Grace in the Middle {31 Days of Celebrating Middle Age}

Your middle is as ordained a season in your life as your beginning was, and as ordained as the day of your end.  God births your beginnings, and He sets the time of your completions.  But He sings over your middle!

"The Lord thy God in your middle is mighty;  He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy;  He will rest in His love, He will joy over you with singing!"  (Zephaniah 3:17)

How can He do that?  How can He sing over our middle?  Has He looked at your middle lately?  Has He noticed mine?  (It's a mess...)

Here's how:  He is confident in His great love for you.  He rests in it.

It reminds me of my teacup poodle Rambo.  Bear with me, I promise this will make sense, maybe.

I've heard some incredible Bible teachers and preachers in my short time on this planet. I've heard them use majestic metaphor and substantive simile. I love the depth that has been illustrated for me, time and again, by solid thinkers in The Faith - some are well-known, some, like my own husband, little-known.

Try as I may, my mind won't work majestically. I sigh and I try, and therein lies the problem.

When I tune into my life as it really is, in all its quotidian acedia (oh, do look the words up - they are delicious to say, but bitter to live) the revelation of grace can come honestly. Like the revelations to be found in puppies and cookies.

It is no secret that I adore my puppy. He is a teacup poodle named Rambo, and he is aptly named.

In fact, my puppy sometimes acts appallingly, and I still smile. I delight in this little dog no matter what.



A few years ago, I examined this anomaly. You see, I was known, back then,  to be ever-working to improve myself, and therefore took unbridled delight in almost nothing. But I took disturbing delight in my poodle...everyone found it disturbing, because his misbehavior had almost no affect on me whatsoever.

I decided this was because I had no fear for this animal's future. God bless all those who believe that puppies have eternal souls: I do not. Therefore, no amount of spoiling on my part will send Rambo's soul to the Lake of Fire. This dog is "eternally secure".

 In a sense, His future is fully known to me: he will live in the lap of luxury and love, and one day die. That will be that (and yes, I will grieve terribly). Nothing in terms of Rambo's ultimate eternal destiny is up in the air. He can't misbehave his way into Canine Judgement. He can't bite hard enough to hurt a toddler.

I am utterly free to delight in my dog.

When I stop to consider these majestic metaphors, I realize: the Lord delights in me! He knows the plans He has for me. He has forever settled my ultimate destiny. (Yes, only because I have trusted Him for my righteousness!)

No amount of "misbehavior" on my part can shake Him from His great love for me, in Christ Jesus. Far from being antinomianism, (and unlike Rambo) this kind of good news actually makes me want to heel - to follow close by my Owner's side forever.

Poodles and antinomianism and eternal security aside (after all, a mind can only take so much splendor) I also sometimes wonder why baking cookies for grown-up kids isn't so much fun anymore.

Used to be, a batch of cookies was a day-maker. Making a couple of sheets of home made chocolate chip cookies had the potential to bring inner healing to four children who, on some days, were fraught with naughtiness and discord.

Ah, but now they are All Grown Up. They are adults, all of them, with jobs and net spendable income. Two of them are married, with babies of their own.  They can buy these treats for themselves, anytime they want. They can work for them.  Cookies from mom don't mean what they used to.  Now, they are just a nice gesture.

As it is with the free Gift of Grace. It is precisely when we think we have matured our way "past" it, that the gift begins to lose its luster. The fun is taken right out of living in it. The truth that used to make our day and heal our hurts, now is something we can earn for ourselves. And we "get blessed" for our efforts.


Well.  Whatever we can earn for ourselves must be pretty common and obtainable. Thus, when God offers grace to us, His grace is reduced (in our minds) to merely The Nice Gesture.

A Nice Gesture is entirely unable to change us.

Hear me - hear me well! Don't rob God (and yourself) of the delight and fragrance that should characterize piping hot, fresh-from-the-heart-of-God, sweet grace. You will never be able to work for it, you cannot obtain it on your own, all ideas of any righteousness of your own are a dangerous illusion.

This is where the metaphor breaks down, as it isn't a dangerous illusion at all for my children to buy their own cookies. See why I sigh? My metaphors aren't majestic enough.

Oh well. It is what it is. Puppies and cookies and grace.

LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me...

Make a Memorial {In the Middle}

So here you are, slap-dab between the former glory and the conclusion.  Here in this middling place, there is none of the momentum that always comes with new beginnings, yet the finish line is nowhere yet in sight.

What do you do?

Girl, you throw a party! 

Not even kidding.

Should we?  Is it worth the trouble it would take to pause while in full tilt, to stop long enough to care about the middle and to memorialize the miracle that we've made it this far?

Dang straight.

Go with me to Joshua chapter 4:

"And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spoke to Joshua saying, 'Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, and command them saying, 'Take you out of the middle of the Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and you shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the place where you shall lodge this night.'

And Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood:  and they are there to this day."

Here, we see that God makes a big deal out of the middle.  In fact, Joshua was commanded to make two memorials:  one from the middle, and one in the middle. 

We absolutely must celebrate right where we are, and for no dang reason.  We must breathe in the atmosphere of eternity, and look at our weight, our debt, our career, our project, our place here in the middle, and let the peace of God settle over us like a blanket.

To be at peace is not to be passive or unempowered - and it certainly is not to be ashamed!

In every place you find yourself, right here in your middle, you can be at peace.  You can know that it is okay for you to be there.  After all, you are where you're at.

And to acknowledge where you are in the middle of your Jordan, and find joy in that place is to find strength.  And to find strength is to find yourself on the other side of your Jordan before you expected!

To be in denial about the difficulties  inherent to the middle, is to leave behind the very stones necessary to build your memorial.

The quality of your outcome depends on the strength and work you put into your middle.  It is  urgent  that you celebrate your middle.

Bring out the Near-Beer and the bubblegum cigars, and I request the very highest of fives.

Get it, girl!

Your Identity {In the Middle}

Everyone has read the quote by Mother Theresa, "The Lord has not called me to be successful, He has called me to be faithful."

And we nod our head in agreement...until middle age hits full-force, and in some area of our lives, lo and behold! it doesn't all pan out.  Success eludes us.  The outcome is not what we were gunning for.  

Then, we wonder what went wrong, what did we do wrong, and where is God in all this? Dark discouragement threatens our spiritual health, as we examine every aspect of our existence, searching for solutions to this problem - for an explanation for this unexpected turn of events.

After all, if we do our part, isn't God obligated to do His? Underneath all the Christian-speak about trusting in God, isn't life a pretty predictable series of acts of obedience, followed by the goal of midlife good results? Sure, we may encounter temporary set-backs, even a catastrophe here and there, but shouldn't the end result turn out to be the one for which we aim? What is trusting in God for, if not to grant success to us when we are obedient to Him?

To put it succinctly: No.

Trusting in the Lord pleases Him. Pleasing Him is the goal. The goal, ultimately, is simply to hear, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

It is hard to stare perceived failure in the eye. It can be devastating to look back on years of work, even decades of obedience to God, with little to show for it, to the eyes of watching men.

But I have a word for you, wherever you are. Whether you have been faithful in the ministry, only to see hardship - or worked your heart out for years in your own business, only to see it go under - whether you have been honest and upright in a relationship, only to be mistreated, or circumspect with your finances, only to see hard times; whether you have been obedient to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, only for them to demand all you had to give, and leave you and your God - whether you have diligently poured out your best years to your local church, only to be betrayed....what if I told you that your obedience-for-the-sake-of-obedience is beautiful in the eyes of the Lord? What if God Himself told you that?

He has already told you, when He told Isaiah. Listen to Isaiah's broken heart:

Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain... (Is. 49:4)

"All this work, for nothing. I've exhausted myself to no avail. Decades of faithfully prophesying the word of the Lord - and no revival. No results."

...yet surely my judgment is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.

Here comes the best part, the healing part ~

And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant...Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be my strength.

This is my hard-won word for you.  Your outcome is the Lords ("yet surely my judgment is with the Lord...") and you are yet glorious in the eyes of the Lord. 

And thus saith the Lord to you. "Yet." Oh, yet! Not just "yet", but "yet surely." Yet surely as He knows your name, you are beautiful in the eyes of your Father, and He promises to strengthen you.

Life is not a predictable series of acts of obedience followed by sure and timely and perfect results. Sometimes, we do all we know to do, and "Israel is not gathered".

Cry your tears, beloved, and then dry them, because outward success was never to be your goal.

Your goal is to be glorious...honourable...distinguished...important and successful in the eyes of the Lord.

And yet you shall be.

The Friendships of Women {31 Days of Celebrating Middle Age}

I knew a woman who was part of our church years ago (she has been gone for many years now) who used to tell me...all the time..."I don't have any friends in this church."

But what she was really saying was, "I don't consider myself close to certain, specific women."

And what she really meant, truthfully, was, "I want to be on what I consider to be the inside track. I think the pastor's wife needs to make me her BFF."

(she later admitted to this, that is how I know...)

Meanwhile, I knew of at least two other women in our church that had reached out to her, who were quite available for her, who cared a lot about her. This woman's blatant disregard for her friendships made me angry. I asked her, point blank, "Who is __(name)___________ , then, chopped liver??!"

I had a way with words, in those days.

Today, more than a decade later, I might be a little more gentle. I said might.

Because I see today, more clearly than I saw back then, that everyone...everyone...wants to be beloved. They want to be special to someone who they consider special.

Today, I would be gentle...but not permissive. I still do not respect a woman who does not treasure her own beautiful life...her own friends...her own husband...her own children....her own home (whatever its size or condition...love, and making the best of four walls makes every home a beautiful place)...

...I do not get along for very long with women who devalue what they have been given, because what they have been given is not what they want. They want what someone else has...maybe what I have or what someone else has - someone else's success, their gifts and talents, their friendships, their whatever.

Celebrate who you are!

Never let who you are not, cancel out the beauty of who you are!

Your friends are the most lovely, your life is the most blessed, your children the most special of all, your home is the sweetest, your work the most meaningful, your church the most precious.

And if your child is a dedicated prodigal, or your job stressful, or your marriage lacking passion, or your friendships not "meeting your needs"....

...that is when it is urgent that you begin to see your own life and your own dear ones as infinitely more beautiful than anyone else's.

Thanksgiving transforms "enough" into a feast. Always.

If you do not consider your own friends to be the very best ones you could ever have, the most lovely, perfect women in the world... if you don't see your husband as the most attractive, your children as the most amazing, your grandchildren as the most beautiful...your mother as the greatest, your father as the most strong and wise...your sister as the most fabulous...

....maybe that's because you don't treat any of your beloveds that way. Maybe they are not worth the effort in your estimation?

Or maybe they don't treat you with celebrity status, so you treat them likewise.

How lacking in grace and creativity. I am sad for you. Only because I see the same tendencies in me, and I sadden my own selfish-self.

I have come to the conclusion that I want to be the first one to celebrate you. Or I want to be the only one of the two of us who celebrates anything...that is okay by me.

I don't always celebrate first (or even at all) but at least I know for sure I would rather beat you to it. I will smoke you, in fact, if you give me half a chance.

Do you see? It's all in how you choose to see and celebrate your one, gorgeous life, and all who are part of it.



You don't have to be accepted into the inner circle of "those" certain women. You don't have to be one of their "beloveds" to BE beloved...the King is your Friend. God has accepted you into His heart...His inner circle...through Christ. He will relate to you as warmly and intimately and affirmingly as you believe Him to be towards you.

He sets your boundaries...those lines have fallen to you in pleasant places, the Bible says. If you cannot see the beauty of your very own life, it is your thinking towards it that is your problem. You don't need someone else's gift, personality, friends, money, or lifestyle.

You need to treasure what you have already been given.

Celebrating who you are frees you to do the same for others. You become free (truly) to celebrate who they are, without hoping they crown you their "BFF" in exchange for the favor.

Suddenly...you are doing unto others the way you wish they'd do unto you.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Local Church {Your Middle Age Relationships}

I love "the Bride" in concept. I am devoted to "the body of Christ" in theory. Its the reality of them both that bites, sometimes. And I should know.  I am here today, in this, the 23rd of our 31 Days of Celebrating Middle Age, with perhaps the stiffest challenge you will hear this month.  Maybe even this year.

Get your bad self into a local church. 

Not an internet church, not quasi-church, where everyone thinks exactly like you do.  No, go find yourself a local church that is organized (yep) and meets in one place regularly.  (Oooooh, if you do this, you are now the one who is thinking outside the box.  What used to be traditional is the new hipster.  You are the new renegade, trust me.  Everyone thinks Starbucks is a cooler way to be the church, and everybody is wrong, just like mass popular opinion usually is.)

Become part of a body of believers.  And if it doesn't bore you from time to time, it doesn't count. 

I'm all into loving my brother, until "my brother" is someone in my church who bugs me. I'm all about grace, until grace must be extended to someone who is so deeply under law they wouldn't know grace if it kissed them on the cheek...

Let's take New Testament Living to the next level - that of actually living it past the point of our pain. Can we take it the extra mile, into loving others all the way past our doctrinal differences, sacrificing the sacred cows of our deepest hurts sustained in church life, dismounting our Holy High Horses?

Whatever made us think that church life was warm and fuzzy? It never has been, and it never will be, not this side of eternity anyhow. In the words of one of the Great Dead Guys, Matthew Henry (I think it was) who said, "We do not yet live amongst just men made perfect...we live amongst 'just men' ", I'm thinking it is time that we get on with the program.

No one is saying "get over it", I'm saying get on with it, in spite of it. If you've left a church - a good church - go back and fix it.  Replant yourself, if you want to flourish.  God's program, His "plan A" is still the local church.

Sure, there is a church universal. She's awesome. She's as terrible as an army with banners. She embodies all that God is about in this hour - which is to demonstrate His Great Goodness to a watching world, through what seems to be uninspired vessels - thereby bringing many sons into glory.

But just as the God who dwells in unapproachable light came down from His greatness, into the womb of a woman....the church universal in all her splendor must become an approachable, human entity. The church universal is expressed and defined by each church local.

In church, this upcoming Sunday, I will tell myself (as I often do, silently), "This is the church. This is what 'church life' looks like." It may or may not be splendid to the naked eye.

That's called "bringing it home". That's called making our theology affect our biography. We all love the church universal. But try "having all things in common" with the universal church. Try imitating the faith of "those over you" in the universal church. (I suppose you could wear Rick Warren's hairstyle, or attempt Joel Osteen's accent, or try to preach like your favorite Christian Superstar...)

But try forgiving the universal church, bearing the burdens of it, and speaking only that which is good to the use of edifying....with and to the ethereal "church universal". How about simply "putting up" with the church universal? It can't be done.

Most of Christianity gets lost in the translation without the church local.

And a group of people have to have more than a creed and a livingroom and their own insecurities in common to actually BE a local church. We may begin with nothing but a creed and a livingroom and our own insecurities, but we don't remain that way...not and be a healthy expression of the local church.

Most of New Testament Christianity cannot be actually lived without the covenant relationships inherent in a healthy local church.

There. I said it.  I so hope you come back!  But even if you don't - if the many readers I have gained in this {31 Day} series all get offended and leave...I have to speak my truth.

Nah, it is the truth.  I hate that term "my truth" - as though truth is subjective, or there is no objective measure for it.


God’s covenant with us is prior to any covenant we make with each other. He chooses us, sets us apart, calls us to holiness, and enjoins us to love one another. But all this must happen in particulars. The commitment to live out the principles of the new covenant takes place with a specific people in a specific place. This results in a local church. Membership matters because particularization matters.

According to Jonathan Leeman (whose ideas I’ve borrowed in the paragraph above), submitting to a local church accomplishes a number of crucial things. Church membership:

1. Identifies us with Christ.
2. Distinguishes us from the world.
3. Guides us into the righteousness of Christ by presenting a standard of personal and corporate righteousness.
4. Acts as a witness to non-Christians.
5. Glorifies God and enables us to enjoy his glory.
6. Identifies us with God’s people.
7. Assists us in living the Christian life through the accountability of brothers and sisters in the faith.
8. Makes us responsible for specific believers.
9. Protects us from the world, the flesh, and the Devil
.
In other words, “the covenant commitment of the local church makes the invisible new covenant visible. It’s an earthly symbol, sign, or analogy of this wonderful heavenly reality” (The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, 267).
Kevin DeYoung

Messes Worth Making {Your Relationships in Midlife}

One thing I have always taught and believed:  If you can't be totally transparent about your life, don't lead. 

Like, seriously.  Don't even lead a parade. 

Because the truth has a way of coming out, and the thing the world needs to see out of leaders isn't perfection.  The world needs to see its leaders have the ability to administrate the manifold grace of God into every life-situation. 

There are those who believe in miracles, and there are those who depend on them.  There are those who believe in grace, and those who depend on grace.  There are those who believe in grace, and there are those who administrate grace into their own lives first, and then into the lives of others.

By New Testament definition, we call those people who have learned to administrate the Finished Work of Christ - we call them "elders" or "shepherds" or "leaders".  And yes, it all goes back to transparency.  Don't hide your stuff.  Don't mask your issues.  You don't have to air your dirty laundry, but those to whom you relate, both in life and in leadership structure, should be aware when there are significant issues manifesting in your life.

Me?  I just tell everyone what is happening and get it over with.  My deepest struggle?  Someone, somewhere knows all about it, I promise you.  More often than not, many someones know.

We reached a point in mid-life, summer of 2010, when our family relationships lurched wildly from very close and  consistent and mostly sweet, to chaotic and painful and mostly angry. 

The summer of 2010 was when we finally were forced to make it official:  We had prodigals in the parsonage.  (That is also the title of an excellent book , by the way). The Preacher and I had seen hints of it coming, for a couple of years.  We had fought tooth and claw for the spiritual lives of all our children, and the battle for the lives of our sons had come to a dramatic head.

We were devastated.  We were encouraged by our leaders to take a long sabbatical, but that was out of the question...more than anything, it was out of the question because only three things in life brought us any comfort in that season: our two beautiful daughters and answering the call of God on our lives.

We did take that summer to rest, and The Preacher did nothing but preach.  (And any preacher will laugh at that statement..."nothing but preach"...because the preparation of a sermon is almost always a grueling spiritual battle, if you are preaching right.)

And we took care of each other.

Friends, your marriage is the most important earthly relationship, and is the singlemost determining factor of your health and effectiveness in the middle.

We crawled to each others arms, my Preacher and I.  We stayed on the same page, no shame and no blame, and together we let God stop the bleeding and heal our wounds.  Since then, relationship with our sons has become beautiful again - we are managing by the grace of God to stay in sweet connection with them, while not lowering the standard.  They don't live under our roof - they cannot, and be making the choices they are making.  They are grown men anyway, and all grown men should be on their own.  But they come and see us weekly, and there is genuine warmth and affection and beauty to be found...even in this place where we find ourselves...in this strange middle.

Our relationship with our boys sometimes feels strange - it is not what it was before -  yet it has never been estranged.  This is because we applied what we knew of the Gospel to our every day life.  We administrated the grace of God into the situation.  We embrace process without lowering standards.  Grace is more than something we believe in, it has become what we depend on.

But we will always, always bear the scars of that summer of 2010, and the subsequent pain of every day, week, month and year since.  When you love God so passionately, a prodigal is a grief that never quite goes away.  You learn to live with the sadness until the prodigal comes home.

And so we wait.

Because relationship is about the ugly-beautiful.  And it is always a mess worth making.

Your Midlife Relationships {A 31 Day Celebration of All Things Middle}

The doctrine of the Trinity.  God - three distinct persons, one God.  This doctrine of the triune God sets Christianity apart from all the other religions of the world.

And it is the baseline from which we understand our relationships and live in relationship with others.

We "experience" community.  God is community.  We "have" relationships.  God is relationship.  To say "God is relationship" is equal to the Biblical verity that "God is love".  It is to say the same thing.

You cannot be a Christian in your functional beliefs, and not value relationships.  You can be a Christian as a non-functioning belief...as a creed, or a system of top-shelf "doctrines",  or as a form of moralism, and be highly individualistic and idealistic.  Yes, you can get away with that.  You can be one of the many who worship God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. 

But you simply cannot say that you love God, and not have a rich tapestry of messy-beautiful relationships.  You cannot say that you love God, and yet you are not part of a body of believers who are living out the Gospel, however imperfectly and however painfully.

New Testament  Christianity is null, void, and pointless without relationships.  Messy, beautiful, tedious, painful, imperfect, blessed, inconsistent and consistent relationships...with actual people who have faults and quirks and glaring imperfections.  Love is a moot point without a real person who tries your patience, and of whom you are sometimes tempted to believe the worst instead of the best.

If you live all to yourself and for yourself, however lovely your lifestyle may be, however beautiful your home, however grand is your plan to share your life with others (without ever actually sharing your life with others) you are a useless rock. 

One stone, all by itself, is either useless...or commonly used as a weapon in the hands of the enemy.  But one stone, built with lots of other stones becomes a metaphor for the very temple of God.

What you believe about the Gospel has everything to do with how you engage the hard work of maintaining right relationships with others.

We must be fully identified by the grace of God - His unearned, undeserved favor and blessing, apart from any list of "to do's".  Otherwise, we will get our identity from another person - by watching them too closely, listening to them too literally, and needing them too fundamentally.  And when they can no longer deliver the goods, we all but extinguish the relationship.

This is sad.  Too many people say they are believers, but in reality  most  of their significant relationships are either dead or on life support.  I want you to think about each one of yours...more than anything else in this world, it is important to be honest.  Gut-level truth only, here.

Your significant relationships:  How many are flourishing?  How many are dead?  How many are on life support?  How many are going along to get along?

Thank God for Christ Jesus!  In Him there is no condemnation, just the opportunity to participate in newness of life. 

It is precisely in middle age that the wear and tear on significant relationships shows up.  No one is exempt, no one is immune, no one has a perfect track record in this area.  Regret is in the very atmosphere of this world. 

Only through the Finished Work of the Cross can you breathe in the atmosphere of eternity, where there is  always  time, where it is always a good time to say "I'm sorry", where we have been given the job ("ministry"...remember, ministry is work) of reconciliation, and where there is endless grace to help in our time of need.

Nothing...no nothing...matures us like having right relationships, and nothing brings us running to the throne of grace for help faster than maintaining right relationships.

Relationships.  A mess worth making.