People we Can be Honest With

It's something we all need. We can't live without it. We need to have them in our lives to live the life we were meant to live.

We need people in our lives we can be honest with about how we're really doing.

We need people in our lives who will ask us the hard questions because they really care.

Not because we want to be down on ourselves and focus only on negative.

We need these people that we're honest with so we have people to celebrate the good things and the victories in life when they come.

We need these people that we're honest with so we have people to encourage us when things don't seem to be going so well.

We need these people that we're honest with so we can walk through the normal-ness of everyday life with people.

Brokenness is What I Want?

As I drove home from a prayer time at church tonight, I found the words to a song we sang when I was growing up in church running through my head.

Brokenness, brokenness is what I long for
Brokenness is what I need
Brokenness, brokenness is what You want from me

Take my heart, and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To Yours, to Yours, O Lord

When we sang this song growing up, I was never really sure that I wanted to tell God brokenness was what I wanted or needed. It didn't seem like it was something I really wanted.

I mean, honestly, is being broken really something that is fun? Or something we would generally want?

Especially when we live in a culture that tells us we need to have it all together . . . or at least that we should look like it . . . it can be hard to allow ourselves to be broken. To allow God to break us.

But, I'm beginning to see that no matter how we may try to avoid brokenness, it is necessary. If we're living behind walls that keep people from seeing who we really are, we end up missing out what God has for us. But when we allow God to break us, we get what He has for us.

Maybe that needs to become our prayer - for ourselves and for our churches. That we would be broken before God, so that we don't miss out on what God has for us.

What if the words of that song we used to sing when I was growing up became our prayer? What kind of difference would that begin to make?

Five Minute Friday:Fall

Once again joining in with Lisa-Jo Baker and Five Minute Friday (although it would be early Saturday morning as I finish this). The word for today is "fall". We write for five minutes, unedited on the word and then post it.


Slowly. Carefully. I inched out toward the ledge.

I had almost conquered it all. The high ropes course I had looked at and decided I could never do for years. Most of it was behind me now.

But the last remaining section was the scariest of them all.

The zipline.

It sounds exciting to some, but when you don't like heights and you really don't like the feeling of falling, it's anything but exciting.

When I finally reached the edge of the platform, I froze. Now I was supposed to jump off and let the ropes and harness catch me as I sailed through the air to end.

I wasn't sure I could do it. I hated feeling like I'm falling, and that's exactly the way I would feel for a few seconds when I jumped off the platform I was standing on.

By the time I finally jumped, I'm sure everyone had given up on me ever actually finishing. But, I did it. And I really didn't like the feeling that came with jumping off the platform - falling was not fun. But actually finishing the entire course was.

As I walked away from that day, I started to see how that experience could be likened to many moments in my walk with God. To "fall" off the platform, I had to trust that the ropes and the harness would catch me.

Sometimes it can be like that in our walk with God. God asks us to step out in something. And to step out, we have to take that step without knowing where our foot will land. We have to "fall" and trust that God will catch us and keep us on track.