surrender | Elaine Olsen

Living Stones from Brokenness…

March 2, 2009

“But as you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God, and precious to him—you, also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God acceptable to him through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5).

Last night, I had the consecrated privilege of being with the women of Kenansville Baptist Church and of bringing them the night’s “entertainment” for their annual ladies’ banquet. I had no idea what was “on” the menu, and I’m certain that they could have said the same regarding my contribution to the evening.

Each year, they gather in rich fellowship to enjoy a delicious meal served to them by the men of their church—men donned in their crisp white linen and bow ties and with the gentility to rival any star five maitre’d. The tables were themed and decorated according to individual liking—an unspoken contest of sorts. Some with the rich decadence of roses and gold and textured linen. Some with the more casual of camping and family memories and snowmen. All tables were immaculately laid with the finest love and care of heaven.

Kenansville, NC. Perhaps not the place that the casual passerby would peg for fine dining; still and yet, the place of its happening last night, and I felt so honored to simply be the recipient of such a lavish consideration.

During the savoring of delectable cheesecakes and while the coffee was sipping hot, I was asked to share the “word” that God had laid upon my heart. It was a hard fought word for me … one that had been working its way in and out of me for the better part of three months as I prepared for our evening together.

It is a word that has confronted me, challenged me, and forced me to a deeper point of understanding as it pertains to my place within the grand scheme of God’s breathing and extraordinary kingdom.

Becoming a “living stone from brokenness.”

To articulate the depth of what that “phrase” has meant to me over the past several years would take too long. Still and yet, I tried, at least for the better part of forty-five minutes. I imagine its truth to be a “word” that will continue its shaping over me in the days and seasons to come.

Why?

Because I, like you, live in a broken world where pain and grief and all manner of sufferings will occasionally be our portion. If not in our own flesh, then most certainly in the lives of those who share our tables and our pews. And while I’ve not had a bad life, I’ve had a broken one at times; I bet that you could voice the same.

The true measure of a difficult season’s worth doesn’t always shine forth in the immediate. That’s the way of brokenness. It buries. It works us and sometimes wearies us to the point of no longer believing that our lives were meant for anything more than simply “holding on” and “getting through.” I know. I’ve lived it, and I’m not so far along in my life with Jesus to occasionally revisit that view and hold it as my own. But here’s the truth of the matter—God’s truth, not the truth according to me and my weary worn flesh.

Living stones are the way and life of a resurrected heart. To be the contrast—to walk and ruminate in the death and dying of a rubbled estate—is not to take Jesus and his suffering for what it was … for what it continues to be.

Our ticket to freedom.

Not freedom from the carrying of our own cross. The cross is the way of the crucified life. But the freedom in knowing that it can be done, through us and most days, in spite of us because within us is the pulsing and breathing witness of the One who enables us to rise and live above the truth of our broken estate.

No one has ever known and will ever know the full measure of the brokenness that our Savior willingly took upon himself on our behalf. If anyone had a reason to balk at the weight and the carry of some heavy stones, it was our Lord. But he didn’t, and he doesn’t, and for us to think that Calvary didn’t matter—that it was all for nothing because somehow we’re still considerably burdened and wearied by the load that we shoulder—well, that is to miss the mystery and the truth of a living stone’s surrender.

When we bring them all—the broken and the battered stones of our past … of our now—when we surrender them to the foot of the cross and release them to the hands of the One who earned the privilege of holding them as his own, then we, like the living Stone, become the makings of an eternal kingdom that is meant to last.

Your broken … my broken, cemented and rooted within the brokenness of the cross, stands as a living witness and monument to the truth of God’s magnificent grace.

It doesn’t make sense, but it sure paints lovely. More than the eyes can see, more than the ears can hear, and more than the mind can imagine. An incomparable glory that shines with the fingerprints of God as he works our broken into his portrait called forever.

Living stones from brokenness. Our gift to God’s “kingdom come.” Our surrender to God’s “kingdom now.”

What a honor to offer Him my everything. What a humbling to be allowed to write it and to join alongside Him in nights like last night, when I am given the platform to speak it. May I never get over and beyond my awe of such moments. Thus, I pray…

Thank you, Father, for the gift of brokenness. For the truth of what it means to you as you work it into your kingdom plans and your living witness. I don’t have much to offer you beyond what I have lived, and what I have lived has not always been my best; still and yet, you ask for it, and your asking is enough to warrant my surrender in the matter. Make me a living stone, Lord; one like You that breathes with the story of Calvary’s grace and that sings with the melody of heaven’s love. Humbly I bow before your throne and thank you for the consecrated privilege of sacred participation in your kingdom. Amen.

~elaine

The Illusion of a Night’s Slumber … The Truth of a Day’s Awakening

February 14, 2009

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose…. The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’” (Acts 16:25-26, 29-30).

I was trapped in the dark of a school hallway. Lights were flickering, people were scurrying, and the trees were bending their surrender to the ferocious mandate of the wind. I could hear the rain pounding its cadence upon the metal roof above me. I could hear the cries of children as they tried to make sense of the surrounding chaos.

Imprisoned by the bedlam and instructed that my remaining as such would be the best option for my personal safety, I decided to wait it out even though a huge part of me cried out for my release to the wild and treacherous of the outdoors.

I didn’t wait long.

Instead, I walked the darkened hallway toward the entrance of the school and turned the final corner on my fear. When I did, my eyes opened, and I was greeted by the brilliant sun beaming its illumination through my bedroom mini-blinds and welcoming me to a new day of living.

Ah … the illusion of a night’s slumber.

What I thought to be real only moments earlier was but a dream working its way out of me in order to teach me a lesson about darkness and light. About perceived captivity and about the choice I have to walk free from its chains into the marvelous light and life that is mine as a child belonging to the Light.

Sometimes my freedom is as simple as a rolling over from my right side to my left. Sometimes, a bit more involved. But all the time, freedom is available. Never am I stuck in my chains. Even when I’m shackled by situations that require my surrender to an iron’s holding, walking in the freedom of God’s light is always my option.

Paul and Silas understood that option. They chose it, and in doing so, a great and mighty midnight happened upon a Roman prison cell. Doors were opened, and chains were loosened. And while some would have justified this mighty act of God as their permission to escape, Paul and Silas chose to remain.

Not because they didn’t long to be free, but rather because they knew that they already were.

Long before an earthquake released them in the physical, Jesus Christ had released them in the spiritual. No amount of dark and dank and torture of a prison cell could keep them from knowing what they already knew to be true in their own hearts—that the cross of Jesus Christ brings freedom to all who choose to shackle their hearts to its pulse.

And while the enemy is ever content and vigilant about stoking the fires of our perceived captivity, God is holy and perfectly content to stir us in another direction.

Not with the illusion of a night’s slumber, but rather with the truth of a day’s awakening.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1).

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Where the Spirit of the Lord was then … where he continues to be now … is with those who have chosen his Light over darkness. His truth over the illusion of a night’s dreaming.

God is not a figment of our wild imaginings. We don’t wake up in the morning and discover that he’s not real; rather, we wake up to the contrary—to the exponential manifestations of his presence in our day to day. Some have unsuccessfully tried to confine the person of Jesus Christ to the contextual isolation of a historical manuscript. But God’s Word cannot be chained (2 Timothy 2:9). He cannot be managed and manipulated so as to fit into man’s need to have everything make sense.

Rarely does the grace of Jesus Christ ever make sense. Instead, Christ came to shatter our “1+1=2’s” with his “One + our 1 = infinitely more than we can possibly ask for or imagine.” Indeed, this truth runs contrary to common sense, yet it is exactly the one truth that kept Paul and Silas remaining in their prison cell, even though an earthquake had released them from their chains.

They were waiting for the outcome of God’s equation, not theirs, and in the end, his answer came in manifold measure—

The salvation and corresponding freedom of a jailer and his entire household.

That, my friends, is the truth of a day’s awakening—the real and realized embrace of a Son’s illumination in our hearts and through our lives. We hold the freedom to carry that light into the illusion of this world’s nightly slumber. It is our high and holy privilege to do so. Thus, I echo the plea of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the believers at Ephesus,

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light … for it is the light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said, ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” (Ephesians 5:8, 14).

Wake up you weary and well-worn pilgrims. Arise and shine, for your Light is come. Today is the day of salvation. Turn and receive the truth of your glorious awakening!

As always,

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PS: I’ve posted this song before and am doing so again because it so aptly fits the truth of what I’m trying to say. Have a blessed rest this weekend. Be safe. Be God’s. And if you are confused about what that means … to be God’s … please e-mail me, and I will happy to pray things through with you. I love you all! I mean it.

A Spring’s Visit to a Winter’s Prison

January 26, 2009

“Then she called, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’ He awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free. But he did not know that the LORD had left him. Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” (Judges 16:20-22).

There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. Its buds and blossoms come regardless of the bleak season preceding its entrance.

Resurrection is the hallowed crescendo after the harrowing silence of a winter’s death—a season’s stripping that reduces branches to the bare and wide-opened embrace of colder winds.

It’s hard to think Spring when Winter continues its insistent knock. It’s hard to think grace when the consequences of sin leave a soul chained and blinded with remembrance.

Samson knew something of winter’s bite.

His life began well. He ended on the upswing, but the living in between reads more like a tragedy rather than the famed position given him in the Hebrews “Hall of Faith” (chapter 11).

God wanted more for him. His parents planned for more. But for “more” to be his portion, Samson would have to walk the plans of his God, and subsequently, of his parents’. And for all of the ways that he might have been faithful to those plans and to his covenantal vow as a Nazarite, we are privy to a majority of his “less” than moments. Moments that included:

- Chasing after all manner of foreign women.

- Gleaning honey from the carcass of a dead lion and feeding it to his parents.

- Exacting revenge via foxtails and torches, the jawbone of a donkey, and the sword of his own hands.

Playing games with God’s truth rather than honoring God’s truth with sacred and in reverent fear.

Indeed, some would argue that Samson had earned his chains, his blindness, and his mockery by men. Open rebellion to God’s ways always yields a well-deserved humbling at some point. I know. I’ve hosted my fair share of showcase moments along the way.

But to remain stuck in our chains … to assign ourselves a place of permanent shame and penance within the cold and barren of Winter … is to delay or to altogether miss the promise of Spring.

And to miss the grace of Spring is to miss everything.

Samson’s Spring came near his end. If you are one prone to spectacular endings—to the grandeur and polish of an epic finish—you’ll miss it. Samson’s resurrection didn’t begin between two pillars (Judges 16:29); it began in the dark and in the depths of a lonely prison cell.

“Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” (Judges 16:22).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

The hair on his head began to grow again.

Grow. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[i]

No matter Samson’s sin and no matter his rebellion, God’s promise of Spring came to him in his darkest night, the seeds of which would grow and would ultimately result in his finest hour. God visited the cell of a sinner and planted his grace accordingly and in a very literal way.

I don’t know if Samson thought a lot about his hair in those days, but I imagine that he did. When a soul is stripped, both in the spiritual and in the physical, one cannot help but look for any sign of covering … of hope and rebirth … of new growth and of springing forth. With every passing day and with every difficult grinding, whenever Samson ran his fingers through the sparse seedlings of a new and growing strength, he was reminded of just how far he had fallen and of the grace afforded him for its gradual return.

It did return, at least in part. That’s the way of God’s grace. Despite our willful choices and hardened rebellion to God’s plan for our lives, his mercy is ready and available for its return. He planned for grace’s arrival, long before our sin mandated its need.

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD Our Righteousness.”’” (Jeremiah 33:14-16).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line.

Sprout. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[ii]

God’s grace. Shooting forth and bursting onto the scenes of our lives. Sometimes through the simple of a hair’s sprouting. All the time through the profound of a Son’s coming. A Son’s dying. A Son’s springing forth on a Spring morning, announcing once and for all that resurrection is here to stay.

That resurrection is the gift of Spring; it follows the stripping and cold of a Winter season. A season when remembering God’s promises is critical to survival. There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. And that, my friends, gets a hallelujah from my spirit and a prayer of thanks from my knees as they hit the bedroom floor, once again, in absolute wonder and awe of the gracious grace that has been seeded on my behalf and that is growing in strength with every passing day and with every intentional glimpse I make into the treasures of God’s Word. He is the worthy pause of my heart this week. Yours too, thus, I pray…

Grow us, Father, into a deeper understanding of all things eternal. Let us not settle for our prisons; instead, renew our hearts toward a healthier life—one that is free of the chains and of the condemnation that seeks to keep us captive in sin’s remembrance. Spring us forth from our cells and grow us in the light and truth of Spring’s renewal—the resurrected life of Easter’s Gift. In the name of the Father who knows us, and the Son who loves us, and the Holy Spirit who so willing tends to us, Amen and Amen.

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Copyright © January 2009 – Elaine Olsen
[i] Baker & Carpenter, entry for “samah,” The Complete Word Study Dictionary Old Testament (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 2003), 956.
[ii] Ibid.

The Forest for the Trees…

October 27, 2008

I dedicate this piece to my friend, Melinda at “Traveling the Road Home”, who graciously afforded me the use of this picture from one of her recent trips. It grabbed me the moment I saw it on her blog, and it has taken me a few days to put some words around it. I pray they speak its witness accordingly. Thanks, friend.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” (Hebrews 11:1-2).

What do you see when you look at this picture?

I see beauty. I see between. I see beyond.

My eyes refuse the focus of the cluttered clustering trees and instead focus on the entirety of the painted landscape. Rather than get bogged down in the details, I breathe in the witness of a well-planned masterpiece …

the forest instead of the trees.

The full and lush of a long ago planting, seeded by the hands of nature and through the intent of a loving God who visions at a higher level than me. Who paints with a perfected end in mind rather than settling for a partial finish. Who gives careful attention to the details so that the finished product breathes with the life and vitality of exacting and necessary brushstrokes. Who gives us his creation to teach us something about eternal visioning and forever focus.

Faith.

Lived and walked in the details, all the way through to the end—to the other side of the forest where clutter gives way to spacious living. Where shadowed existences give way to God’s lighted embrace, and where the backward glance at the trees left behind fills in the gaps about seasons previously misunderstood.

The ancients of Hebrews 11 understood about faith and the potential cluttering therein. They were commended for their focus … for seeing the forest as their bridge to home rather than as an obstacle to prevent their arrival. Refusing to be overwhelmed by the maze of tangled brambles and knotted roots along the way, they set their eyes on the faint glimmers of a finish that sparkled its radiance light through the dim masking of branches and foliage.

Their vision leveled toward completion.

“All of these people were living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

A city … just beyond the trees. A better country that houses the perfected end of the process that we now walk. A permanent dwelling where the din and lies of the forest are replaced with the splendor of God’s eternal peace and truthful witness.

Friends, if ever we needed the witness of eternity’s truth, it is now. We are walking through a tree-laden season of volatile living. The chaos and clutter of an electoral process is leaving most of us confused and pointedly focused on the trees that obstacle rather than on the forest that divinely shapes. Our minds landscape with the ugly and contrary nature of a temporary foliage that refuses to budge and that so easily trips.

We fight understanding as we soldier on. We refuse to bend and to bow to the trees’ cloistering for fear that in doing so, we will never make it beyond their branchy embrace. Rather than concede to the process of our perfection via difficult trees, we slash at their bark with our words, with our hateful intent, and with our neglect to love.

We fear the outcome, even though the outcome was never ours to fear. What happens in our country over the next few weeks does matter. It is important. But our perfected end, and God’s sovereignty in the matter, isn’t so fragile that it cannot abide an Obama or a McCain presidency.

God has never intended for our focus to stop mid-forest. To freeze frame on a single tree or on a single event in history that was only ever intended to be one miniscule part of the whole. The enemy would like nothing better than to stop us in our tracks and to have us think that the next president will be our savior. The truth is…

No man or woman will ever or could ever hold that title.

There is only One who is worthy of such an honor. His pilgrimage through the forest would require that his Father journey deep into its dark in order to cut the one tree that would house and hold his surrender. He did, so that our requirement would be less. So that we could walk it through to the other side with temporal wounds that bleed less and never lasting. Christ didn’t journey without forethought. He walked with one purpose in mind.

The forest for the trees.

The beauty, between, and beyond of a portrait that was painted long before he allowed us any voice or any vote in the matter.

Is God concerned about our now? Perhaps, but only as it pertains to his completed masterpiece. Is God involved in our now? Absolutely, because what he has in mind is a canvas that is brushstroked with the truth of his ample sacrifice—an end that is painted with the blood of Calvary’s grace. And that, precious readers, will always warrant his attention and his brush.

We are almost home, nearly finished and nearly perfect. God is after our beauty, both individually and collectively as a people. No thing or no one person will thwart his kingdom agenda. No matter the trappings and confinement of a few temporary trees … no matter the outcome of a presidential election … God’s light is still shining through the branches of our dim and our confusion. He is calling us through to the other side, and one day soon, our backward glance will afford us a beautiful understanding for the cluttered shaping that we now walk.

Fear not, our Father has allowed us our trees so that his forest will boast the punctuated splendor of a few faithful hearts—hearts that are trusting and fully content to leave the painting up to him. Thus I pray,

When I am fearful, Lord, with the confusion from the trees that surround my life, remind me of the forest that houses the completeness of your plan. Illuminate each step with the light of your forward focus that will keep me moving in the right direction and in the full assurance of what awaits me on the other side. This season is my season—one that you have ordained for my steps and for the steps of the country that I call home. Keep us, Father, in perfect rhythm with your will. And when I am tempted to consign such understanding to the fragile minds of men, forgive me for assigning them with too much. You, alone, are the King of my heart and my life. Only you can carry me on to my perfection and to your intended end. Humbly, I bow to the beauty of your trees this night. Amen.

Raising Faith (part nine): Embracing Your Release

August 17, 2008

It’s been a year now since we moved our son into his second floor dorm room at Campbell University. Even tonight, those memories come to me with clarity as if lived only moments ago.

Everyone told me it would get better—this pain that kicked me in the gut with the force and fury of a winded hurricane. I didn’t believe them then, but time has walked its cadence. And now a year down the road, my wounds of separation have healed, as God has tenderly walked me through this mothering milestone with the prayed for measure of grace that speaks the witness of a Father’s faithfulness.

Tonight we stand at the edge of another letting go. We are preparing to send him back. I won’t be making the trip this time. There is less need now, but there was a deep need back then. Then was painful. Now is joyful. Not because I am glad to see him go, but simply because I am free to let him do so. Free to let him become and to grow into the man who God has called him to be.

Nick and I have done a lot of maturing over the past year. I’ve come to understand that my “release” is necessary if he is to fly. I know it sounds simple. In theory, it is. But doing it—embracing the letting go? Far from simple. For me, it’s been the most complex learning to date. Honestly, I’m glad to be on the other side of this one, but while my heart rests this night in peace for the process, I know that there are those of you who are profoundly feeling the effects of being on “this side” of the letting go.

I’m drawn to you. My tears have wept for you. I cannot keep from being filled to a heart’s brim with a deep measure of understanding love and compassion for the steps that you are making. What can one mother possibly render as useful in this time of painful transition? What could be said that hasn’t already been spoken over your bleeding wounds? Probably very little.

But this I will tell you, for I know it to be true. I’ve lived and breathed its witness in this past year and in the previous nineteen that lie behind.

Our God is faithful and good. We will never rightly “let go” of anyone without his knowing and without his holy nod of approval. What pains us, pains him. Those we hold as dear and precious in our hearts are held as more precious in his. He allowed them our homes and our influence for a season, and now he asks us to release them back into the hands that held them first. To the God who shaped them and formed them and adorned them with the lavish expression of heaven (Psalm 139).

He asks of us a hard thing. But hard is not always bad, and in this case, hard is very good and especially right and our necessary portion if our children are ever to find their firm rooting in Jesus.

I didn’t like it then, but it swallows easier tonight, for I have gained the wisdom of a year long learning. I have hindsight, and before long, you will have it too. It cannot be rushed through, even though your heart cries out for the finished process. It simply must walk. Step by step until you find yourself on the other side of “letting go.”

As a word of witness this night, I want to share with you my penned ache from a year ago. Perhaps it voices the tears of your eyes even now. (an email sent to friends on August 18, 2007…)

There are some things…some places in all of our lives that simply are too tender for words. Moments when we come to the utter edges of ourselves and wonder where we will find the strength for the next moment. Where we are caught in the fragment between breaths and find it difficult to breathe our next.

I had one of those moments today. To date, it is the most difficult pain I have ever known. For those of you who have been through it, you’re nodding your head just now. For those of you who await its arrival in the somewhere not so distant future, you’ll not fully appreciate it until it arrives.

I hugged him tightly, cried my eyes out, and groaned with utterings that words cannot express most of the hour ride home from Campbell University this afternoon. I listened, in turn, as the 16 year old in the back seat uttered his own share of groanings. Bless Billy…all he was allowed to do was to manage the van back to our driveway. And just when I thought I had conquered my angst, I arrived home to find a beautiful bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter. It arrived somewhere around noon today, while my in-laws were watching the little ones.

Completely of his own accord, my college freshman son (who I’ve often thought not quite ready for the world…for you see he has so much more to learn…so many more ways to mature) did a very “adult” thing. A very lovely and gracious thing. He thought of his mom, and he told her that he loved her…that she was his heart.

All I could do was hug my flowers and have my husband take a picture of me pitifully cradling my gift. A memory for the years to come. To remind me that, perhaps, Nicholas is ready for the world, and that with God’s help, we will both manage the transition with a measure of grace and joy.
Thank you for the times when you’ve prayed for us. I felt every one of those petitions honored today. Tonight I will gaze upon my bouquet as I let their beauty and my tears lull me to sleep to awaken me to another day. A Sabbath day.

A day that will rise on all of us and beckon our participation. I pray that all of us will find rest with our great and awesome God as the dawn announces its arrival.

I love you all. Thank you for loving us.

Peace…sweet peace for the journey and for the next.

Sabbath did come, my friends, and I found my peace in this journey through God’s amazing love and tender care over my soul. It will come for you, too, for Sabbath rest is always our portion when we allow our Father the freedom to walk our hurt and to heal our hearts.

This won’t be my final chorus of surrender as it pertains to my children. It has been the first and because of it, I will have some courage and understanding for the next. Perhaps, you need a little courage and understanding tonight. Your heart and your pain are safe with me. Greater still…

Your heart is perfectly loved and safe with our Father. More than anyone, He understands the painful tug of “letting go.” He walked it with his Son so that we could walk to him with our surrenders and lay them safely in his hands.

May God grant you the grace, wisdom, and beauty of a sacred release tonight. And may He always…always…give you his,

PS: Nick’s just taken off…I am fine. There is, however, another young lady who isn’t faring so well.

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