Monday, August 27, 2012

White Stone

Tearing Down Walls




Going back and tearing down the walls of the past is hard -- but important.

It was time to reveal ‘My Story’


                  - - for the glory of the Author of my story.


Blogging broken places. 

Processing the past.

Praising Him for the present.

Somehow I got some healing. 


Giving a sweeping overview of my life markers.

Messed up. Bound up.  Freed up.


That heart rock became the touchstone of my faith.

A true stepping stone on my pathway to freedom and wanting to live fully for Jesus.

Finding the heart reshaped my thinking.

It became my glory story.

It fueled my passion to just believe Him and start living like I believe Him.



To blog about the raw places of your life takes courage and a little crazy.


I write for an audience of One.

To demonstrate His power and strength....

.....in just seven weeks, there have been five thousand page views from ten countries of this blog.


It makes me think of Jesus who fed the 5000 with five barley loaves and two fish.


Only God!

He wants to use my story. He wants to use your story.


 Don't you want to live your life wild and alive?


We need an UNDIVIDED heart.

A  - -sold out   - - -on fire heart.







I want to live that kind of radical life.

Can I suggest we have to go there with God and just be undone in all the stuff that holds us back?

To get unstuck and move forward and start really living.

To restore the places that may be broken we have to give Him those places.

Exposing those pieces of ourselves that we try to hide and protect.

To be real. Unmasked. Messy.

Don’t we all need to get there?

To stop pretending we have it all together.

Reaching out to the One who does have it all together.

One of my favorite verses holds a promise.

I pray you would allow it to sink into your heart. 

It is a promise to you. 

According to this verse, He has a rock for you.
On that rock is something so personal between you and God...
      that no one else will 'get it' if they were to see it. 

I love that!!!

Today I hope you will draw near to the One who makes and keeps His promises.














Perhaps you would enjoy one of my current favorite songs.


 


















Seeking The Heart Of God,
post signature

Monday, August 20, 2012

Final Installment "My Story"

Life was no longer just survival mode.
In some ways, I had submitted to the losses.

Five years of eternity had passed.
That's when this man came along and I physically felt my heart wake up.

His tenderness softened my soul to risk loving again.
We went to see Big Bird and shopped for girls clothing ....on our second date. 

He knew the very day and time that he trusted in Jesus as his Savior.
We took the girls on our honeymoon.
He loved them as his own.

Our youngest was born. We moved to a place with 180 acres. 
There were cattle, horses and home school.
The days flowed into years.
My walk with the Lord was not exactly flourishing.

Mostly I was busy building my own kingdom  “...in Jesus name."

Under the strain of having an emotionally fractured mom,
  life came to a crossroads with my daughters.

They had been the hope that got me out of bed in the morning.
These beautiful girls had been my reason to live.

In them I found my identity and my purpose.
Through them I had reached beyond the dark veil. 

In reality, I had made blond haired idols.


Humans are inadequate saviors.

How could they understand the scars I bore? ––Besides they had their own stuff to settle with God. 
 
There was the Christmas we didn't even know where one was. A Christmas I spent alone.

Every parent dreads a season like that.

Under stress I clean. As I clean I wrestle with the Lord.

In one junk drawer I found the rock. That red rock from the dark day.

Out loud I heard my own voice say, 

“...like I need a rock to remind me of that day....
     - - I have two living stones to do that!”

It made me so mad I got up to throw the rock outside.
Then I felt like something told me to turn it over.
This smooth rock that had the perfect place for your thumb to rest.
As I rolled the small stone over I saw it for the first time.

A heart.

Yes.

A very pronounced heart shape.
It stopped me cold.
Surely my memory was playing tricks with me.

Nearly twenty years I'd had this rock
and never noticed it has a VERY pronounced HEART on it.



I was undone by this message from a time long past.

I had to sit down.

It was a message from that day.

My day of desolation.

The day I had cried out   "... for a sign...if He was real..."



The heart was evidence that He DID hear me.
That in my darkest moment He was THERE.

This personal God that had walked with me all these days.

Now I clutched this message that bears witness that He had gone before me.
Fully realizing He had pushed back the waters that threatened to destroy me, 
even though I could not see His footprints on that rivers edge.

He had carried me, pursued me, proven His love for me.


He has come to set this captive free.


Oh yes, that day I had a heart of stone. 

“I will remove from you your
heart of stone
and give you a
heart of flesh.”

Ezekiel 36:26 


Now I have a heart that is His.
For I have believed in the One.
Jesus Christ.

His grace astounds me.

This is my Jesus story.

I hope you have one too! 


Sweet friend if you haven't settled the issue of where you stand with Jesus,
may today be the day.
Get down on your knees and lift your soul toward heaven.
Speak words in faith that you want to receive His free gift of salvation.
Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Today is the day of your salvation!

I'd love to hear from you!

♥ 

post signature

Monday, August 13, 2012

Fourth Installment "My Story"


The foundations of my life were shaken.
The darkness was darker.

The tragedy overpowered every aspect of life.
It stripped me of most things I counted as important. 

Decisions constantly had to be made.
None of the choices offered were preferred.

My heart made deep-rooted agreements, with the messages of my pain.

Helplessness, hopelessness and anger set in.


The only thing that seemed to flourish were my daughters.

Tragedy had not stopped time for them.

They didn’t care that the cattle were sold at a record low or
 that our address had changed.







In the face of devastation there is a taunting voice
 that asks questions like, “How could a good God.....?”

Questions of “Why..... ?”

Up to this point God was just some vague thing to me.
Something people seek in need and in weakness.

I was a church goer.
I thought I was a good person.

Religious   - -maybe.
On my terms.

That fierce longing in my heart remained from when I was young.
Desperate seeking.
Seeking and striving.
Heart hunger that can’t be satisfied with food.

The day came.
It took more pressure than I care to admit.

At the end of myself I went to my knees.
I opened a Bible and ask the Lord to speak to me.
In simple faith I asked Jesus to invade the places of my heart and
 the depths of my sin.

There were no flashes of lightning. 
The mountains I faced didn't move from here to there  --that day.

There was however Peace.
Something restored even though most had been lost.

Out of the ashes of my life there was a new Hope.





Photo by Rhonda ♥







post signature

Monday, August 6, 2012

The Dark Day


One night, Dan kneeled down on one knee, in front of our friends and asked me to marry him.

He was a cattleman who bought a farm.

A place ––on paper which could never pay for itself even in good times.

Our life seemed stuck on fast forward.

We were in constant motion with changes and battles and work load.

Together we fought what professionals call a 100 year flood. The river came reclaiming the fertile farm soil it had deposited there in years past.

Financial disaster loomed with soaring interest rates and falling cattle and corn prices.

There were two daughters born eighteen months apart.
The youngest was six weeks old. My body was still trying to recover from her birth. Exhausted, and frustrated, Dan and I exchanged harsh words. As I pulled the covers up to my chin, I noticed that our wedding picture was falling out of it’s frame. It seemed weird....but appropriate.

I began to pray the Lords Prayer. It was just a habit. Every night the prayer was said, memorized and all run together. 

“...Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done….”

Those words lingered and wondering if I really meant them. “….Thy... will.... be done..?”

Morning came and for the first time our newborn daughter had slept though the night. I was suppose to go out and help Dan with the morning feeding, but I was still mad that he laid on the couch while I unloaded a car full of groceries, tractor parts we needed to begin corn harvest today plus two sleeping babies. We were both so weary and pushed past our limits. 

After taking a shower and getting ready, I went outside and heard the calves bawling.

It was a haunting, piercing sound.

Unrelenting. Unsettling.

I knew they should have been fed by now.

I took the path that went past the orchard and led to where the grain bin stood. The grain bin we had built together with family.

That is where I found him.  His life was claimed in an accident involving a power take-off on a tractor, while auguring grain.

It took a long time for the first responders to find our location, because it was before 911 was established in that area.

They said he was killed instantly.

In that unplanned moment it began. 

Grief.

Grief so thick and deep that it penetrates the morrow of your bones.

When death comes knocking at your door, it’s not a question of “if” you will answer   - - but how.

My heart felt like it had received a near fatal wound.

As if the very flesh of my heart had been ripped from my body and left on the outside for people to stare at.

Grief is the price we pay for loving someone.

It makes you sob deep heaves.

It makes you cry ugly cries, until there are no more tears ––unless you drink more water.

There are no shortcuts to grief.

The only way to get to the other side  …is through it.

Even than it's a journey that has no real arrival point.

Its hard work.

Grief makes you feel crazy.

It makes you wish you were the one who had died.

Thankfully shock is an early response to grief since it cushions the blows.

That morning I sat in the wreckage of my life, waiting for the emergency personal to arrive.

I rocked my baby girls as if it was important. Rocking them as if my own life depended on it.

Rocking hard and asking God, "Just who is going to walk these girls down the aisle someday?"






The day turned cold.

The sun rolled behind the clouds and there was driving  rain, sleet and then snow.

Shards of icy rain stung my face as I walked along the river bank near the house.

Alone, truly alone, for the first time.

With raw emotion I cried out to a God I did not know personally.

Raging as I asked Him ––if He could even hear me.

I asked Him for a sign ––if He was real.

The area I was walking had been ravaged by the flood. When the waters receded there was nothing but sand and a few pieces of debris. I looked for something, anything to hang on to.

What I found was a rather small, smooth, red rock.

There was nothing else around.

Another disappointment, but I put the rock in my pocket.
  



post signature
 
© Rhonda Quaney