the dawn will break upon us
 by mike crawford Jan 1st, 2010

God raised up a horn
Our salvation born
Down from the line of kings
Who prophets spoke and angels sing

He came to save from certain death
To shine His light - His name our breath
To break the bonds that hold us back
So we might give where others lack

Unto us a child is born
To us a son is given

Dawn breaks on frozen hearts
Darkness fades the world restarts
From the warmth of that sun
Ice will melt – healing comes

And all the walls that we built
Dams torn down - the water spills
From our eyes and from our hearts
Overflows to every part

Unto us a child is born
To us a son is given
And He will be the hope of all
And He will reign forever

And of His peace will be no end
And of His grace will be no end
And of His love will be no end
And we will all be called His friends

Unto us a child is born
To us a son is given

it won't be too long now
  by Isaac Anderson (The Well Dressed Downs -- 2009)

It won’t be too long now
There’s a weight that’s pressing down
There’s a swelling in the belly of the world

It won’t be too long now
There’s a Son Who’s pressing down
There’s a swelling in the belly of the world

So welcome to the end of your sorrows
Welcome to the end of yourself
Welcome to tomorrow – where hope lives

Come, for all things are now ready...
Luke 14:17 

This entry is actually a true exchange of encouragement during a time of waiting...the "in fear and trembling" kind of waiting...that we all need to make room for and as surely as we are there we find others who are willing to wait there with us -

Thanks SiSteR. Not sure that you even know, I guess I kind of have assumed that you get caught up on our stuff through others. This reminds me that even if that's true...a word from the heart of a person, even through email is so good. This word from you certainly comes at a time of extreme waiting for our family. My husband resigned, mutually but terribly unfortunately, from his job and business partner of a start up company over a YEAR ago. We had a severance, that quickly ran out, as we tried to keep our home in my dream area of the city and keep our oldest of 3 girls, Adelaine from having to switch schools...again. waiting on the Lord, because i did not want those things to be affected, not my security. Surely his plan was to keep us and provide for us there. As our hope and money was depleted, we found that leaving the house was inevitable in order to keep Adelaine in school. So as you know the situation, we had to break an agreement, what relationship that was left and that security.
SiSteR, We moved in to a warehouse with a family of 8 and a drifter on troost-in the HOOOOOD- next to an adult theater!? We had news of a possible job, but no confirmation, and no other place to go. Some families of our impact group and many others offered, so we would not have been on the streets.  We couldn't make a commitment or get a lease for that matter, so trying community living seemed like a good place to not be alone in this.

As it became harder to know what to do, living in community actually became suffocating, with too many people, and too much space, even though it was a really cool warehouse and it could be so good at times.  Then the job my husband ended up taking, for peanuts with a promise of pay at the end of the project began to take a nose dive. He actually had hopes that it would become a way to be able to do what he left to do, building a community from within vs developing a pocket book.  And after he had done his part, fully restoring it to where he promised-they let him go two weeks before that pay would take place. We were kind of hit hard by this one, no severance not even a full paycheck?! and we could no longer afford to live this way, we needed a space to think and be our family, only. All i can muster up to ask is "what is happening here?"

and in the middle of all of this i am finding that during this time, as hard and crazy place that it seems to be-I was feeling a new sense of trust that overcame personal fears that I have known my whole life.

It looks ridiculous, and feels so strange. At this point we still had no home, no job, no way to put Adelaine back in that school & it was somehow ok. Really no turmoil over those things, just living everyday, finding that EVERY true need gets met, by so much more than I asked for. So deeply, uprooted, that new life is all that will be known from here on out. I'm missing a bunch in between...like a few of those needs a house we get to rent from people who needed it to be filled, $ for Adelaine to get to go to school, a friend gives him handiwork regularly, even if it sometimes means raking leaves, we have had groceries delivered nearly every week, friends took us out for their anniversary dinner, so much prayer and so much more- last week, I was hitting bottom, in this waiting room, and seriously cried out-Lord, what would make this better is to fix our freaking dryer (help me, help me, help me)...as piles of clothes hang on all the banisters, and rails, and more piles.  My husband doesn't know this at the time-well actually rarely is he ever just aware of my state of mind unless i do voice it - but since I have tried to not complain, a lot, he decides to help someone else move - when I am having a breakdown and need him home?! Really. So when he comes home with a dryer, guess where you can find me...back on the waiting room floor. (thank you, thank you, thank you)
So another word aside, back early in the year when it was announced that Isaac was coming for the summer, interiorly, i kept hearing, "just wait for Isaac to come"-and what he spoke about while he was here as a pastor for the interim, was so true to where we were and that he mentioned Anne Lamott's prayers whom I was reading at that time, & haven't put down since
... Help me help me help me...thank you thank you thank you ...
I can see why that was good for me to hear - it was what was happening.
And there has been no change, a few phone calls of hope, and maybe if we decided moving was an actual option there could be big change outwardly. But we just feel that waiting this out-yes in fear and trembling-is going to be where the deepest movement is really going to happen for our family's freedom and true incarnational transformation to keep pushing through.  Even if when it kills us, everyday, sister.
Like this morning, If there is anything, that i have held above ground during this whole time, it would be my girls and husband. Just keeping us together, safe and healthy, has been my personal challenge as a mom. It's hard when it looks like we are falling apart, and maybe naive or unprepared. But living day to day in faith is all of those things in practice! No one knows until they've been there, eh?
This week, I haven't even thought about Christmas because Adelaine's birthday is Saturday, and just thinking about how to do that creatively is taking all I have. When I falter, i admit, it's here, trying to make things as normal as possible-like it matters, or that there is even a normal? But I want her to enjoy her birthday?! I get a call from a friend who says she is dropping off a little something-each year their family makes homemade apple butter and we so look forward to this call! So she comes in all bundled up with a huge smile and a card-no apple butter? A gift card for target and the grocery store. Happy birthday Adelaine! Oh, did I mention a carload full of gifts for our entire family! ALL from a generous anonymous giver who asked her to deliver it to us... this stuff happens to other people.
So when that question creeps in..."what is happening here?" i see this, these things happening in the good and the bad - THE most direct way for God's inbreaking to occur in me, is through the well being of my family-and honestly i can say its not about the gifts...it is about THE gift, Him. He knows how to take our little requests and give us what we do truly NEED-leaving us to feel overwhelmed that we get SO much.

We just have to be there, in that waiting room, flat faced, arms wide open, sprawled all out all over that floor.

Is this what you were thinking when you say:


"Waiting has been a common thread in what I have heard from the Father in the last few months, it struck me again as shared on Sunday and then boom, again this AM.  But what I loved about this passage was that the Lord sometimes give us no choice but to wait. And when the waiting is hard, He gives us one another. So if you have felt the pain in waiting of late, know that you are not alone, I for one count it a blessing to wait along side of you. Thank you all for the part you play in my life and may this be encouragement to you that we are in this together, no matter how hard and dirty and gritty life gets.  He made us for community and real growth happens as we forage together as a family, a chosen family. "

If so...yes. Indeed he has made us for community and real growth does happen as we forage together as a family, a chosen family."

bLeSSeD Be,
cHaRiTy!

(the entry was in response to this)

On Dec 13, 2010, at 8:36 PM, :

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

I usually like to share words of encouragement in person, but this morning as I spent some time in the lectionary old testament reading, I felt this great desire to share it with all of you, as individuals, as groups of leaders, and as my beloved community.  Most of you I know and all of you I honor and respect for the time and talent you so generously give to ensure our faith community grows and thrives.  I know we have all felt the stress and strain of the last year as we have foraged what for many of us is a new type of journey without a lead pastor. As our friend and I spent some time in prayer together last night,  I realized that indeed when we communicate with one another as belivers about our lives, our comunion with the Father and how the Holy Spirit is moving, that it is incredibly encouraging and for whatever reason I have been remiss in sharing over this last year and I am resolving to change that.
So this morning the old testament passage was Isaiah 8:16-9:1and what struck me was chapter 8 vs 17 "I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.  I will put my trust in him."                 Waiting has been a common thread in what I have heard from the Father in the last few months, it struck me again as shared on Sunday and then boom, again this AM.  But what I loved about this passage was that the Lord sometimes give us no choice but to wait. And when the waiting is hard, He gives us one another. So if you have felt the pain in waiting of late, know that you are not alone, I for one count it a blessing to wait along side of you. Thank you all for the part you play in my life and may this be encouragement to you that we are in this together, no matter how hard and dirty and gritty life gets.  He made us for community and real growth happens as we forage together as a family, a chosen family.

humbly,
SiSteR

is screaming that THERE IS NOTHING OK ABOUT ANY OF THIS!

and i know that it has nothing to do with insecurity, emotional or financial instability, or even the fear of needing to know a thing.
because do you know what?
i. KNOW. this. fear.

this fear is so familiar to me. i have spent an entire lifetime avoiding this fear. but i know it. hidden it so deep that its the only thing visible in the darkest times.  but i mercifully know it.

still all i want is to just be o.k.

and then i am reminded that just o.k. is not what i am made to be.... or marked to become...

and yes. i KNOW this, too.  and it is so familiar to me. and i have spent an entire lifetime avoiding this gift. and i know it. and i have hidden it so deep that its the only thing visible in the darkest times. but truthfully i know it.

and then comfort comes even still as everything inside of me is screaming that THERE IS NOTHING OK ABOUT ANY OF THIS!

{  "everything will be okay in the end. if it's not okay, it's not the end." –unknown }

"Man, in his weakness and shortsightedness believes he must make choices in this life. He trembles at the risks he takes. We do know fear. But no. Our choice is of no importance. There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we even get back what we rejected. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.

 "Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best. "

"our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home."

"God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road." 

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever."

"It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness."

"One does not travel by plane. One is merely sent, like a parcel."

(Translated from Danish)" — Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) (Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny)

....more - http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/8147.Isak_Dinesen

Fear of the Inexplicable

" But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. " Rainer Maria Rilke  ....i am just TOO aLiVe to be perfect.  perfection IS a form of protection of our fears of what is inexplicable in our lives? R.i.P. Reassurance PeRfecT PROTEST  ...and then i just have to honor this uprooting in me that has occurred merely since yesterday and which i believe may be monumental in marking a new season for me, because i can no longer ignore the rumblings from within or even think that  these words are going to do no less than haunt me evermore ... or until i simply acknowledge this awareness of all that is thoroughly interconnected -  from this particular work of collected words, random thoughts, unintentional happenings, postings from certain sites, peculiar images, and undeveloped ideas - is what causes the rising in my soul to scream for freedom, and in a way that reminds me that this freedom isn't nor hasn't been so far removed that i won't be able to recognize it. it may not be the same freedom that i believe i have and do experience, but it will be a freedom that springs out of me, more faithfully and with a strength that i am sure is beyond everything i have ever known.   for whatever its worth, and with absolute inexplicable belief, today is different, and without any reservation, i am ready to do what ever it takes to make this happen, beginning with every little thing that matters to me.