Sunflowers & Roses

Sunflower hands catch falling Rose petals

Grunt. groan. sweat. tears. 

Laboring to attach fallen rose petals to my Sunflower face

Aching for love. Longing to be lovely. Wishing I were as beautiful as she. 

I must be her. 

She is loved. 

She is lovely. 

She is a vessel by which men convey their love. 

I must make her beauty stick to my plainness.

I labor to no avail.

It doesn’t work. 

They won’t stick.

Nobody is fooled. 

A sunflower will never be a rose. 

Falling rose petals perish on the floor.

Hands no longer grasp for their beauty.. 

They won’t love me. 

I’m a sunflower, not a rose. 

And then, 

He picked me. 

He chose my beauty to convey His love.

I don’t have to be red. Or smell like a rose. 

He made me just the way He wants me. 

Her place doesn’t overshadow or nullify mine.

We both bring joy. 

We both belong in the garden. 

I love my yellow petals, green leaves.

I stand tall, turn my face to the Son, 

And bask in the light of the one who 

Thought this world needed my sunflower beauty,

Even though it already contained hers. 

Consuming Belief

Consumed by

doing things to please other people. 

earning their favor. 

manipulating them into giving me what I need.

I misunderstood 

my relationship 

with God 

other people.

It's called codependency.

I believed that 

if I just did the right things, 

in the right order, 

at the right time 

with the right people...

if I could just get all of that right,

God would love and save me.

It doesn't work that way. 

I'm never going to

do all the right things 

in the right order 

at the right time 

with the right people 

all the time. 

Salvation is based on my faith and God's grace. 

Not 

how often I pray 

the things I do to earn His favor.

the opinions of other people.

I love my children based on our relationship.

Not how well they behave

Or what they accomplish

The things other people say about my children doesn’t affect my relationship with them. 

Compliments are nice

Criticism is an opportunity for improvement.

I know my children. I know who they are. Feedback from others doesn’t change what I know about them or who they are.

God's opinion of me doesn't change based on how others feel about me. 

He knows my heart. 

When someone complains about me, they are not giving Him new information. 

He knows my heart. 

He doesn’t believe falsehoods, or change His opinion based on theirs.

He knows my heart.

If God’s opinion and actions cannot be swayed by the compliments or criticisms of others, why should mine be? 

Manipulate

The knowledge to simply say what I felt, eluded me. 

Every word a manipulation to wrestle my needs from the clutches of what I believed were hands unwilling to relinquish them.

Fear drove my communication . . . 

of rejection.

of being unloved.

Fear that my unspoken beliefs would be confirmed as true. 

  of being weak. 

In denial of these fears. 

My life would be made up of a string of gossip, assumptions, judgment.

Sarcasm. 

Passive aggressiveness.

Shallowness.

Drama.

Relationships stale.

Fragile.

Painful.

Dysfunctional.

Confusing. 

And then . . . 

I learned that 

directness is a virtue. 

I can say what I feel.

How they respond is a reflection of them, not me. 

And . . . 

to say what I feel . . . I have to know what that is. 

So . . .  “think about what I am thinking about.” 

Honestly.

Deeply. 

“What is in a man’s heart flows from his lips”

Diseased communication comes from a diseased heart.

Change my heart, Lord. 

Pride to humility.

Fear to trust.

Approval seeking to God seeking.

Avoiding to peacemaking.

Until “the meditation of my heart and the words of my lips are pleasing in Your sight.”

How Does He Love Me?

How does He love me? 

Let me count the ways . . . 

highlighted clouds in gold,

rain while the sun shines,

Flowers regrown when sweet, eager boys pull “weeds”

Buys a home,

Sends me a friend,

Repairs what is broken.

Sweet freckle faces,

Laughter in the night,

Melodies and harmonies seeping through the walls when I think the fighting won’t end.

“Can I sit on your lap?”

Does my make up look okay?

Sweet words spoken when they think I don’t hear. 

Song of Solomon

Partners in life

Leah -  loved & chosen.

A place to grow,

Space to land

A village to raise our children. 

How does He love me? 

            I’m still counting the ways. 

In Bloom

He planted me here, designed every petal, leaf.

I measured myself against flowers,

didn't measure up.

Suffocated. Stamped out. Dead beneath the soil.

He dug me out, brushed me off and raised me back to life.

He's restoring every petal, reviving every

He rooted me here.

designed every petal,

predestined every leaf.

In love, he made me.

With purpose, intention.

But. . .

As I blossomed,

my blossom didn't seem as pretty as theirs.

So . . .,

consumed by comparison,

failing to measure up,

I began to wilt

Suffocated.

Stamped out.

Dead beneath the soil.

But. God.

Searched for me.

Found me.

Held me.

Spoke truth.

He rooted me here.

Designed every leaf.

Predestined every petal.

Would I trust Him?

Or trust MY OWN understanding?

I chose.

Him.

Every day.

One at a time.

He dug me out.

brushed me off.

raised me up.

And now,

I bask in the Son.

dance in the wind.

He rooted me here.

Designed Every leaf.

Predestined every petal.

Planted flowers close by to give me company, not a measuring stick.

Together. Not compared.

Shared.

Beauty compounded.

Grace magnified.

Life.

In bloom.

The Scale is Not God

Words on the page sear into my heart.

"If this part of you never changes, will you be okay? Do you want this more than you want God?"

The questions opened a wound I had long held tightly to . . . disordered thinking making lies seem true.

Like a monster whose power is lost in the light of day . . . 

the dark place in my soul holding onto my desire to lose weight too tightly shrieks in horror as the light envelopes it.

It started the day I received a newspaper clipping in the mail. My 15 year old eyes filled with tears as I read the ad for weight loss pills with anonymous handwriting spelling out, "Hannah, try this. It works!"

It continued when the scale wouldn't budge and my 30 year old heart felt control and the favor of God slipping from my fingers. I didn't eat for days, exercised too much. When I couldn't stand the hunger any longer I binged on anything I could get my hands on, purged it all and started the cycle all over. 

I slowly put back on all the weight I had lost, except for about 40lbs.

I mostly stopped purging in the traditional sense. But trying to diet and exercise often triggers the cycle for me. 

God has done so much for me. He has changed me in amazing ways, but I still struggle with food. 

In denial and unaware, I cried out to God, and sat in my car reading a testimony of God healing an eating disorder. A friend offered the book to me and I didn't really understand why, but I started reading anyway.

The woman who had been healed from the eating disorder asked two questions,

"If you stay the way you are right now, for the rest of your life, will you be okay?"

and

"Do you want to be skinny more than you want God?"

The questions immediately triggered emotion, and I knew God was working.

I allowed a deep wound in my soul to be exposed for the first time. I answered the questions begrudgingly, but honestly.

God opened the wound, and I examined it. I admitted for the first time how disordered my relationship with food and exercise has been. And how disordered my thinking still is. I don't full on starve myself, exercise excessively or the other ways I purged at my lowest point, but my thoughts are disordered, and that leads to disorder in my actions.

So I pray that God will help me to want him more than I want to be thin. I ask Him to help me believe that I am loved now, even in my obesity. And I praise Him for who He is, with the understanding that seeking Him with my whole heart is the goal...not being thin. The fruits of the Spirit are a by product of seeking Him...not a pre-requisite for finding Him.

And . . . I open MyFitnessPal, enter my food, eat all my calories for the day and remember who my God is, and that the scale is not it. 

Work in Progress

I know what you might be thinking. You might be looking at me thinking of all the work God hasn’t done in me.

You might see my extra pounds. You might notice that I don’t always accept compliments with grace. You might notice that I can be snotty. You may look at my choice of church and think I made the wrong one out of wrong motives.

You may know any number of things about me and think that this God thing isn’t really working out for me. 

But you know what the biggest thing God has done for me is? Shown me that regardless of what you or anybody else sees in me, He sees Jesus. And that’s what really matters. 

Going through a step study and being an involved member at Celebrate Recovery doesn’t mean that I’m perfect or that I think I am. It means that every.stinkin.day. I have to surrender my life and will to Christ’s care and control. 

It means that every.stinkin.day. I have to remember that what I want and the way I want it may not be God’s plan for me. But I also remember that in the will of God and living out His plan for me is exactly where I want to be. 

I am going to tell you a secret. I think God has a plan for me. Maybe that’s a character defect, I don’t know. I’ve read several articles that talk about how people believing God has a specific plan for them, a work for them to specifically do is arrogant and the root problem of today’s world. I’m willing to accept that that may be the case. But I do believe he has a plan for me. 

Over and over and over again I’ve done what I thought was stepping out in faith, only to realize that I had pushed my own agenda. Or maybe just taken a step along the path of God’s plan for me...but the result of that one particular action isn’t the thing God ultimately has planned for me. 

I keep trying to guess what God’s plan is and hurry toward it, but I’m learning to be patient. To lean into God’s timeline and rest in Him. I’m coming to understand that maybe that’s been His plan all along. Maybe all of the stops and detours along the way are getting me ready...if not for something in this life...then for the next one. 

Yes. I want to know His plan for me. If He dropped it in my lap today, I would jump for joy. But I trust that He is going to bring it about in His time and in His infinite wisdom. And for HIS glory, and not my own. 

Because HIS glory is the point, isn’t it? Not mine or so people can admire me. It’s so people can look at the wreckage I created and praise God for bringing me out of it. 

He’s not done yet. But He’s working. Yes, I’m overweight, can’t take a compliment, let my feelings guide my responses and make unwise decisions. But He’s working. 

And I am resting in that knowledge and assurance.

Heart Judging

The moment had come. I would have to share the assumptions I had made. The judgments I inflicted on her unknowing heart. 

Every time she contacted me, I judged her motives for doing so. 

“She’s only talking to me because . . . “

The thing is, my judgment and assumptions seemed justified and I didn’t see them as assumptions and judgments. Her motives seemed clear to me. 

But the very real truth is that I absolutely was making assumptions about her motives, and that became clear when I communicated honestly. She shared her heart and my eyes were opened to my judgments.

I have no right to make assumptions about other people’s motives, no matter how clear they seem. 

If you don’t talk to me at church, it is not okay to assume you are a snob.

If you don’t offer me a seat, I have no right to assume you know how much my feet hurt - and that your lack of care is a reflection of your character. 

Jesus says that the words I say flow from my heart. It works in reverse as well. What I don’t say is also a reflection of my heart. 

You are a beloved, chosen child of God just as likely to receive the grace of God as I am. If it is imperative for me to believe those things about me, it is also imperative for me to believe them about you. And treat you with the same grace I expect to receive, by asking when I have doubts about your motives...and communicating openly, honestly, lovingly and directly.