Choicest Pearls

Give thanks. It is a cry and a command, a tradition and a trajectory, a practice and a partaking, a feast in our famine. 

Give Thanks. Two words like a crash of lightning that can change the entire landscape of our lives. Offering gratitude can unlock the believer’s heart for true worship. It is the undoing of ourselves and the making much of someone else, namely Christ. 

Give thanks. We have heard it so much during this season that it has almost lost its meaning.

Even in the best of circumstances, maybe Thanksgiving doesn’t feel like you want it to feel. Your expectations are not being met. God’s lavishness has lost its luster.

Or perhaps you are not spending it with your beloved family and friends. Maybe you are spending it with your family, but the deep hurts that reside within those walls make going home excruciating, suffocating. This might be your first Thanksgiving without someone you love. Last year, we buried my precious dad at Thanksgiving. Maybe the empty seat at your house casts a shadow on the ones that are filled.

For you, giving thanks may feel courageous. It might be painful and difficult and lonely. It could require a mustering of incredible strength to utter the life-giving words.

Look at Psalm 103:1-4--

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy…”

David, though he has had every material gift at his disposal, is so moved toward gratitude for the intangibles: God’s forgiveness, His healing, His redemption, His love and mercy. David knows something of grace.

“David selects a few of the choicest pearls from the casket of divine love, threads them on the string of memory, and hangs them about the neck of gratitude. Pardoned sin is, in our experience, one of the choicest boons of grace, one of the earliest gifts of mercy,—in fact, the needful preparation for enjoying all that follows it.”- C. H. Spurgeon

Thanksgiving is not just one day. It is an everyday celebration of the perfect provision of a good God, especially in the midst of trying circumstances. We credit God, we recognize God, we bless His name. If you are in Christ, be thankful for Jesus, the Pearl of great price, in whom we have been given every good gift. 

Perhaps the only thing you can thank God for is the breath to speak the words to Him. Then thank Him for the breath. Offer him the fragments of your heart with the promise and expectation that He will make something beautiful from the ashes in His time.

Give thanks. Tomorrow is an opportunity to choose which way we will steer our hearts. Gratitude is the rudder that can change the entire course of your little ship. Offering thanks, especially in the midst of suffering, releases the storehouses of pain to erupt in a flood of praise. Grief to gratitude. 

Painful was the day my Dad landed safely on heaven’s side, and as awful as it still feels, not a day goes by when I don’t thank God for my dad. God has guided my heart to thank Him for this path He has chosen for me, though I would never have chosen it for myself.

Thanking God and even praising Him for the events in your life that have decimated you can free you from the bitterness and hurt of circumstances and lift your heart to the eternal hope of knowing Christ. Thank Him FOR the hard things, not in spite of them. Give away the famine and feast on Christ. His banquet table is everlasting.

Dear friend, what are your choicest pearls? What will you thread together from your memory to hang about His neck?

Gorge your soul on the goodness of a loving, forgiving, and sovereign God this day.
He is pardon. He is joy.

Come Thou Fount of every blessing, tune our hearts to sing Thy praise. 

Give thanks.

The Letter Every Dead Dad Hopes His Daughter Will Write

May 26, 2014

Dear Dad, 

I feel melted inside- like if it weren’t for my bones holding up my frame, I would collapse into a puddle on the floor. It turns out there is nothing magically healing in the one year anniversary (eve) of your death like I truly hoped there would be. There is only the distinct replaying in my mind of every detail, every tremor of shock and gallon of tears that still leaves me numb and fumbling for the way. It’s all back, perhaps with greater perspective but with the same searing agony that makes me feel physically sick. 

I guess there are more moments when I remember you without crying, but today has been filled with other kinds of moments. I lit twenty matches in the wind trying to do sparklers with my kids. I watched beautiful red roses wilt on your grave. I was short with my husband. I made the long trek home from Hamilton while squinting through tears. I sat at the pool while my kids swam and all I could think about was how that was the last place I ever saw you, ever hugged you.

There is no timeline for grief. And if the measure of our love for someone determines the length and depth of our grief, then I know mine will never end. That is the kind of love we had… have. 

For three hundred sixty-four days I have struggled to come to grips with the fact that I will not see your face or your great big smile until I am in heaven, too. That is hard for me to wrap my mind around.  Every fiber of me misses you, but there is not a piece of me that doubts God ‘s undeniable goodness and that He is at work in ALL things, even this. Thank you for teaching me that, Dad. 

You were in every way an extension of Jesus Christ in my life. You were His hands and feet.  I will never believe that any earthly father ever loved his daughter more perfectly than you did. You loved me unconditionally and encouraged me every day of my life. When you died, I lost a tangible part of Jesus, and I think that is what makes it hurt all the more. 

When I find my thoughts drifting to you, I can’t help but thank God for you. I did nothing to deserve you. You were God’s greatest gift to a little girl who needed to grow up being told how special she was, how beautiful, how kind, funny, and how gifted she was. You did that so well and so often that I believed you. 

Every time I have gone on a walk this last year, I remember your presence next to me, talking and making a thousand memories. I still feel you pushing me on, encouraging me to run with perseverance the race set before me. And when the sun is shining warm on my face, I remember so much laughter and a lifetime of happiness with you in it. 

Thankfully, there was nothing unsaid between us. I know and have always known how much you adore and cherish me. And you knew and know how much you mean to me. No words on a page could ever describe what only a heart could say. 

Thank you for your indescribable love, for loving Marcus and our girls the same way, and for never giving me a bad memory of you. Thank you for standing behind me and picking me up out of my most bitter disappointments and heartbreaks. You were always the one who did that. (Wow, I need you now!) 

Thank you for loving mom as perfectly and as selflessly as a sinful man ever could. Thank you for doing everything you could to help anyone who needed it and for the many letters of encouragement to me, Travis, and countless others. Thank you for giving me roses a hundred times at least, and helping me understand that I was worthy of a man of God. 

Thank you for bringing JOY everywhere you went. I am fully aware that I might never laugh the way only you could make me laugh, and I will probably never light up quite the same way as I did when you were in the room. But I will ALWAYS carry JOY with me and the happy remembrance of 34 years I shared with an extraordinary man. 

Until Jesus calls me to come home, I will try every day to honor you, to honor Christ. I will try to love our family the way you did. And I know that I will never stop missing you, grieving you…loving you. I would not wish you back from where you are, well, maybe a little. But I know that your faith is now sight. You are seeing Jesus face to face.  I long to be there, too. 

Please listen out for when my name is called. I will be looking for you. My tears will have long dried out. My sadness will be no more. I will have my arms spread out wide and I’ll be running. 

I love you, 

M.G.

 “Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. “ John 16:22

The March 4th Challenge

If there is one thing I have learned in this whole grieving process after losing my dad, 

 IT IS OKAY TO BE SAD. 

Our culture is so obsessed with happiness that sorrow makes us completely uncomfortable. I sometimes wish I could wear sackcloth and ashes on my head like in Biblical times so people will know to treat me with extra kindness and grace. Instead, I wear a black watch to proclaim my state of mourning, even if I am the only one who knows. Oh to live at Downton and wear awesome black dresses for months at a time and have a lady’s maid- but that is another post!

We are so uncomfortable with public grief that people ask how I am doing but don’t really want to hear the answer. When someone asks, “Are you okay?,” I sometimes say, “No…I know I will not truly be okay until I get to heaven, and I will spend the rest of my life learning to be ‘okay’ with that.”

 Debbie Downer…awkward silence…crickets… 

Losing Dad was the turning point, the hinge that opened the door to true suffering and sorrow for me. It ushered in a new season in my life, as I feel like much of who I am is now defined by who I was before and after his death.  I have always been an expert cryer, but since Dad’s death, the tears fall in gushing gallons at times.

 A friend told me once that tears are worship- evidence that this is not how it was supposed to be, proclaiming our longing for all that is fallen to be restored. A believer’s tears shout to a broken world the painful desire and hopeful praise for the only One who can make it right. 

My dad had the same propensity for tearing up that I have, but he was also the best encourager of anyone I have ever known. Almost every morning of my adolescent life, I awoke to find a 3x5 index card on my dresser with his handwritten scribble of an encouraging quote or just a note to say, “I love you and I am so proud of you.” He had the gift of words and he used them frequently to give life and grace to most everyone he knew. Salt and Light.

But here’s the thing. We seldom use our sadness because we are so quick to try to fix it—because it hurts, because it is uncomfortable and inconvenient, because it casts a dark shadow on everything else in life. Because it makes even the smallest task seem impossibly hard. Our knee-jerk reaction to sadness is to MAKE. IT. STOP.   (I do realize that there are mental and emotional conditions and circumstances which require medical help in intense times of depression, and I am not begrudging those treatments or talking about those times here. Medicine can be a gift of God to heal). 

However, in every trying time God gives us, He has a purpose. We must stop to consider what that might be or else we just survive our sadness or wish it away. Believe me, I have had a lot of days where I am just trying to survive, and I have wished it all away more times than I can count. That is okay, too, and natural, I think, for as long as it takes.

But consider God.  Is it all just an accident? Are His hands tied behind His back as He watches us writhe in pain, groaning and crying out for mercy? No. God doesn’t just let me get to the end of my rope. He TAKES me there. 

He is totally sovereign. Should we accept good from His hand and not bad? Do we want the Giver or the gifts?  Is our affection so shallow and fickle that in our finite understanding we perceive God to be a certain way or do not feel He is working out His plan correctly, so we bolt?

He never ran away from us. He could have climbed off the cross but He willed Himself there. Through the pain, the betrayal, and the embarrassment, God accomplished a great purpose in Christ’s suffering. What purpose might He have in yours? 

We have a choice. We can’t go back, we can’t even hold onto this moment. We can only move forward in His perfect timing.

I am using this day, March fourth, to consciously MARCH FORTH.  I hope to reflect on what God is doing with me in this season and to ask Him what he would have me do and by His grace to do it. 

My mom, who has exhibited such hopeful grief, is going to Africa for two weeks this summer to tell people how to find life. My ten-year-old nephew Tate shared his testimony with his peers and how Jesus transforms hearts. One of my dad’s best friends raised money to build a press box at the local high school baseball field in memory of my father and of his great love for baseball and his dedication to helping local players. Dad’s Bible Study continued their tradition of having an annual banquet for the widows in their county on Valentine’s Day, naming it the Robert Alston Sweetheart Banquet after my dad because of his vision and dedication to care for widows.  It goes deeper than just paying forward the encouragement we have received from him.

It is proclaiming the infinite goodness of God in the deep chasm of suffering. It is uniting ourselves to Christ in His suffering and allowing Him to change us as only He can into His likeness. God doesn’t give you suffering only to put you at odds with a broken world.  He gives you suffering to put you at odds with yourself. And as we rise from the ashes, which I someday hope to do, to be changed. To be different. To never be the same. As an old friend Isaac Hunter used to pray, to “apply His Word to our feet that we might not just be hearers of the Word, but doers also.”

For me, March fourth will be a new holiday. A day to remember my precious dad and to honor his memory by what he did best: to overcome adversity and choose joy, to be an encourager, and to MARCH FORTH with great purpose for God’s ultimate glory. 

“March Forth” for you may mean getting out of bed today and making breakfast for your children. It may mean finding one thing to thank God for each day, even though the sky is falling. It may mean donating to those in need, baking a new neighbor some cookies, or forgiving a bitter hurt you have been holding onto. It might be as simple as looking in the mirror and telling yourself, “I was made in the very image of Almighty God.”  It may mean reconciling yourself to God by accepting what Christ did for you on the cross. It may mean picking up a Bible for the first time in your life and receiving the Bread of Life.

Easter is almost here. Resurrection is upon us. How does God want to use your suffering, your pain, to propel you forward for your good and His glory? How will you rise up and MARCH FORTH? What will He use you to do for the kingdom today? 

Why I Will Not Wish You Happiness and Health in the New Year

Happiness and health are the weak cornerstones of our culture, the false pedestals we have built to uphold our shallow and shaky theology about what God intends life to be about. When they crumble or disappear, which they inevitably will, they bring our worlds and our view of God down with them.

Happiness is not a bad thing and neither is good health. I love to laugh! I love to feel good! I want those I love to experience these wonderful gifts from God, but they are fleeting. Neither health nor happiness is ultimate. Our obsession with them has made them appear to be the pinnacle of experiencing life, but Biblically speaking, this just is not so. An army of healthy, wealthy, happy Christians breeds no depth, no compassion, no urgency or dependency. 

Does that mean that we should not enjoy life and be happy? Exercise and eat right, spend money on vacations with our family, a new house, or save for the future? No. I am simply saying we cannot put our HOPE in any of those things, as they will inevitably let us down. We put our hope in the One who richly provides for all our needs. 

Here is what Jesus said. “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.” In other words, the things of this world—our circumstances, our bank accounts, our bodies, our relationships, our health- they will all disappoint us eventually...but put your hope in Me! I am not of this world. I will never disappoint you. 

Following many years of a happy and healthy life, I have had three years of a very difficult pregnancy, some extreme struggles with low iron and thyroid disease, a husband with cancer in his lung, and losing my dad unexpectedly. My little box of health and happiness has effectively been burst. This surely can’t be what Jesus meant when He said, “I have come that you might have life and have it to the fullest.”

Jesus Himself was homeless. He was ridiculed, mocked, run out of town, betrayed, denied, beaten, and crucified by the very ones He came to save. Scholars believe Jesus probably lost His dad Joseph at an early age. He looked into the faces of his dearest friends and knew the brutal deaths most of them would endure. What pain, what disappointment.  If happiness and health were what He came to bring, He would have been a cruel liar. He came to bring infinitely more.

This is why He came. In the middle of the darkest time of my life, in the process of losing what I so greatly value, I have found infinitely more. Beyond the ink on my Bible’s pages, I have truly discovered joy in sorrow, peace in pain, hope in distress, eternity in mortality, and I have experienced the presence of God so near I could almost feel His breath on my shoulder.

I would not wish these last three years of my life on anyone, but I also would not trade them for anything. I choose to accept daily with gratitude and trust all that the Lord has done and will continue to do in the years to come. For my good and His glory.  

This is the incredible mystery of the Gospel, the great exchange. We get fullness for our emptiness. Robes for rags. Dancing for mourning. The last first. The lost found. The broken made whole in Him on whom there is no spot or blemish.  I have Christ. And He is enough. Forever.

I will not wish you a happy and healthy new year because I pray for us exceedingly more than that. A wish has no power behind it, or as my dad used to say, “Wishin’ won’t paint the porch.”  So here is what I pray for those I love in this coming year:

I pray you will choose JOY in all circumstances, which is a great deal better than happiness. I pray for the PEACE of Christ to rule in your hearts no matter what storms you might be facing. I pray for you an abounding HOPE and FAITH in Christ, that you will seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. And I pray that He would be your portion, your all in all…that you would know Jesus and LOVE Him deeply, just as you are fully known and immeasurably loved by Him. 

I pray we would be marked by serving those who have need rather than seeking to eradicate our own needs. And I pray our collective journey heavenward will be toward holiness rather than happiness. 

A Joyful and Hopeful New Year to all. Life abundant. For our good and for His glory.