded, giving way to faith in his presence and promises.  And that stance, of walking through this with no plan of my own, no trying to make anything happen, just simple release into the Lord's hands and following him, has led to spiritual healing and freedom...not to mention a wonderful experience at the clinic.

Now, it's time to choose that path again.  I'm choosing to not reason this thing out, to not have a stance of grasping at every little ounce of...whatever I can get for fear that soon it will all be gone, that the well will run dry.  The Lord has spoken good things to us about this doctor, this clinic, this whole thing.  And those good words from Him stand in direct opposition to these little lies that try to sway me.

And it's funny, I just read Mark 4 when I got here.  It's the story where Jesus and some disciples set sail to cross the sea, and he says to his disciples, "Let us cross over to the other side."  While they're on their way, a huge storm comes up and starts tossing their boats and filling them with water.  Meanwhile, Jesus is sleeping.  The disciples freak out and wake him up asking, "Don't you care that we are perishing?"  To which Jesus replies, "Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?"

He really drove this story home with me this evening.  "I've told you that we'd make it to the other side.  What's more, I'm even making the journey with you...AND I'm not even sleeping this time.  These little lies washing over into the boat are no match for my power."  And as he called out, "Peace, be still!" to the storm, he gently whispers the same thing to me.

He has had his hand in this whole Carson City experience from the beginning...months ago when he told me, "I'm giving you favor here."  How will he not see it through to full completion for the greatest good?

We've got to keep our eyes on his promises, on HIS truth.  This life, Satan, our flesh all send lies our way that masquerade as truth...but they are powerless in the presence of Jesus. 

Galatians 3:5

 Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Romans 15:13

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.