Slamming Caffeine

Don't let anything get in the way of your view.

Seriously, if you have a driver's license, you know that there is nothing more annoying than some huge flat nasty bug on your windshield. It's annoying, it's gross and it can actually be a hazard. A dead bug can be an obstruction to seeing the road ahead clearly.

Most of us get so, forgive the pun, but "bugged" by the mess that we find the nearest gas station and sponge the junk off.

So why do we hold onto the bugs that block the windshield of life?

If you love a great cup of coffee, that you'll appreciate my heaven on earth scene...rain softly coming down, a city by the ocean (Seattle, San Francisco, Carmel..you get the picture), friendly baristas, fragrant beans roasting pleasantly, fresh roasted coffee just waiting to be ground into most benevolent of brews....Huge comfy chairs, once-read newspapers left behind, the sound of quiet conversations in the background with the occasional excitement of reunited friends...the aroma of fresh baked pastries...traffic bustling outside with cars and people and dogs and bread trucks.

See? I literally get lulled into this fantasy land when I think about coffee. I lose all grasp of reality.

Here's the flip side of that beautiful moment: Imagine being introduced to a certain type of instant coffee that tastes better than fresh brewed coffee and waking up early in the morning in eager anticipation of being able to act as your own barista in your own home. No more drive-thru lines, no more $5 lattes.

NIRVANA.


The only problem with this picture is that in my case I have a very sensitive gut and what with my in-home access to my favorite beverage, I consumed far too much of the stuff. Soon, I was doubled over in pain (it seriously felt like the insides of my esophagus and stomach were being ripped apart with a razor). The nutty part? I was (for a couple of weeks anyway) willing to sacrifice comfort for more of my golden brown elixir, until finally I couldn't take it anymore.

I begged God for help.

"Help me, God. No more, I can't take it anymore. I'm clearly insane. This stuff has become like heroin to me and I can't put it down." (What the heck? Seriously, what is WRONG with me?)

God answered my prayer and QUICK. No hangovers, no headaches...the very next day it was like He had wrapped me in soft, puffy clouds and gave me clarity to see. I had peace and appreciation for all that was around me. The pink cherry blossoms, the green green grass, my son's beautiful smile. It occurred to me that I had been in self will.

That would be the exact opposite of God's will.

It's been a few days now and I occasionally find myself having an internal battle about whether or not I could maybe just maybe have a traditional Starbucks latte because after all, I'm so tired and could really use that kickstart. The thing is that so far (cause trust me, I'm praying in between those crazy thoughts) I don't want to trade in a "jump" for the peace and joy and serenity that I've found.

It may seem stupid to be addicted to coffee, but some of us seem to have that kind of personality. Whether it's Facebook or the Housewives franchise or gossip or alcohol or coffee, some of us have the propensity that act like that bug on a windshield--we are splat up against the very thing that it keeping us from seeing what God wants to see--that our life is good and beautiful and enough.

We cling to the things that dirty up our windshield. We can't see clearly, we have an obstacle to get around but yet we are hesitant to stop by the gas station to clean it up.

And the real zinger? It's only after we've cleaned up the mess that we see what we've been missing.

HAIR (and attitude) by JESUS

Are your Mom and Dad are too busy bringing home the bacon to help you figure out how to make your hair look good in the morning, let alone help you navigate through life?

If you are in a situation where your parents are too clueless, busy, checked out or clocked in to pay attention to you, you've got to know that there's a way out of your hair dilemma, loneliness, confusion or personal drama.

First of all, let's get it straight. Whether you know it or not, you're part of HUGE, loving family. Your family is so big, that it's impossible to know everyone in it!! It's sort of a GANG.

If you know anything about gangs, you know that normally, you've got to be "jumped" into a gang to be a part of it.  That tends to involve violence, terror and intimidation by the members of the existing gang.

Here's the GREAT news!!!!! God has already taken care of the "jumping"!!! If you've accepted the LOVE of Jesus in your life, God sent His son Jesus to get jumped for you!!! By dying a sinner's death on the cross, He took our punishment!!! The flogging, whipping, piercing and bleeding??!! That was the PRICE HE paid for our membership in HIS GANG!!!

Nice!

OK, thats great, but your parents are still not as available as you'd like.

Let's focus on Jesus for now and leave your parents for later.

It sounds cliche, but Jesus HAS A PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!! AND IT ROCKS!!

I'm guessing that your thing is to do well in school, make lots of friends and look cute in the halls. As long as your hair looks good and your clothes make sense, you're happy.

Now take that plan (and there's nothing wrong with it, by the way) and put it up against Jesus' plan. He wants you to do well in school--and to really discover what drives you; what motivates you. He wants to stir your heart for something amazing!! AND to excite you about finding a way to serve others in a way that is unique to you. It could be volunteering in an animal shelter or going to build houses in Mexico or helping inner city kids in your area!!

There are NO LIMITS to what GOD can do in your life!! The cool thing is that you don't even KNOW what could unfold as you submit your will to HIM!!! (I'm so excited for you, I can hardly contain myself!!)

And friends? Not only does Jesus want you to have friends, but to extend that friendship to others. Especially to those whom everybody else seems to ignore or disregard (the handicapped, the goth crowd, the nerds, the outcasts, the loners...the ones that eat lunch by themselves..).  When you reach out to others, you're extending HIS LOVE...and guess what? When you extend HIS LOVE, you get MORE OF IT YOURSELF!!! It's kind of like a "pay it forward" kind of deal!!

Your friendships will start to be deeper and more meaningful. You'll attract trustworthy, amazing people into your life that will inspire you to be the best you possible!!

And your hair? Of course, Jesus wants you to feel confident, but that assurance should really come from the inside!! With Jesus as the center of your life, you're going to have an inner confidence that will radiate outwards. Have you ever noticed that if you're counting on your hair to look good in order to have a good day, that your mood will fluctuate depending on the 'do? When we're Jesus-centered, we can laugh at ourselves if we don't look perfect, realizing that all of that doesn't really matter!! Your true friends will love you no matter what your hair looks like!

So back to your parents. They're busy. You can't change that, but what you can change is your attitude.

Get up a little bit earlier each day and spend time reading the Bible. Even just a chapter.

And, if you want, say a prayer. Something simple like, "God, increase my love for Jesus. Let me see the world, my family and friends through Your eyes today."

Remember, GOD LOOKS AT OUR HEARTS, NOT OUR LOOKS:

1 Samuel 16:7 says (MSG): But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Heaven

I bet you're really good at something.

Maybe it's playing sports or texting super fast or cleaning your room or whittling a piece of balsa wood into an amazing four-poster bed. 

I make these off the hook, melt in your mouth, really crazy good chocolate chip cookies. 

There have been times when hoards of people (OK so maybe not hoards, maybe its closer to one kid on a skateboard) will follow me around at parties, begging for the recipe or at the very least more cookies to stuff in their pockets for later consumption.

One hazy morning found me baking up a very special batch of these cookies for a new friend--a friend that I wanted to impress with my cookie baking skills. I knew that these would be a huge hit, not only for her, for but for her entire household. (Can you sense the humility here? It's borderline embarrassing.)

Fresh out of the oven, I zip-locked the gourmet goodies and carefully put them in a gift bag, ready for delivery.

It was her birthday after all. Man, was she in for a treat!! (And yeah, I fully realize that the horn-blowing is reaching maximum overload, but please indulge my profound big-headedness for just a moment.)

One problem though. When I asked for a good time to drop them off, I never heard back from her.

A day went by and nothing. And the special part? The part I'm not proud of? 

I got mad.

How dare she IGNORE my prize-winning treats of joy? How dare she blow me off? Didn't she know what she was passing up?? 

Not only my sweet delicacies, but my FRIENDSHIP!! (Insert sarcasm here. I can be a tad (ha!) overdramatic. Not to mention self-centered.)

I was so upset that I PRAYED. On my knees, bag of cookies in hand.

"God?? What do I do?"

"Give them to Lisa."

"Lisa? Who's Lisa?"

"At Starbucks. Give them to Lisa."

Shocking.  God was aware of my daily sojourn to my neighborhood Starbucks. 

And so off I went with the cookies.

"Is there a Lisa that works here?" I asked in between making sure that there were plenty of Splendas in my soy latte. 

If there was ANY question that God was involved in this transaction, that notion was IMMEDIATELY dismissed upon hearing the barista's response.

"Lisa? Yes, there is a Lisa here, but she has cancer and she's off right now for chemotherapy."

BAM.

Tears. Chills. Yelling about Jesus right there in Starbucks.

The God of the Universe. The Guy that created sharks and sailboats and sunrises and gravity took time out of His busy schedule to make sure that one of His daughters knew that He was with her in the midst of her pain.

Wow.

That's some serious LOVE, isn't it?

Going through something? God hasn't forgotten you. He sees you, He loves you and He is right by your side. 

Say out loud, based on Isaiah 41:10:

'I will not fear,  for God is with me; I will not anxiously look about,  for He is my God. God will strengthen me, surely He will help me. Surely He will uphold me with His righteous right hand.

Thank you God FOR everything!!! Most powerful prayer on the planet!

Way before I really knew Jesus or had any experience with the Holy Spirit, I was in one of those predicaments that so many women find themselves in when we rely on our own highest thought to direct our own lives.

Or lowest thought.

Against my better gut judgment, I said "yes" to moving in with a guy that I had been dating. Completely selfish and self-centered and having zero idea of Christ-like love or sacrifice, I literally drove this guy to drink. I'm not kidding. He'd come home later and later until finally one day, he didn't come home.

So there I was, crying my eyes out for what seemed like days, when a dear friend came over with some Christian tapes, lunch and a sympathetic ear.

If you ever want to make a huge impression on anyone in pain, bring them food. I'm serious. That makes an impact.

She was different and all she said about that was that she had rededicated her life to Christ.

Hmmm.

Long story short, she left me with the tapes and I started listening to one in particular called Prison to Praise.

Changed. My. Life.

The premise of the tapes was based on 1 Thessolonians 5:16-18(NIV) which says:

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,"

and Ephesians 5:20(NIV) which says,

"always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

The author, Merlin Carothers, spoke of being instructed by the Holy Spirit to give thanks not just in all things, but FOR all things, for this is the will of God for His plan for salvation.

There are stories in Prison to Praise that speak of parents thanking God that their daughter was dancing in a strip joint, praising Him that this was all part of His plan for her salvation. Soon after they started praying in this way, a believer walked into the seedy dance bar and offered her the gift of salvation. She accepted Jesus and is now serving Him in a mighty way.

Another story details a soldier who wanted to quit smoking and couldn't find the will power on his own. After praying that specific prayer, every time he started to smoke, he'd throw up violently until his desire to smoke soon disappeared.

In my own life, I've prayed that prayer over incredibly difficult circumstances within my family and I've literally seen the people involved drop their argument and come crying back to each other begging forgiveness.

I've prayed "thank you God for..." when my husband and I've had a disagreement and have seen miraculous things unfold; things that have created a newfound understanding between us where before there was nothing but argument and dissension.

All from thanking God FOR the situation.

A friend shared this story,
"My teenage son was addicted to methamphetamine and pornography and would disappear for days at a time. For years, I would pray that God would make him stop using. We sent him to rehab after rehab and nothing worked. Within days of release, he'd be back at his dealer's house getting high again. We were out of options and ready to give up. Someone suggested that we thank God for his meth addiction; that it was all part of God's plan for our son's salvation. At first, it was hard to pray that way, but we realized that God knew what He was doing. Days after we prayed and thanked God for Mike's meth addiction, we received a phone call from Mike's best childhood friend telling us that Mike was there on his couch, sobbing. Mike got on the phone with us, and between choked back tears, told us that he had been using speed and in the midst of getting high, he was suddenly struck sober. He said that all of a sudden, he was aware that he was killing himself. He said it was almost like he was watching himself destroying himself with a needle and he was horrified and disgusted. He broke the rig in half, flushed the drugs and called his friend to pick him up. Mike is now serving the Lord in our church's youth group and has been clean for two years. He loves Jesus with his whole heart and he still loves snowboarding, playing bass guitar and reading spy novels. He's still Mike, bur he's not bound by drugs and pornography anymore. It was like our thanking God for Mike's drug problem released God's power in a miraculous way."

God wants to meet our needs. We don't have to beg Him, we just have to praise Him.

Say out loud, "Thank you, God, for __________; it's all part of your divine plan for my (or someone else's) salvation."

Say What, Jesus?

I love this from writer John Shore, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Simple, simple, so profoundly challenging about none of us do it.. If you have the nerve to call yourself a follower of Christ, then have the moxie to obey what Jesus unequivocally proclaimed the most important commandment of all. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And then go, Christian, go." 

Seriously can be one of the hardest things to do. Oh sure. It's easy to love the people that are nice to us. The ones that show up on time, the ones that give us compliments, that buy our lunch. 

But what about the folks that ignore us? That betray us? That belittle us? Are we supposed to love them too?

Uh, yes.

But how? I mean, how can God expect us to love--to extend grace to--someone who is irritating or mean? Or just plain undeserving (in our limited estimation)? 

That's where our need for Him and a huge helping of grace comes in.

I don't know about you, but I tend to take things personally. 

I know, it's not about me. Right, I get that. 

But I make it about me and then I miss the point. 

I miss the miracle.

I miss the fact that there is an opportunity to demonstrate LOVE and see the Almighty Love Machine in action. 

So what if someone is rude? It's probably because they're tired, lonely, worn out or on a mental vacation. Maybe they just got terminated, or they're terrified or just got turned down. 

Maybe, just maybe, they don't believe that God exists and it frustrates them that you call yourself a Jesus follower. 

Maybe they're waiting for you to show them otherwise.

Dare to show LOVE to at least one "undeserving" person today. Pray first and be prepared to be blown away. 

Based on Mark 12:30-31, say out loud:

God, help me to love You with all my heart and all my soul and all my mind and all my strength. Help me, God, to love my neighbor as myself. I know, Lord, that there is no commandment greater than these.

Treasure Hunt

What if your life were a map and all that you could see was your current location? What if there were amazing treasures just around the bend and you had no idea about them?

Seriously. Picture a treasure map, filled with adventure, secret treasure and the occasional hardship. Imagine a sandy beach on one side and some rocky mountains on the other. You've been given all the tools you need to navigate through the terrain--a pick ax, a shovel, plenty of water and a compass, but because you can't see five feet in front of you, you decide to throw down your tools and give up.

Isn't that what so many of us do in real life? We get scared and give up, often just a few feet away from a box full of treasure.

As a young person, I was terribly short-sighted. I couldn't see what lie ahead, so I settled for what I saw in front of me. Poor relationship choices (dating a guy whose response to "what are your interests" said one word, "Sting"..), ridiculous "career moves" (slinging reheated scrambled eggs for the breakfast crowd at Hotel Circle in San Diego), and walking away from an opportunity to go to an amazing school (Go Cal Bears!!)...all because the idea of waiting for something better, choosing wisely and going for excellence were too scary for me.

What about you? Do you have any idea about what's in front of you? Can you predict the future? Maybe what you're going through right now is temporary. Maybe there's something amazing just around the bend.

Don't miss it.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11 ESV)

Don't ask God to "swiffer" your life, cause He will!!

I had just asked God to root out and remove anyone that He didn't want in my life. And guess what? They stopped calling. They stopped showing up. And the loneliness was deafening. The well of pain was so deep it hurt to breathe. Literally.

It was just a few days, but those days were dark--dark like I'd imagine when the disciples thought that Jesus was gone forever. It was like climbing uphill without any energy or motivation.

Meanwhile, a dear friend called. Out of the blue. (So, God's blue?) My friend had lost both of her parents in the span of less than a year (as well as her grandmother). If that weren't enough, she had faced losing her ability to sing and minister musically as her vocal chords were cut for back surgery. She had gone through such devastating loss.

Although it had been a few years since we had seen each other, God seemed to keep the chords strong between us. The day seemed perfect to finally get together.

My friend is extraordinary. A diamond--beautiful, compassionate, exceptionally talented...with a serious love for Jesus. She, like me, has a young child (and two older kids) as well as a husband that she loves dearly. As we planned a visit, my thoughts were along the line of "God, give me words to say. Inspire me Lord. I don't know how to be there for her."

I felt God saying, "Don't treat her like a Christian music star, but like a sister in Christ." I get that. A star can do no wrong. A star is untouchable and unapproachable. A sister is reachable, touchable, relatable. Hugs and tears and laughter happen between sisters.

What a gift that day turned out to be. I didn't minister to her. I didn't encourage her. SHE MINISTERED TO ME!! She reached in and touched my soul. She grabbed my wounded heart and with God's help, gave it life. Praise God!

We are both treasures out of darkness. We are both examples of God giving beauty for ashes. We are both talented, amazing, light-filled, broken, redeemed, women of God.

God used my friend to give me something that I didn't even know that I'd lost. Hope.

We've always said that we didn't know why God put us together or what He had in store for us, but it's becoming clearer and clearer now. I'm pretty sure that He wants us to remember where we come from so that we can help other women dig out from the wreckage and rubble that comes from living outside of God's will. I also know that He wants us to mention His name at every opportunity.

And why not?

He deserves all of the credit.