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“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see,” so begins a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson that I loved as a child. Shadows are tricky things. As the poem goes on to describe, they do not behave in usual ways. Sometimes they expand and sometimes they are hardly visible at all.

This time of year, shadows take on an ominous quality for children with big imaginations. Each one just might be a monster waiting to jump out and say, “Boo!” While children enjoy the fun of a good scare, I as an adult need to be a little more cautious in how I deal with the shadows in my life.

See, another interesting thing about shadows is how they can misrepresent the object. Shadows can end up looking distorted and scary, far different from how a room looks with the lights on. We are taught a lot about staying away from the dark things of life, evil things that would be detrimental to our relationship with Jesus. However, there is also danger when there is just a small amount of light on a situation, maybe just enough to distort the truth in our minds.

This is a lot like when my children use flashlights. They do not seem to understand that a flashlight works best when held steadily at the area that needs illumination. Instead, they bounce the beam all over, blinding me and creating a confusing array of shadows that move all over the place. If I don’t allow the Holy Spirit to be my light and I am not using the Bible as the lamp of God that it claims to be, I might end up in a shadow world of half truths and confusion.

Jesus is the Light of The World. He came to take away the darkness and bring everything into the light. I am so grateful that I can bring all of my darkness, problems and worries to Him to shed light on and show me the truth!

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12

I need to share something humbling with you my readers…

When I read articles or blogs on the Internet or even in a magazine, I have a tendency to think of the author as an expert.  At the very least, I usually imagine them highly qualified.

This belief actually held me back from writing because I did not see myself as qualified to write about anything.  Then I read a quote from Justin McRoberts that said, “May the reality that I cannot know the whole truth never keep me from bearing witness to what I can and do see.”  This gave me courage to start sharing through writing.

Now the embarassing part.  There are so many times when I go back to edit or review one of my blogs and I realize I have not been remembering or living into one of God’s truths I had written about!  It is one of those, “Oh yeah,” moments.

As I am writing, I seem to be teaching myself and hopefully you, my readers, will glean something along the way too.  So while I am not an expert, I am continuing to learn and grow and to bravely share what I am learning.  I found a quote from Phil Collins that sums it up very well, “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”

I hope this will encourage you as well to share things you learn with others.  Even if you don’t have all the answers, or life all figured out, someone could use your wisdom and experience today.  You don’t need to be an expert or highly qualified in order to do something, you just need a little bit of courage and the willingness to allow God to use you and your unique gifts.

“Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”  Joshua 1:9

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”  Proverbs 27:17

As much of an oxymoron as this title might sound, I believe it is possible.

After the year we have had so far, I am sure I am not the only one feeling like I should just slap a big “F” in red letters on it and hope for a better grade next year! However, in that kind of thinking I am selling myself very short and also being short-sighted in all that I have actually learned in this extremely difficult time.

In fact, one of the things I have learned a lot about this year is called “re-framing.” This is when you change the way you think about an experience or even something as simple as an undesirable task. For instance, I could get really down about all the events we have missed this year that my family would have normally gone to. But re-framing would remind me of all of the opportunities we had at home doing family activities that we ordinarily would have been too busy to enjoy.

But back to the sense of failure that keeps trying to creep in. Just like re-framing is a mindset, failure and success, most of the time, live in our thoughts about ourselves and the attitude we have about those thoughts. If I view myself as a “failure,” or this entire year as a “failure,” I automatically discount anything good. Never mind that my kids have loved having me around more. Forget the fact that I have overhauled and cleaned out almost every square inch of my home. Completely overlook the extra time I have had in the evenings to read to my little ones and talk and listen to my teenagers.

I believe the reason we in our country have struggled so mightily with the restrictions that we have encountered, is due in part to this overwhelming drive for success. I find in my own life that I don’t even have a clear idea of what the success I am pushing for even looks like! We just push ourselves so hard that we don’t even have time to ask ourselves that question.

So recently, God began to teach me about successful failure. He had me camp out in Psalm 23 in the Bible, re-reading it every morning. This beautiful Psalm is all about Him being our shepherd. The part about the shepherd making the sheep lie down in green pastures resonated with me. I am very much like the somewhat dumb sheep that can’t even take a break by themselves, but have to be made to lie down. God engineered circumstances in my world to the point that I finally threw my hands up in the air and sat down and rested in my Heavenly Father’s loving arms. Which, of course, is exactly where He wants all of us to dwell. My successful failure right now looks like giving everything in my life to Jesus and trusting Him to lead me the next minute, the next hour, and on, trusting that even if I don’t accomplish the things that I thought were important that it is okay. He is teaching me that the only success there is in this life is to know Him and have a relationship with Him. All of the rest will some day fall by the wayside.

So the next time the thought comes into your mind that you have failed, check in with God. He can re-frame your thinking quickly and remind you that if you are right with Him and pursuing Him with all that you are that you are a great success! Also, remember that nothing is wasted with God and even things that we view as failures, He will use in His ultimate success story.

“And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

I want to get the most out of this difficult experience.  To suck the marrow out.  Go past the surface, past the heart of the matter even, to where the life blood is created.  For that is what I need, a transfusion.  The only way to change, Jesus’ blood for mine.  Oh God, don’t let me miss it, the change You are doing in me.  Don’t let me heal over too quickly, leaving something ugly festering underneath.

Down to the marrow, the root of my pain.  There is pain there, but also strength.  The marrow of a bone holds all the nourishment.  God are You going to nourish me on my pain?  Only You could do something like that, taking darkness and creating light out of it.

Can I be brave enough to ask You to take me all the way down, down to the scariest places of my soul?  To take me to a place of real healing.

I don’t know what’s in there, but You do God.  You know the anemia my faulty marrow has created in my life.  Me living a thin existence when all the while Jesus is waiting, holding out the rich cup of His blood of the covenant He made with me. 

Can I reach out with a shaky hand, take and drink?

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you:  The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’  In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”  I Corinthians 11:23-26

I teach piano to about 20 students of various levels of ability, from my little beginners to some fairly advanced students.  Inevitably though, at the end of my teaching day it is not the beautiful classical pieces playing themselves over in my head, but the very first plunked out melodies of “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” and “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat.”

Ear worms.  Such a gross term for those musical phrases that want to play in a loop in our minds.  I have no idea why they stick in our heads the way they do, but aside from being mildly irritating I suppose they don’t do any real harm.  There are some phrases that play through our heads that can cause us harm though.  Thoughts like, “I’m not good enough,” or “Why can’t I have it all together like so-and-so does?”  These kind of thoughts used to absolutely paralyze me.  For many years they held me back from doing a lot of things because I believed them to be true.

The only way to stop these thoughts from playing over and over in our minds is to confront them with the truth.  We have to acknowledge that they are actually lies.  True, we can never be “good” enough, but that is why Jesus came, to redeem us into His image.  Another way to get rid of these beasties is to learn to replace the lies with the truth of who we are: we have been made in the image of God!  Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  Even after we have banished these harmful thoughts we have to be on guard that they don’t sneak back into our minds, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You,”  Isaiah 26:3.

It took some work for me to learn how to “catch” those nasty little ear worms, and replace them with truth, but it has been so worthwhile.  I still have to be on my guard that they don’t creep back into my thoughts, but just like my piano students know, practice makes perfect!  This new way of thinking has provided freedom in my life to pursue things I never thought possible.  Will you join me?  Will you believe the truth about yourself and what God has planned for your life?  I can’t wait to see what you do with your new freedom and truth!

“Finally, brothers, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  Philippians 4:8

Why is it that when we think of eating something healthy we think of spinach?  It is the quintessential stereotype in any children’s story to have a parent telling their little one to eat their spinach.  Why do we also approach our relationship with God this way?  I better eat my spinach: read my Bible for so long each day, go to church every Sunday, put a certain amount of money in the offering plate, and the list goes on.  If we do all these things we will be spiritually healthy right?

I don’t think this is quite what God had in mind when He made humans.  Also, let’s be honest, just like kids kick up a fuss about eating their spinach, not many of us actually stick with a dry spiritual diet like that anyway.

I recently heard a worship song with the phrase, “grace upon grace” in it.  For some reason it made me think of whipped cream.  I believe that what God is really offering us is dessert, not spinach.  He has this wonderful gift of salvation and new life He offers us and then on top of that He gives us grace upon grace.  This is like getting a piece of pie and being offered whipped cream and then more whipped cream!  The best part of all, is that we don’t even have to eat all our spinach to get this dessert.  There is nothing we have to do to earn what Jesus wants to give us, in fact one definition of grace is, “unmerited favor.”

Don’t worry, I am definitely not advocating abandoning your Bible or your church.  When we have a real relationship with God those things change from things we feel like we have to do, to things we get to do.  Oddly enough, the most difficult thing in all of this is simply receiving what Jesus is offering.  Saying yes to a relationship with Him and then yes to the grace He wants to lavish on us can be extremely difficult.  However, once we get a taste of the life He is offering we will probably be okay living on dessert!

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  John 10:10

“How much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”  Romans 5:17