Category: Stones of Remembrance

Happy Anniversary!

Carolyn

My mom and step-dad celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary last week. As I was driving home today, I thought it worth a blog post to wish them a Happy Anniversary! Why is 25 years so significant? When they married in 1983, my mom was the age I am right now, and my step-dad was 64. Given that most everyone I had known and loved had died prior to getting to age 64 (I have more memories of funerals as a child than birthday parties!), I have to admit I did not have high expectations of a long marriage.

My step-dad was hospitalized a couple of years after they were married. He had one problem, and while that was going on, his appendix ruptured, and during that surgery, they discovered the early stages of colon cancer. I was convinced he was going to die. I remember sitting in the hospital room for hours during his recovery. I would beg God to let him live and let them have a good long marriage. It just didn’t seem right for my mom to be widowed twice.

As I reflected on this today, I see how kind God has been to them. Nearing 90, my step-dad is in great health, has a great mind, and is still strong and active. He has survived two bouts of colon cancer and a broken neck that put him in a neck halo for 8 weeks a few years ago after a car wreck. No one expected him to come through that the same, but why should we limit God?

During his second colon cancer a few years ago, my mom and I committed to pray nightly at 9 p.m. from our separate homes each night leading up to the surgery, instead of choosing to worry. We gave it to the Lord each night, and I was amazed at the things God showed us each day during that time. When the surgery day came, my mom said she had a peace unlike she had ever known, which was quite extraordinary given her propensity to fear things like that.

After surgery, I had to go back to my home 550 miles away while they were still staying at the hospital. One morning, I was with the kids going to Target. As we drove out there, a song by Steven Curtis Chapman was on called “This Day.” “This day, all your mercies are new, this day every promise is true, Father help me to believe, give me faith I need to know You, and trust You, this day.”

After it was over, I told my kids that this was taken from Lamentations 3:23, and I prayed it for my mom and step-dad. When I got home, I called mom and she shared how they had had a terrible morning, felt oppressed in the room, and it had been very upsetting. She said, “we quoted Scripture, and the one that meant so much to us was from Lamentations 3:23.” I know this was not an accident!

I was amazed at how God constantly wove our thoughts and prayers and minds as we were deliberate in seeking Him together for this, how He gave us the same prayers and verses and reassurances. And my step-dad survived and has done well since!

So as I considered some of these things today, I thought God has been really good to them, to us! And 25 years is a big milestone and something to celebrate! We don’t know how long their marriage will be, but the years they have been given together have been good and sweet! Praise You, Lord!

Our Great Shepherd and Savior

Carolyn

When we decorated the tree this year, I saw this little ornament and it reminded me of a great, true Christmas story from 2005!

A little background… I have a dear friend whose husband walked closely with the Lord and was used by God in the lives of so many people through his passionate zeal for God. Somewhere around 1998, he decided he wasn’t so sure anymore and he decided to set his faith aside and wanted no more to do with it. My friend kept looking to the Lord and praying and waiting and hoping that God would bring her husband back to Himself.Fast forward then to 2005. By this time, it seems highly unlikely he will ever return to the Lord, from a human perspective. He’s a great guy, super nice, leading a good life, why does he need anything more? Our prayers continue. In the times of discouragement, the Lord continued to sustain and encourage my friend, and there were times where you just cling to the words of truth and hope found in Scripture and continue to believe God is able.

In April 2005, right after I had surrendered my life to the Lord more deeply, I was praying each day and asking the Lord what He would want me to do each day… someone to reach out to, something He wanted me to do. One day, I couldn’t get my friend’s husband off my mind. I felt like there was a book I should share with him and that I should encourage him that the Lord loved him and was seeking him still. But how? It seemed the right way was to call. He’d surely never read a letter.

I was nervous to call. I wanted a sign. I told the Lord that it would be great if a certain song would play on the radio, then I could know. It was a song that echoed the message of the book, but they weren’t playing it as much anymore on the radio. As I stood confessing to the Lord that I shouldn’t have to have a sign, I finished praying, and what song should start… yes, Much of You by Steven Curtis Chapman, the one I wanted to hear. As the song ended, the radio announcer came on, and they were having a pledge drive, and the voice said, “Make the call. Make the call.” How funny. They were referring to the call the radio station and pledge, but I took it to mean, “ok, here’s the song, I’ll make the call.”

I dialed their number, got the machine, nearly hung up, but held on and waited for the beep and started talking. I don’t even remember what I said, but I think it was mostly telling him that I knew God loved him and wanted him to return, that He was seeking him, and that there was a book I thought he would like. I mailed him the book, and that was the end of the story. No great turnaround, that was it.

So fast forward to Christmastime 2005. It’s been 8 months. I’ve never spoken to him since that message. It’s about December 23, and I called my friend at home. I was totally unprepared for when her husband answered the phone. It’s that brief moment of confusion when you hear a different voice and think “who did I call,” and then I realized who it was and thought “now what!?” She wasn’t home, but he was working from home. I was nervous that I was interrupting his work, so I hesitated to keep him on the phone, but I felt I should address the call in April. I did. I can’t remember the exact conversation, but he was nice, said it just didn’t work for him, that’s fine for me and he understood my calling if that’s what I believe. He is a really smart guy, and I just remember feeling like such a fool after he explained his way of thinking. I didn’t even reply much because I knew he was working and so that was it.

I hung up the phone and sobbed. Shamefully, part of my tears were out of embarrassment, but most of them were over the fact of how hard his heart seemed, and was there ANY hope that God would change this heart. I went to my bedroom and grabbed my prayer book (Face to Face) which I had not read that day. As soon as I opened it, the first verse was, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation to all who believe.” I lay on my bedroom floor and cried and prayed for him.

I later heard something break. We had had our Christmas tree up for 2-3 weeks now, and my children knew not to touch and had not touched the ornaments! In fact, the tree had fallen on my daughter after she pulled it a year or two before, so she had proper respect for the tree and always kept her distance. But for some reason, she uncustomarily had touched a gold ball, and there it was broken on the floor.

As I was cleaning it up, I was on my hands and knees under the tree, and I looked up and my eyes caught this ornament right in front of me, hidden back in the tree, but now in my face. It’s just a little cross stitched ornament that I had never thought much of that someone made me years before. It says, “Joyful Spirit Jer. 33:11” — that’s the meaning of my name. As I looked at it, it puzzled me why someone would choose a verse from Jeremiah for “joyful spirit.” Aren’t there lots of psalms about joy?

Anyway, I went to my Bible to look up the verse. It said: “the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who will say, ‘Praise the LORD of hosts, For the LORD is good, For His mercy endures forever’ — and of those who will bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the LORD. For I will cause the captives of the land to return as at the first, says the LORD.”

When I read this, I knew it was about my friend’s husband! I almost felt it was the Lord saying not to fear, that He would cause this captive to return as at the first! I was later able to share with my friend the events of the day, finding this Scripture. To my amazement, she replied, “You have no way of knowing this, but that is the passage I’ve prayed for him (her husband) for the last 7 years!”

Well, the story continues, and there are many other amazing things that God did over the next 2 years to continue to encourage us that He was at work and would bring this man back. And yes, my friend’s husband DID return to the Lord in 2007, slowly at first, but now completely and with his full heart! It’s been remarkable to see what God has done in their lives since then.

I could blog story after story of what God did in this, but today I wanted to remember Christmas 2005 and the ornament, what God spoke through it. I’m thankful that God pursues His people, the great Shepherd who seeks his lost sheep. His timeline and ways are not the same as ours, but they are good and right. We should never lose heart.

Praise Your Name, Jesus. At this season of Christmas, we remember that You came to earth to save us, so that sin should no longer have a hold on us. You deliver Your people from bondage and set them free to love and know You. And You fill us with great joy! Your sacrifice for us has given us new and eternal life in You, and our sins are forgiven through faith in You.

Praise the LORD of hosts, For the LORD is good, For His mercy endures forever!

The Spirit-Filled Life

Carolyn

As I’ve reflected on my last post, I think I’ve combined two separate ideas: how God reveals Himself and His character to us and how God speaks to His people. I think one point I was hoping to establish is that God is vast and boundless and not restrained to act just as our minds can understand. He is above the natural, and it’s incredible when you find Him invading your life in supernatural ways.

The way God has most powerfully revealed Himself to me is as my Rock and my strength, which are parallel Hebrew words. This was on April 27 and 28, 2005 (which I wrote about in an earlier post). He is also a God who can speak and act in our daily lives through His Word, prayer, and the power of His Spirit. Since April 28, 2005, He has shown me this again and again, but prior to April 28, 2005, I would have been skeptical and reluctant to believe that.

One example jumps to my mind. A couple of years ago, I was at a friend’s house and we were watching the kids play in her yard while we shared what God was doing in our lives. When we started to pray, she felt led to pray a psalm for my husband. This was not a familiar psalm to me. I thought that was sweet. A few weeks later, I was waking up one morning and my husband had been awake for a while. He said he woke up in the night and felt led to read his Bible. He had been drawn to a particular psalm and couldn’t explain why, but felt like God was showing him this. This was the same psalm my friend had prayed for him a few weeks prior to that.

Those kinds of stories are just unmistakable evidence to my heart of a God who speaks, who is intimately involved in our lives. In many ways, I think I’m writing this blog to recount His work in my life, to remember what He has done, to praise Him — but I also find I want to encourage those who might have grown up in a way similar to me. I not only had no expectation that God would speak to my heart through His Spirit, but I also rejected any notion by anyone else that He did.

But look at the promises of God in the Bible! I was missing something so wonderful, so amazing, and I never even knew! It’s called the Spirit-filled life. It’s not one that’s directed by me, dependent on me. It’s one directed by the God who has saved me and rescued me from death and the power of sin and raised me up with Him, given me new life, and given me the gift of His Spirit! The very moment I believed Him to be more than I thought or understood or could mentally manage, He absolutely revealed Himself to me that this was true!

Another thing I want to clarify is that I am talking about something here that is on the other side of salvation… after we are saved. There is only one way to God… Jesus! His shed blood on our behalf. For those who believe on Him, they are given eternal life and their sins are forgiven. He died on the cross to bear our sin and take our punishment so that we could live. And He was able to do that because He was sinless, fully God and fully man.

But I do believe that many people stop there. They believe the gospel, pray asking God to forgive them and save them, and then go on living the same way. That’s what I did. And I thought I was doing pretty good because I acted nicely, behaved well, and did what I thought was right (in my own eyes) and what I had learned by being in Christian circles. But I was missing so much!!

Christ came to transform us, to mold us into His image, to sanctify us. As we seek Him daily through the Bible and prayer, His Spirit is at work to do these things. We yield our lives to Him, and He fills us with His Spirit. And He is not confined by any limitations that we want to set upon Him.

This morning, I praise God because He loved me and saved me. And I praise Him for opening my eyes to see and know more of Him.

The God Who Speaks

Carolyn

I love that we have a God who reveals Himself to His people. He is so personal with each of us.

As I studied Genesis and Exodus a couple of years ago, I couldn’t help but notice all the names of God that are introduced and how He spoke so personally. In Genesis 17, He said to Abram, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.” This was the first time God used the name Shaddai for Himself. To Hagar in Genesis 16, He revealed Himself as El Roi, the God who sees. And in Exodus 3:6, God revealed Himself to Moses as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Later in verse 14, God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” declaring Himself to be the Eternal One, uncaused and independent (according to my Bible notes).

Those are just examples of the ways God revealed Himself in those days, and yet today, He is still a God who speaks and reveals Himself. He does this first and foremost through His Word and through His Spirit. And He can do this in innumerable ways because He is so vast and beyond comprehension; God cannot be put in a neat box that we can understand. I am stunned by the personal nature of how He speaks and reveals Himself to His people.

One way God ministers to my heart is through music. This is something that began in April 2005 after I really surrendered my life to Him. I was so thrilled by what I was discovering about God and so sick of being “lukewarm” and having a faith that God would want to spit out of His mouth, that I went around ecstatically proclaiming what God had done for me everywhere I went. I remember our small group meeting at our house, and I just went on and on about it! I started to wonder if I was being a little overboard with all my gushing. The only thought that kept going through my head though was “If you don’t praise Me, the rocks would cry out” (a reference to Luke 19:40).

I traveled to Memphis that next week in May 2005 for Mother’s Day and to see a friend whose son had just been diagnosed with leukemia and was being treated at St. Jude. At church that Sunday morning, the anthem was about this very thing that had been on my heart all week:

“If we keep our voices silent,
All creation will rise and shout,
If we fail to praise you, Father,
Then will the very rocks cry out!”

I’d certainly never heard this song or an entire anthem declaring this message. In the past, I would have questioned “coincidence”? But God had been revealing Himself so clearly in so many ways, that I didn’t doubt this was from Him.

I flew back home and was feeling led to do a neighborhood Bible study that summer. As I prayed about it, there were so many ways that God answered and led so clearly. I did though wish after my quiet time one morning, “I’d love to have a song for this, but I know there aren’t really songs about your neighbors!”

As I went to start breakfast, I turned on the radio in the kitchen, and the words to the song that were playing by Steven Curtis Chapman were: “Wake the neighbors! Get the word out! Come on, break out the music, climb a mountain and shout. This is life we’ve been given, made to be lived out… so live out loud!” That became my neighborhood Bible study song.

I literally have a song for most major events in my life. And when I hear them, I can remember how actively God revealed Himself during a time in my life (my grandmother dying, selling our house, my son’s broken wrist, etc.).

One last quick song story. I have a benign kidney condition where my kidneys are misshapen and I therefore have lots of stones and diffuse calcification throughout. After being diagnosed a few years ago and finally figuring out the source of the pain, I was told I’d need lithotripsy every year or two to manage this. Each checkup revealed more stones and more concerns from the tests they had done.

As I was preparing for my next visit, my quiet time that morning was in Habakkuk 3. As I finished, I decided that whatever I learned at my doctor visit, I would need to give the Lord praise. I then started ahead on my day, but then realized, no, I need to know specifically what I am going to say because otherwise, I will forget to praise Him, especially if the news isn’t good (which is what I expected because I was hurting). I went back to Habakkuk and noticed 3:2: “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day…” So the phrase I took to remember was “I stand in awe of You.” No matter what I’m told, Lord, I will say “I stand in awe of You” for You have done great things for me.

Later at my doctor visit, I sat waiting. The doctor rushed in with one of my reports and sat down. He then proceeded to tell me how wonderful it was: “What are you doing? How has this happened?” He went over every level, with each one saying how great it was! I felt like a school kid being praised for doing well on a test. He kept saying how great this was and how this was the best report he had seen from a patient with this condition, on and on. I just started saying in my heart, “I stand in awe of You! I stand in awe of You.”

I left and went to get my kids at a friend’s house. As I was telling them the story and how we needed to say thank you to the Lord, and I was describing to them how I praised God with “I stand in awe of You,” I could hear the music playing on the radio in the background. It was playing an old, but familiar song “I stand in awe of You:”

“Yes, I stand in awe of You, Jesus,
Yes, I stand in awe of You.
And I let my words be few… Jesus I am so in love with You.”

Now, I did still have stones, and I’ve not been healed, but each subsequent visit has held a good report: “This is awesome!” a nurse told me at the next visit. Awesome, indeed.

I love it that God speaks through songs. I’d love to hear the ways He speaks to you, too. He is so personal, so real, so near. I praise the God who speaks in such personal ways!

Trust in the Lord

Carolyn

Psalm 118:8 “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”

With school starting on Tuesday, and kickoff activities beginning tomorrow, I thought I’d share how it is we ended up on this road of helping start a school and being so involved in its growth. This is not something I could have ever imagined!

We had put our son in the public school for Kindergarten, but felt that it wasn’t challenging and I, having had Christian elementary education, missed the Christian foundation. We decided to homeschool for one year, but knew that we were not long term homeschoolers. In November 2005, my brother-in-law dropped off a packet of information about a new school. As I read the information about classical education (a model my husband and I both embraced and which I had gained more exposure of through homeschooling), I wondered if (and secretly hoped) this was the answer for our children’s education.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a couple had felt called of the Lord to start this school and by themselves had put together this information packet, set up an informational meeting, and sort of laid a fleece before the Lord, asking Him to provide at least 3 other families by year’s end if they were to move forward. At their first prayer meeting on New Year’s Eve, they had 3 other families.

For us personally, we began to pray about it that Thanksgiving, but did not know how we would afford private education. We went to the first interest meeting in early December, even recruiting other families to come. We began praying.

Then one morning that winter, I woke up with the words “one eighteen eight” going over and over in my head. What did that mean? Since yielding my life to the Lord and seeking Him that previous April, there had been a couple of times like this where verses were spoken in my head in the night, and both of the other times, it was very clear what it meant. But in this case, I wasn’t as sure. I knew that there was only one book of the Bible with that many chapters — Psalms. So I looked at Psalm 118:8 “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” Hmmm. “That’s good,” I thought, “and I guess I could apply that to many things, but Lord, I’ll just wait for You to show me what it means.”

A few days later, I decided to go to the school’s webpage that had just been constructed. When it popped up, there was a tree spreading across the homepage. That was significant to me because during our year of homeschooling, our theme was a tree. We had memorized Psalm 1 (also a passage within the school’s website), and we had a tree in the yard named “Roots” that we watched throughout the year. My son would journal about its changes. We studied the fruit of the Spirit and hung fruit on our tree. We wanted our lives to be like the tree firmly planted by streams of water.

But not only did the webpage come up with the tree, it came up with a verse, Jeremiah 17:7, that slowly moved in and out: “Blessed is the man whose trust is the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.” I knew immediately — That’s it! That’s the same verse as Psalm 118:8. In fact, when I looked it up in my Bible, to the side of Jeremiah 17:7, it said “Psalm 118:8.” They are the same thing. It’s better to trust in the Lord than put confidence in man! “Yes, Lord, I will trust You. I will follow You in this!!”

As we moved ahead, God graciously provided me a job at the school doing administrative work to help solve the question of financing private school education for our children. We met with the other “founding families” every Saturday to pray for the school. We saw God do amazing things with such specifically answered prayer regarding everything from teachers to location to curriculum.

Sometimes I think the call was so clear because the road would be so hard! At every point of doubt or discouragement, I could remember what He had shown us, and keep moving forward, despite the obstacles. And He met us every step of the way! He has used it as a means of our sanctification, too, which I had not expected.

We started in the fall of 2006 with 23 children, had 49 during our second year, and have 64 enrolled this fall in pre-K through 6th grade. We look forward with great anticipation to what God has in store as we continue to trust Him for what He has brought together.