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He is enough

piano
New Zealand

 

Have you ever known something, but even though you know it, like really know it, you still question it all the time?

A hesitant knowing.

I have known that I have needed to write this post for weeks. Weeks of musing, weeks of thinking, weeks of mind debating but I have a hard out heart-war to declare what I know to be true.

These coming words have not been flippant, quick cliches, that are rolling out of my keyboard without deep contemplation. These coming words have been an internal fight to turn into an external song.

Over the last couple of years (Okay maybe five years) I have really wrestled with the idea of prayer and healing. Not specifically prayer for healing, the concept of them separately.

I have questioned after many a series of calamity, whether prayer is actually as powerful as I have been lead to believe.

I have wrestled.

I have pleaded.

I have asked simply for revelation.

You see I have seen many answered prayers come to pass over this season of contemplation. It is not whether I have seen fruit from my faith. The problem is I have seen and watched many people at the same time pray with as much fervour and faith, without any answer.

I am hesitant to write, that I have often questioned whether God is enough.

Is He enough?

I really want Him to be, but so often I live a life that does not show this to be absolutely true. A life that wrestles with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, He just cannot hear all the time.

Maybe just maybe He skips some prayers and answers others.

Maybe just maybe He is playing a divine game of Russian Roulette.

Maybe.

Or Maybe not.

The haunting part of this state of questioning, is that I know. I know that I know, He is real. I know that I know, that I know, I have prayed and He answered so clearly that either I am a little loopy or He is a lot real.

I’ve seen people helped, I’ve seen miracles unfold, I’ve spoken words that are profoundly not my own, I have written passages that have come to pass, I have seen Him move.

I have heard His voice.

I have known that He is absolutely good.

The problem is often my perspective and often I have just seen many crazy things done in His name as well. These two things combined, has wearied my heart to trust that He is enough.

People and perspective have been my greatest let down but I layer this belief onto the sovereignty of His will.

My heavy heartedness from the way people have projected their questions onto His way, has grown and grown.

When people are experiencing devastating seasons of loss, the last thing they want to hear is that maybe God has another plan. When friends have waited and waited, prayed and fasted, yet their breakthrough has been slow to unveil, the last thing they need sprouted off to them is a quick witted cliche that makes the person saying it feel better about the awkwardness of the situation.

Every time we fake our response to someone and speak irrelevant, insensitive untruths to make ourselves feel somewhat more comfortable in the state of in-between for the person we are interacting with, we reinforce this unspoken question of whether He is enough.

He is enough.

I know He is.

He has shown me over and over again at the power of His presence.

The problem I have always battled with is changing my perspective on what enough looks like for me, this side of eternity.

My enough, is so different to His.

My version of solution is very shallow in comparison to His.

My answer to his tarried response is never with the insight of what is to come.

He is enough.

Even when we have come to the very end of our capacity to trust and hope.

He is enough.

I am certain of it.

Even though I question.

I know it to be true.

But he said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So then, I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in me.

2 Cor 12:9

As I step into this New Year, with the potential for amazing grace and heartfelt mercy, I am reminding myself once again that His power is made perfect in my weakness.

In the midst of my questioning, this wandering heart is leaning in to hear from his soft, gentle whisper.

Amongst my heart that heaves and groans awaiting his perspective, I can say without a shadow of a doubt He is enough.

Lord, change my perspective this year about what is enough in my world.

Help me see your ways above my own.

Amen.

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you are enough

The farm
Eagle Rest, Dwellingup

Each day awakens across our Earth with the same number of moments. There are families in this very moment savouring each and every breath as they wait and watch their loved one pass, there are Mothers today regretting times when they said something that fractured their family apart. There are wives sitting without husbands, counting the days, seconds and milli-moments, hoping they could rearrange and go back to a place when what was lost could be re found. There are men crying at the charred remains of their beloved homesteads.

Every moment across our Earth, people are succeeding, people are fading, people are burying and people are birthing.

We each have the same amount of moments, but we each spend these moments very differently.

The last month for us, has been a crazy ride of delight and devastation. From losing loved ones, to welcoming favourites from overseas. From opening presents, to New Years reflections. From the bushes of the outback of Western Australia, where scorpions landed on friends legs, to winding back lanes in New Zealand, foraging to celebrate the life of a dear friend.

Tonight as I sit here and write, the farm where this photo was taken just a few short days ago, is just one town from a raging bushfire. Life is increasingly fragile and the more we give in to the delicateness of its trust, the more we struggle with our capacity to move forward into new days.

As I have traversed the highs and lows, the long plane trips and the slow, telling forrest highways, I have had a little something raging in my heart of hearts. A few words that change absolutely everything.

These words are not just for me this New Year I suspect, I am thinking they are for you as well.

Words that have haunted me, because if I was absolutely down right, disgustingly honest. I did not achieve either of my goals for twenty fifteen. Both of them remain unfulfilled. With every valid excuse in the world, I just didn’t pull them off.

How about you?

What about your New Year?

Has it been quiet?

Has it been devastating?

Has it been uneventful?

What about quietly inspiring?

The words that have been whispering to me in the wake of such a unexpected and dramatic end to twenty fifteen are these simple three words.

You

Are

Enough.

You are enough my friend.

My dear friend Ruthee has taught me more in her passing, than any moment of intense conversation that we have shared together. That life is so short, it is a vapour, it passes through our hands, leaving joy and questions in its wake.

What stops us often from stepping forward into days of deep satisfaction, is we spend our days looking backwards and trying to make sense of our past mistakes.

This New Year the greatest gift you can give yourself is to be kind, forgiving and gracious to yourself more than others. By telling yourself you are enough.

You alone are enough

You have nothing to prove to anyone.

Maya Angelou

We stumble and we fall, we step over and around people and memories, we are impacted greatly by grief and unanswered questions but one of the greatest hurdles to living a deeply satisfied life is always carrying the burden of shame and not enough-ness. (I know it’s not a word, but I like it).

Not only are you enough, but those who are closest to you, your kids, your husband, your friends, they are enough.

Isaiah 41:10 reminds me of this…

Do not be afraid for I am with you.

Do not be discouraged, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you.

I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

In the wake of seasons that don’t make sense, when you are unsure if you can keep walking into a New Year, New Day, New Season, New Month, New…new…new..

Be kind and forgiving, take it slow and be soft with yourself.

You are enough.

Lower your expectations of yourself and just walk.

Walk slow, walk kind, walk…walk…walk.

And if you haven’t taken time to reflect this New Year yet, then it is not too late.

Ask questions.

Forgive yourself.

Let go.

Step over.

It is a new day and you are enough.

I had so many plans about how I would launch twenty sixteen, with new looks and new ideas, but honestly for today, this is enough.

Join me in tagging your creative pursuits or what inspires you this year with the hashtag #inspire16

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what is love?

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There are many days that I find it difficult to explain love.

Days when I have been betrayed by a friend who I thought had my back,

Days when I am so tired from being a Mum of two, that my legs drag and my heart aches,

Days when I am confused by words, trying to decipher between their lies and secrets held.

Love is not easy to explain, because I think culturally it has been expressed as a feeling, rather than an action.

We say it’s love; when we feel caught up in the emotion of infatuation…

We say it’s love; when we receive something of worth…

Love is in fact the way we act when we have nothing left to give but ourselves.

Love is the moment we say yes, when everything within us wants to say no.

Love is believing the best, love is accepting a difference of opinion, love is holding on when everything in your heart wants to let go.

Love is saying sorry when it hurts, love is finding a way to let go when you think about that situation over and over.

Love is not subjective, love does not have boundaries of race, gender, age or disability.

Love is way beyond an emotion.

Today is the one day that I find myself overwhelmed by love.

A day of reflection, a day of betrayal, a day of sacrifice.

One of the greatest scenes in the Easter story is the one where Jesus hangs between two thieves and he gasps ‘Not my will be done but yours.’

He didn’t want to walk the path towards death. He laid down his will, to prefer another.

Throughout the centuries, the cross has been used as a tool of judgement, a tool of shame, a symbol of exclusion, used to deny people access to the Father through works.

This goes against the very fibre of what the cross actually signifies.

No matter where you stand today surrounding and watching the Easter story unfold. Whether you think it is a fable, whether you feel excluded and stand in its shadow, whether you feel disappointed by its terrible historical implications, whether you are indifferent…

Today in my view the cross equals love.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

From one who was betrayed, to one who was crucified, to one who sacrificed his life to prefer another…

This is love.

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Church, it was never designed to…

God, spirituality, hope

God, spirituality, hope

Most Sundays I wake and the first thing on my mind is Church. Not the hipster interpretation of a group of people judging each other for what they wear and how cool their instagram feed is.

Church; intentional, beautiful, broken, often disappointing.

What thoughts come to mind when you think about it?

Old men wearing robes and swinging incense?

Scandals, laced with deeply hypocritical dialogues?

Times when you have trusted people and they have completely broken that trust? or

Moments of sacred contemplation lighting a candle for a loved one?

Music?

Money?

Coffee?

Fashion?

Judgement?

What comes to mind?

The word Church actually means a gathering of people. A community of people seeking God, taking time to reflect on their internal spiritual worlds and encouraging one another to look outside of that introspective place.

Sundays make me think about my people, my faith, intentions, opportunities, forgiveness, forgetting or trying to do my best to let go at least.

Church is not;

a set of rules,

an obligation,

rituals,

make believe,

a crutch for the weak,

a costume that you wear.

Lately I have been consumed with seeking the new.  New days, new ways. Echoes in my heart over and over.

What is next? What needs to be left behind? What is religion? What is real?

In my pursuit of truth, I don’t want to lose sight of what is good, what is meant to be hard, what is beautifully incomplete.

Church.

It will never fulfil every desire, it will never be perfect, it will never satisfy you, because it was never designed to.

It was designed to make you hungry.

It was designed to make you seek.

It was designed to make you hope.

It wasn’t designed to give you all the answers because people can’t, only One who is greater can do this.

Church, its not just something I do with my friends (as much as love to)…

It is brutal. It confronts. It makes me feel awkward. It hurts.

It also heals, it reforms, it refreshes, it challenges, it brings new life.

Church; People, questions, seeking, hoping.

It is the hope of the world.

Fallen.

But designed to be free.

If your experience of church has been broken, you are not alone. Don’t throw away the deeply sacred journey of doing life in community because it doesn’t satisfy all your needs.

It was never designed to.

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Anyway

anyway one

anyway two

I lead a network for women called Kinwomen, with two of my best friends. Each month we have a theme and April’s is ‘Forgive’.

In the 18 months that we have been exploring a new theme with women online and on radio, I have never been as challenged as I am this month.

Every quote that I find, every script I have prepared, every blog I have edited, I have been super challenged.

I personally don’t find it hard to forgive people, what I find hard, is how to reframe relationships once they have been broken.

How do I love someone at a distance?

How do I transition seasons and let people go?

How do I respect others, but also put up good boundaries for my family?

How do I stay healthy on the inside?

One of my radio spots this month, I just simply read this poem from Mother Teresa.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Mother Teresa

I walk away from Easter every year and I am challenged in my love walk.

I am challenged by how much I hold onto.

I am challenged to forgive and forget.

I am challenged to move on and not allow offence to take me off course.

I am challenged about doing anyway.

When I get stuck in a place of offence, it really impacts my ability to believe for a better tomorrow.

How about you?

Speak tomorrow

Amanda