Peace for the Journey | Elaine Olsen

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.

A Gracious Plenty

August 14, 2008

“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: ‘He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.’” (2 Corinthians 8:13-15).

I saw it this morning. Right in the place where I’ve been seeing it all summer long. A bag filled with a garden’s growing. A gracious plenty offered to me and my family by a retired couple who understand God’s principle of surplus as outlined in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

I don’t know this couple well. They have only recently moved here, but in the time since their arrival, we’ve managed a few chats amidst my morning runs and have discovered a mutual love for God and for garden produce. They’ve instructed me that the hanging bags on the mailbox are meant for my retrieval. Gladly I receive, and today was no different.

It got me to thinking. To pondering about a heart that gives from the overflow of a garden. A luscious plenty that’s been soiled and seeded, tilled and tended to with a harvest in mind. Rather than hoard and shelve their produce, my new friends have decided to share the wealth of their garden’s growing.

I like that. I like the surprise of seeing my bag hanging on their mailbox and of knowing that I’ve been thought about with the picking.

It’s the way of an abundant heart. Of growing a surplus and then out of that overflow, sharing the extra with others in need. And while there are other, perhaps more pressing needs in my own life, I am tendered and touched by the hearts of people who understand that giving always yields a return. If not immediate, then somewhere down the road.

As I examine my own life, I look for the plenty. For the extra measure of a garden’s growth that could be shared with others. What about you? Where does your plenty lie this day?

Look at your hands, your heart, your giftings, and your wallet. Examine them under the light of Calvary’s grace and with the measure of God’s goodness and tell me, where is your plenty?

Plenty. Perisseuma in the Greek meaning “to abound; surplus; abundance in which one delights; that which fills the heart; that which is leftover; remains; residue.”[i]

We all have an existing plenty. Regardless of our outpouring—whether financially, physically, spiritually, emotionally—there exists a surplus somewhere within. A plenty that is meant to be shared for the benefit and for the building up of the body. We don’t often feel this to be the case, for we are a busy and tired people with an output level that leaves us saddled with our weary.

So often, we crawl to our beds and pray for the strength to walk another day, giving little attention to any needs other than the ones that frame our flesh. Left unattended and unnoticed, our needs become our blinding, and our plenty is shelved and buried beneath the weight of an inward focus.

It’s the way of selfish heart—a perfected “taking” that harbors the lie that we have nothing left in our reserves to offer. No surplus or residue thereof for the sharing. No bags to hang on the mailbox. No garden’s growth and thus, no produce to feed my neighbors.

It’s been the way of my heart lately, and it’s not healthy. And while God allows me my tired and weary with a depth of understanding and healing that only he can offer, he expects me to keep an outward focus…even during my times of refueling.

My resources may be limited on all fronts, but there is still some surplus in reserves. His name is Jesus, and he is my overflow. The residue of his abiding presence can be seen, felt, and tasted through this heart of mine. My plenty may shape different than yours, but its seeding comes through the same grace. The Someone we each hold far outweighs the temporal offering of our hands.

We can give our neighbors Jesus, even when we feel that we’ve little to offer. We do so through our words, our simple acts of kindness, our attitudes, our compassion, our prayers, and through our hanging out of all manner of a sacred garden’s produce that is meant for the taking and for the closer examination of a God’s eternal plenty.

You, my friends, are so faithful to hang out that bag for me everyday. You may feel that your garden harvests lean and sparse, but as I travel through this journey in cyberspace, I’ve come to count on finding your “bags” of blessing hanging out on your mailbox throughout the week. Indeed, our blogs all package differently, but this is the beauty of God’s garden. He seeds our soil with uniqueness, yet with a fullness that weaves a sacred and perfected masterpiece.

Your plenty often fills my need with the overflow of a Father’s love. I am eternally grateful for our yoking alongside one another. You’ve fed me with the bread of heaven, and I feel so privileged to share this road with you. All this to say…

Keep to it. Keep tending to your garden and keep packaging up God’s blessings to pass on to those who are dropping by for a taste. I know it’s not always easy. Even today, I painfully struggle to write a complete thought. But God’s love compels me to do so, for perhaps somewhere in the doing, my meager surplus might be enough to equal your hungering need. Like my neighbors, I hang Jesus out for the entire world to see. And He, my friends, is the gracious plenty who is more than enough to garden a world’s hunger with the finest bread of heaven.

Let it be so for each one of us today. May the eternal seeding of the Eternal One harvest rich and plentiful in and through your heart this very night. From this mailbox to yours, I’m so glad that you took the time to stop by for a visit. You have been purposefully thought about with this “picking.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the abiding and breathing Holy Spirit, Amen.

So, how is your garden growing? What’s hanging on your mailbox today? I’d love to come by for a taste. Shalom.

Copyright © August 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.
[i] Spiros Zodiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary New Testament (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1994), 1150.

Lunching with the Ancients

August 13, 2008

For my Tuesday ancients. I’ve written of you before, but today you caught my heart again. I love you all!

“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.” (Hebrew 11:1-2).

I ate with the ancients today.

Now before anyone takes offense, you need to know that by my calling them “ancient,” I do so in the spirit of Hebrews 11:2.

Ancient. Presbuteros meaning “elder; of age; the elder of two people; advanced in life; a senior.”[i] And in the context of the scripture, an elder bearing the witness of a life built on the solid foundation of faith.

Yep. Those are my ancients—women seasoned with the grey and the wisdom of walking a long life with Jesus. We are in our fifth year of “doing lunch” on Tuesdays. We began gathering upon my family’s arrival to this community, and rarely have we missed a week in that time.

I seek them out wherever I go. The ancients. I suppose it won’t be long until others might consider me as one of theirs. It is a label I will humbly accept, for to be numbered alongside my ancients of today and the pilgrims in Hebrews 11 is, indeed, an honorable tribute.

The pilgrims that gathered today walk deep. On the surface, we may seem a little shallow, for rare is the occasion void of our laughter. We do our fair share of discussing politics, current events, doctor’s visits, and offering up of ideas on how to “fix” the problems in our church. Mostly, I just listen to their thoughts, and I am glad to do so, for they have stored up a lifetime of memories worthy of my pause.

But underlying all of our chatter, there runs a sacred thread of a well-spun truth that anchors us all to the table and keeps us coming back every Tuesday for more.

Faith, and the certainty of things therein.

For all of the changes that flood their current, there are a few things they would voice as certain. Things like…

This life is full of pain.
This life is full of joy.
This life is but a breath.
This life is not the end.
This life is to be celebrated because…
This life is a gift from God.

I bet that you have lived long enough to voice a few of these certainties as your own. It takes awhile to come to some conclusions in these matters. Our youthful immaturity and need for reasoned parameters often prohibits our clarity.

When pain is our present, it’s hard to reason the joy. When life fades to the certainty of death, it’s difficult to vision beyond the grave. And when celebration goes unnoticed—seemingly forgotten and pushed under because the urgent and desperate blankets the party with wet—well, life unwraps more like a tragedy rather than the sacred wrapping of a gracious God.

Indeed, it takes years of well-worn living to reach some conclusions in this matter called faith. My ancients have lived those years.

Some years have authored sad. Since moving here, three of my friends have buried husbands. One of them has buried a son. All of us have walked to the grave on behalf of loved ones—friends, family and one of our own named Maxine. Many have been escorted to the hospital because their bodies have betrayed them. Surgeries and procedures have been their portion. There are tears and remembrances a plenty that speak the witness of such sadness.

Some years have authored joy. Untold numbers of marriages and babies and graduations and birthdays have passed through their hands in our time together. There have been parties, vacations, and family reunions enough to fill a scrapbook the size of heaven. There are pictures and newspaper clippings that speak the witness of such treasured milestones.

My ancients know about years and about the threading the weaves them together. They know Jesus, and they are wild and wonderful and just on the other side of “crazy enough” to believe that He is the one who holds the needle that sews them ever closer to their eternal home.

They walk toward heaven, not from it. And if they harbor any fear in the matter, they keep it from me. Somehow, they realize that their faith, their hope, and their certainty about the season soon to come are needed commodities in a world that suffers from self-centeredness and short-sighted visioning. They’ve lived long enough to get over their bitter, to live with the unanswerable, and to surrender their need for control.

They simply live by faith, and not by sight. And they would all tell you that this is a really good way to live, considering that their temporal vision seems to fade with the passage of time. They have caught the vision of their forever, and that, my friends, is reason enough to lunch with the ancients every Tuesday.

I need to see, and they need to color the sacred canvas of their witness while the brush is yet strong and the paint is still wet. Like the saints of Hebrews 11, theirs is a portrait worthy of the throne room of heaven, and thus I pray this night with tenderness in my heart,

Thank you, Father, for surrounding my life with the ancients on Tuesdays. They breathe the witness of faith unlike any other women with whom I share my life. You knew I needed them, Lord, and with gratitude I accept their influence in my life. Script my heart with the certainty, hope, and faith in the truth of who You are. They are sure of their tomorrow. Let my life breathe with the same measure. And when we all finally reach our home with You in heaven, it sure would be nice to have a Tuesday table with our names on it. Please tell Maxine that we won’t be long in coming. Amen.

[i] http://studylight.org/desk/view.cgi?number=4245

~elaine

I would love to hear about the “ancients” who surround your life. If you don’t have any, find some! They are a treasure trove waiting to be discovered. Shalom.

Shifting Seasons

August 11, 2008

“To everything there is a season, and time to every purpose under heaven.” (Ecc. 3:1).

Seasons.

Appointed segments of time parametered around specific occasions. Times in life that float in and out. Some with awareness. Some with little thought.

I’m about to enter into a new season, and, indeed, it comes with much thought this night.

My kids are returning to school tomorrow. It both delights my heart and fills my mind with a new set of thoughts. Every new school year brings changes for all of us. Some change I can control, but mostly, the changes that will come fall outside my realm of manipulation.

It is the way of seasons.

They cycle and spin around us as an inevitable force of nature, and the only control we can levy in the process is the one that voices our response.

How will we walk it? How will we embrace the unknown with a measure of grace and purity of heart that is our requirement as a people who are called to live by faith and not by sight? Will fists and stomps and “refusals to move” be our portion? Or, will we instead, step into it with a calm resolve that whispers the surety of Solomon’s wisdom?

There is something oddly diverse about shifting seasons. Our appointed segments of living can hold both hard and soft. Pain and joy. Full and empty. Difficult and easy…all at the same time. We cannot avoid a new season’s arrival, nor can we fully calculate its end, but we can be sure that while walking it, our emotions will run the spectrum’s extremes.

Tonight, my emotions run tired and worried. Not because my kids are entering into a new school year, but simply because of what they leave behind as they go.

Me.

A mom without focus. A mom with some free time on her hands, and yet with little understanding of how to fill those hands. A mom who has dreamed for so long of one day finally realizing what she wants to be when she grows up. A mom who could do a hundred things in a hundred different ways to make the time pass, and yet a mom who isn’t interested in just filling time.

Filling time with a hundred things is of little value to me, for time is precious and it is marching its cadence in quick measure. No, what I’m after in this new season of living is filling my time with a few pursuits that hold timeless value—investments that save sacred and reap dividends far into the future. If not my future, then the future of those who will come behind.

Tonight, I’m not sure what that looks like or how it breathes. But I’m fairly confident that it will include the paper and the pen and the ink that draws from the life-giving well of God’s holy Word. I’m certain it will breathe with people—those individuals who’ve been so wonderfully deposited into my life by divine intention. And I’ve got a feeling that it will also pulse with the quiet hush of heaven—times of orchestrated isolation that will allow me the room to pause and to ponder the one thought that stirs my heart the most.

My Father.

And my God is anything but filler. He’s timeless. An investment in Him is an investment that reaps as sacred and yields dividends long after the seed has been sown. He holds the highest value of all intended pursuits, and in the end, He is “how” I want to be when I grow up.

I don’t know what season you are walking right now. Perhaps, like me, you are about to enter into a new segment of living. And while yours may not step like mine, all shifting seasons bring pause to our spirits.

I am thinking about you tonight, even as I think about all of the ways that I want to honor God with my life in this new chapter called today. I don’t want to simply “get through” it. I want to fully live while in it. I don’t want to rush time. I want to savor the aroma of minutes and hours and days that are given to me because God deemed them purposeful and worthy on my behalf.

I don’t want to look back on this season with regrets. Instead, I want to look forward with the understanding that this season is the solid seeding of my next. That choices made now will matter for tomorrow. That this shifting segment of time is my necessary portion if I am to grow into the woman that God intends for me to be.

I’ve been anticipating this new chapter in my life for nearly three months now. The chapter entitled “summer” has come to an end. The page has turned, and I have arrived on the scene of my next. The deepest and truest desire of my heart is to live it like I mean. To walk it like I talk it. To inhale the beauty of God’s eternal and then to exhale him with every breath that I breathe.

If that can be my punctuated “amen” at the end of this season, then I will have lived the wisdom of King Solomon and will have walked the grace and promise of King Jesus. May it be so for all of us, and thus I pray…

For this season of change, Father, I thank you. For all that will be accomplished toward your perfect end, I thank you. For your willingness to allow me this season, I thank you. And for your grace that affords me the privilege of walking it with you, I thank you. Bring clarity in my confusion. Calm in my chaos. Focus in my fledgling. Mercy in my mistakes. Grace in my growing. And peace…always peace…in my journey. You are my Peace and the highest esteem of my heart this night. Amen.

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a very good morning!

Perhaps you, too, are embarking on a new season of living. I would welcome your thoughts in the matter. I would also appreciate your prayers for me as I seek a writing focus for the next few months. I have some ideas but need some clarity in the matter. How may I pray for you this week? It is the privilege of my heart to do so. Shalom.

Raising Faith (part eight): Embracing Your Church

August 9, 2008

“So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2).

It’s official. VBS 2008 has officially reached its end. I, for one, wouldn’t have missed it. I tried to. Tried to find an excuse to limit my participation, but no good one could be found. Thus, I strapped on my “yes” and dug in my heels for the doing. VBS is a doing I’ve been doing for over thirty years. And for the past nineteen years, it is what my children have been doing also.

For all of the reasons that I loved being a part of our church’s VBS this year, none was more special to me than having my entire family alongside.

My teenage sons (19 and 17) have unlimited options for their doing these days. They could have…

Hung with their friends.
Gone to the movies.
Cruised the mall for bargains.
Played the latest in XBOX.
Fed their sports’ addiction via the internet or ESPN.
Found their boring at home and abroad in a variety of ways.

They could have done all of these and more, but they didn’t. Instead, they spent these past five evenings at VBS, entertaining the children and adults through their limited acting abilities. They did it, in part, because they love their momma. Even more so, they did it because they love their God.

They understand that part of “doing” life with Jesus means doing it with others. A relationship with the Creator dictates a measure of relational output. A commitment to Christ is also a commitment…

To walk in community with the body of Christ.
To give back.
To shine forth.
To guard the good and sacred deposit.
To be faithful in the small and in the big.
To honor a parent’s leading.
To honor a Father’s grace.

My sons get it. Their faith journeys are ongoing and growing with an outward focus that exceeds selfish introspection. I don’t tell you this out of a mother’s pride. My flesh could easily make that leap, but in doing so, I would limit God’s hand in the matter, and when it comes to the sacred shaping of a family…his hands are everything! No, I tell you this tonight because I want you to know that raising kids to love Jesus is possible. In fact, it is likely and probable when “raising the faith of family” is priority number one in the hearts and minds of those doing the shaping.

It doesn’t always breathe so easy and right and perfect. Our life as a family certainly hasn’t. But if there is one thing that we have consistently embraced over the years, it is our firm commitment to live in Christian community.

To be church people even when our faith was weak. To stay entrenched in the life of the church even when our hearts were committed to worldly pursuits that didn’t match up. To attend services through the seemingly boring and the mundane, and to believe that, even in the “boring,” kingdom business was on the table.

God didn’t give us the mandate to “train up a child” with the idea that all was for naught. Raising Godly kids isn’t a high stakes game of chance. No, God gave us the responsibility because he knew that our “doing” of faith would be the seeding of theirs. Sacred shaping begins in the womb. It continues over the next ten, twenty…forty years and counting! What started as a hope in my parents’ hearts for my life continues to this day.

I began my life in the church. They made sure of it. It stuck. Jesus stuck. And now, forty-two years down the road, I see the process come full circle in the lives of my sons. I am so thankful for their faith, but even as I write my gratitude, I realize that…

it doesn’t always stick—this life with Jesus and the free will of a heart. I understand that there are many of you who’ve known the pain of a prodigal child. Who’ve lived the life of the prodigal, and even now, your eyes sting with the hurt of confusion over the matter. The wish I’d done it different’s and the what did I do wrong?‘s linger as bitter lament within your souls. You’ve done your best, and now you fear it may be too late.

It is never too late. As long as you have breath and time and a day called today, you have the gift of kingdom influence. You have been given the sacred trust to be the light and life of Jesus Christ to a people who hunger for reconciliation with their Father. They may not yet fully understand the yearning behind their hunger, but never be fooled into thinking that it no longer exists.

It is there. A deep, unsatisfied craving and crying out for relationship. For community. For life within a body that exceeds the flesh. All of us, every last one of us, yearn to belong to something bigger than ourselves. God designed us with a pulse that beats for life together. He intended for us to live as one—one church with One, and only One in charge. And until we get there…until those whom we love get there with us…we must keep to the road of this sacred journey.

We must keep to the church and to our attachment therein. We must love the church through our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service because, as believers in Jesus Christ, church is what we do. It’s who we are. It’s how we are to live, for we are the church of the first born, and our names are written on the membership rolls of heaven (Hebrews 12:22-24).

And this night, there are thousands upon thousands of angels who congregate in joyful assembly because “church” is what they do. Jesus is why they are doing it, and never is it boring. Never is it pointless, for they, unlike us, always understand that kingdom business is on the table. They know and have seen that with God, all things are possible. In fact, all things work in our high and holy favor when Jesus is added to the mix. And thus I pray…

Keep us to the things of you, Father. To your church and to your people until we all come to your throne as one. Make our commitment to the body of Christ a solid and firm foundation so that the shaking of the world leaves us rooted at your doorstep. Forgive us when we choose our preferences over the preferences of you. Let us not forsake meeting together, encouraging one another, and building up the body of Christ through our gifts and our teaching. Equip us for every good work within the community of faith, and raise our faith, along with the faith of our children, as we continue in our “doing” of church. I love your church, Lord, and I feel so privileged to have taken part in bringing your story to the stage this week. Humbly and in holy fear, I guard the sacred deposit you’ve given to me. Thank you for trusting me with your witness and your grace. Amen.