writing – Sheila Dougal

What I wrote in 2021 and what I dream about writing in 2022

I spent the morning thinking about what I value. I asked myself what the why is behind what I write. I came to the conclusion that I value peace in relationships, overcoming conflict and trouble and helping others overcome conflict and trouble.

I value honoring the Imago Dei in people and the truth that Christ’s redemptive work means nothing is wasted or vain in the Christian’s life.

I care about learning from history and nature and gaining wisdom from the Bible and forefathers and sharing that wisdom with others.

I treasure telling kids about Jesus.

I care about seeking wholeness for myself and others. Being productive is important to me as well as resting. I’m an easily-fatigued, low-energy person, but I value doing something that makes a difference for good in my life and the lives of those around me.

As I’ve thought through these ideas and truths I care about, I hope to use them to guide my writing in 2022.

Looking back over what I’ve written and published, either by blog or another web magazine, in 2021. In 2021 I wrote 20 published pieces. Seventeen of them on my blog. Three online magazines. The purpose of this review was to inventory what I enjoyed most, what the impact was, and what themes I wrote on.

I have a hard time naming the themes in my writings. Most of my posts are personal reflections or thoughts on something I’m troubled by or have been helped by. Two of my posts were book reviews. About a quarter of the blog posts are poems. But three-quarters of my blog is an attempt to persuade others to think differently on a certain subject I see popping up on social media, or to think about God or the hope of Jesus in hard times, or something I”m learning in life or marriage or parenting.

What’s interesting to me is that the posts with the most views were the posts I didn’t expect much of a response from. The series on Remembering God did better than I expected. And the poetry posts (which I love to write) were a viewer flop. I still love writing poetry. Blog views or none.

The three articles I submitted to online publications did well. I enjoyed writing the poem to Fathom Mag the most, but it seems to have had the least impact. The TGC article about marriage has generated a lot of private messages and even a long phone call with a perfect stranger from across the country. The Risen Motherhood article on Launching Adults is probably the article I most enjoyed working on.

Reflecting on what I wrote this year I realized something else- I didn’t achieve the goals I set for writing in 2021. My goal for 2021 was to submit a book proposal about being married to someone who doesn’t worship Jesus. The running title in my mind was: Even If. Following Jesus even when your spouse does not. I did work on several brainstorm sessions about that book, but I couldn’t get past the ugh feeling in my gut. I just don’t really want to write a book about my marriage. I guess I’m torn about it. Part of me feels called to write about my marriage to an unbeliever because I know it’s an underserved topic in teachings and writings among Christians. But the rest of me feels a bit of bitterness about it. I’ve dreamt of writing a book that would inspire and encourage others, but I never thought it would be about the difficult marriage I continue in, with love. I guess I just haven’t worked out my own inner trouble on this subject yet. Maybe one day.

I had also planned to compile the poetry I’ve written over the years into different themed groups. I don’t expect I’d have much of a chance of getting my poems published in a traditional way. I don’t think I”m that great of a poet either. But I’d like to organize my poems and print them into small booklets that I could give to friends and family as gifts. That never happened. I plan to take this up again this year. I’ve already started compiling a group on the subject of sojourning through the liturgical/historical Church year. I’m thinking of a compilation towards Easter. And one towards Christmas. The Church has been a stream forming how I think and the shape I take in framing the world. I want to write poetry along those lines.

Years ago I wrote a poem I imagined as a children’s book about a king and a dragon. I’d like to either develop the poem into a grade-school aged reader’s book, or into a picture book for children. I don’t even know where to begin there. But I’ll do my research and if, like the poetry books it seem unlikely, I’ll print it and even take a stab at illustrating it and send it out as a gift for friends and family.

Today’s reflection on what I wrote in 2021 led to a couple other writing dreams I have. I would like to do some research and write at least a good article (and maybe that would lead to a book) on the subject of the historical church and healthcare and how our history might call us to do something about the healthcare crisis in America as Christians. Another dream- write something inspirational about how it’s not a waste of your life to spend your entire life letting Jesus teach you how to love another well.

So now you know what I wrote in 2021 and what I’m dreaming about writing in 2022. I’d love to hear what writing impacted you in 2021 and what you’d love to read in 2022.

Here are the links to my top 10 blog posts of 2021 in order of most viewed, and my published online magazine articles:

From my blog:

#1 How Four Flawed Churches Helped Me Love Christ More

#2 Bidding Moms of Young Children to Rest in the Power of Christ- A book review

#3 Purity culture: The fruit of our “lawish hearts”- A book review

#4 On Looking Up

#5 Peacemaking

#6 Remember God Can Replace Anyone’s Heart

#7 Ashes, Ashes

#8 Learning From My Marriage: Three Practices To Build Compassion When We Disagree

#9 Remember The Mystery

#10 Remember The Hope of Glory

From the web:

TGC: God hasn’t wasted my marriage to an unbeliever

Risen Motherhood: Launching Adults

Fathom Mag: 27 Years Deep

The Mother of Moses: Preaching my essay to myself this morning

This is the second week of high school for my two fast-becoming-men sons. I dropped them off feeling that familiar threat, “They’re never going to believe you Sheila. They’re never going to love Jesus.” That voice of accusation, lies and hopelessness that likes to try and tempt me to give up. Whatever that means.

But today, I remembered Jochebed. I wrote about her in an essay Morning by Morning published yesterday. Reading my own words I thought about my voice as a writer. I sound like a preacher sometimes I think. It’s mostly cause I’m preaching to myself. It’s hard for me to step away from the pulpit and let you see my bleeding wounds. But I’m learning to find the assurance of the body of Christ there. In the vulnerable gatherings of people, online, but even more, in person.

I struggle to not feel hopeless for my kids. For my husband. For myself. Jochebed must have struggled to not give in to hopelessness. Surely the threat of Egypt on her beautiful newborn son made her wonder if her God really was the living God. Surely she was tempted to wonder if the stories she heard about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and the God they put their faith in were true. But ultimatley she didn’t give in to unbelief. She didn’t give up Moses to the river or to Pharoah’s daughter’s arms out of hopelessness. She gave him up in faith.

I gave my boys up in faith. Again. May the God who preserved Moses in the river and in Pharoah’s house preserve the two beautiful sons he entrusted to me!

You should head over to Morning by Morning and read the touching essays and stories there. You’ll find encouragement!

Here’s an excerpt of my piece on Jochebed:

Being a Christian mom in the current American culture is daunting. Like Mike Cosper describes in his book, Faith Among the Faithless: Learning From Esther How to Live in a World Gone Made, we find ourselves in an “in-between space” where as Christians, we like Esther have to choose between power and weakness, safety and vulnerability. There is much to be learned from Esther. But as a Christian mom, married to an unbeliever, I find a lesser known character in the Bible inspiring me to walk by faith at such a time as this.

My husband of almost twenty-five years and I do not share a worshipful response to Christ. The strain on our relationship as we pull our yoke two different directions has impacted every person in our family, especially our kids. Raising my sons with a desire for them to know Christ feels threatened daily in our home. And in our politically-correct, pluralistic, secular culture where you can believe whatever you want as long as you don’t believe the exclusive teaching that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, pointing my kids to Jesus is mocked.

And it’s not just the threat on my sons’ minds and hearts that concerns me. Their lives are literally at stake. The suicide rate in the U.S. for teen boys is astounding. The message they’re taught says they’re nothing but randomly formed animals, the result of a hapless passing of millennia. Yet they’re taught they should be moral (whatever that means to them) with no grounds for that morality. In a milieu of endless entertainment, they’re bored and hopeless. The edict of death seems to have been declared on our sons by unseen rulers in our present age.

Read the rest here at Morning by Morning.

End of the day (very brief) thoughts: The stomach flu, Nuclear war and writing

flue

I have about ten tabs open on my laptop for places to submit articles in the coming days. I submitted one today to Desiring God. We shall see. I feel a little like that woman who touched Jesus in the crowds of people pressing against him. She probably thought, “There’s no way he’s going to notice me. Look at all these people!” But he did. And not that I’m hoping Jesus will notice me, but there’s a fire in my bones to write. It’s part of what God has me doing. Right now I’ll be thankful for rejection letters with advice in them. I like learning. I like learning to write better.

Today I spent most of the day disinfecting our house. The husband and one of the sons spent most of the night and morning puking. Ugh. The stomach flu.

Tomorrow I’ll get to see a cousin I haven’t seen since I was a little girl. Family coming in from out of town to visit grandma and my Aunt and Uncle. I really hope I bleached and Lysoled the stomach flu away. I don’t want to wake up puking and I certainly don’t want to bring it to my family.

That’s about all I got tonight. I have lots on my mind but the forehead is wrinkling with fatigue so I better sign off.

I leave with this thought:

I heard an expert on NPR today say that there’s a 20% chance we could end up in a nuclear war conflict with North Korea.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

4 Ways to Unwrap the Gift of Waiting on God

There’s a lot of waiting on God in the Bible. Joseph’s waits in prison, wrongly accused. Israel waits in captivity, suffering for her idolatry. Roman occupied Jerusalem waits for the Messiah after centuries of hearing nothing from God. And we wait for Christ’s return while we sow the seed of his gospel sojourning here. Waiting on God is an act promised to receive blessing according to the scriptures (Isaiah 30:15). And it’s the meditative focus of Advent. During the Christmas season we have opportunity to think about what or who exactly we’re waiting for. In the midst of parties, shopping lists, cookie exchanges, decorations and concerts, it is easy to miss the gift of waiting on God. Sometimes it takes hard circumstances for us to wake from our busy stupor and embrace the sober gift of longing for our coming King. It took a hard situation for me to exchange the stress of the season for savoring the sweetness of waiting on Jesus. If you find yourself in a painful, confusing, not-at-all-jolly season while the world around you rings bells and sings carols, I invite you to come aside with your Bible, a pen and paper and start unwrapping the gift of waiting on Jesus this Advent.

Waiting When Life Doesn’t Get Better

My youngest son was born two days after Christmas 13 years ago. That year, while I was burdened with his growing body inside mine, I was also heavy laden with a load of fear, sadness and shock. My husband was seeking a divorce and I was about to give birth to our second son. Along with the heavy anxieties of those cares came a stronger arm of grace to bear me up. In those days I began to learn what it means to wait on God in faith amidst my fearful circumstances. In the year my son was born, I started to learn that hoping in God and having faith in him meant waiting with expectation for Jesus, not waiting for everything in my life to get better.

That year, I began journaling in a discounted spiral-bound notebook I found at a local grocery store. With a poinsettia and the word “Faith” on the front, that journal became the place where I started a practice that has continued until now. Every year around Christmastime (sometimes the first week of the new year) I spend some time prayerfully reading God’s word with a specific look for how the Spirit would direct me in the coming year as well as reflecting on the last year’s entry and reality.

As I look back over the years, each year, I see how God is faithfully doing what he promised. He is using all things together for my good, to conform me to the image of his Son. Although I’ve seen God’s answer to my slow-to-believe prayers, my circumstances haven’t changed much. Thankfully, my husband and I are still married. But the marriage hasn’t been without its very difficult times. It’s not like I can say I have hope because God turned life in to a fairytale story of happily ever after. Not at all. I’m still praying for salvation to come to my household, and save every member. I’m still praying for God to rid me of being a coward and a man-pleaser and make me a woman of God who laughs at the days to come and fears God not man. I’m still a tired mom, who deals with depression and fears. But I do all that with a periodic lifting of my head to remember that I’m waiting on God. Advent is a good time to lift our heads and call to mind our hope.

Capture a Remembrance of Your Hope

Even if writing or journaling isn’t your thing, making a yearly tradition of using a small journal entry as a way of focusing your attention on Christ and his coming may help you look up and focus on the gift of Jesus. Here are four suggestions for how you might capture a yearly remembrance of your hope in the One who came to save his people from their sins, and is coming again to consummate our joy in him.

1) Cast your circumstances on him. Put in the journal the circumstances that are causing you to long for him. Is your marriage a wreck? Is your child dying? Have you lost a loved one? Are you lonely? Depressed? Anxious? Afraid? Tell him! Write it down. The Bible calls us to cast our cares upon the Lord because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). In Isaiah, Hezekiah took the threats of his enemies and laid them out before God and called on God to intervene. In the gospels, people brought their sick selves and loved ones to Jesus. When you bring your troubles to God in writing, you start to realize how much you long for him to do what he promises to do one day: Make all things new (Revelation 21:5).

2) Call to mind his promises. Look up scriptures with words like “hope” and “wait” and “trust” and “faith”. You’ll find some promises and prayers that will help you worship while you wait this Advent. Like this one, “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 64:4) Write it down. And turn those specific scriptures that grab you into prayers for yourself and others. Pray that God will help you hope in him.

3) Cry for your kids, or someone else’s. A yearly advent journal is a good place to put prayers for your kids or for kids in your life, maybe cousins, nieces, nephews, grandkids, kids in the neighborhood, kids at school, kids at church, etc. God doesn’t want us to hope in our kids. But he does want us to hope in him for our kids and to give our kids Him as their hope. “…that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God…” (Psalm 78:5-7). Writing down your prayers for the next generation is a wonderful way to build your anticipation for Jesus.

4) Cry for new desires. It’s easy during the holidays to get distracted by things we want. Whether it be material things like a new phone, or clothes. Or relational desires like a new friend, or a happier marriage. Though there’s nothing wrong with those desires, if they consume us, we’ve missed out on real joy. In the midst of God’s chastisement Isaiah prays that God would be gracious to his people, because though they may be sick from head to toe with sin, his people really were longing for him. In their distress they waited for God their Savior. It says, “Your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.” (Isaiah 26:8). Over the years I look back and realize that often the name of Christ and his remembrance wasn’t the desire of my soul, but as I have cast my cares and called his promises to mind and cried for my kids, he’s developed in me a longing for new desires. He has created in me a desire for his name and remembrance. He has caused me to embrace waiting on him.

Life’s circumstances can be horrific, mundane, depressing, chaotic or just distracting. But when we lift our eyes off the circumstances, tell God about them, cry for his help, seek his grace and wait on him we experience the gift of anticipating our coming King.

post anesthesia thoughts

(has nothing to do with the post, just a pretty pic i took a long time ago)

I’m not going to over think this post too much. I had minor surgery today and am still feeling drunk on leftover anesthesia/fentanyl/percocet. Consider yourself and the three other people reading this warned.

In the past few weeks I’ve been listening to podcasts from writers, reading articles about blogging and freelance writing, etc. In one of those I was admonished to write something daily. Be it a blog post, a journal entry, a poem… something. Because writers don’t just think about writing, they write. I think my pastor said or wrote that once too. It struck me then, and when I read this lady’s article. I am a writer. Not a known writer. Not the best writer. But I enjoy writing and I just process life better when I’m writing. But when I set out to write something, especially publicly, I sometimes step in the quicksand of self-analyzing and get stuck there. And then I don’t write anything. And that sucks.

So, I took that lady’s advice and decided to write something daily. And the next day my MacBook’s hard-drive failed. My 13 year old black Lab Bailey decided jump onto the chair where I was sitting on the back patio (something she has never done) sending Mrs. Mac descending to the concrete. I believe she lasted 48 hours after that and died (the Mac, not Bailey). Soooo, my writing daily challenge has been mostly limited to journaling.

I worked consecutively this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the acute rehab unit where I practice one of the least-glamorous forms of nursing and often found myself thinking about the importance of doing the least-glamorous as a Christian. But that’s another blog post. Those past three days I wrote notes on paper about my patients and nothing more.

Today I returned to the same hospital as a patient. That’s a good thing to do as nurse. I had a minor being-a-girl related surgery that will hopefully help being a pre-menopausal girl with girl-problems be less problematic in the coming years. Such a surgical procedure is neither something one wants to talk about nor read about so I’ll spare you. But the experience of being a nurse on the other side is worth writing and reading about.

I dont’ tell nurses caring for me that I’m a nurse until I feel like they feel comfortable with me and I with them, or until they ask me what I do for a living. That being said, I was really glad 7 different people asked me my name, date of birth and what procedure I was having today. I know as a nurse this is a monotonous part of our job, constantly asking questions our patients often get tired of answering, but its reassuring as a nurse to know the people about to put me into a drug-induced coma and cut on my flesh are repetitively asking for the same information ensuring I’m not going to wake up without a leg or something.

While waiting for the doctor to come talk with me before the procedure, my husband and I had a very interesting conversation about Christian theology, homosexuality and forming personal relationships with people who don’t share your worldview. We don’t share the same view on the first two of those three, but we agree that talking and listening with people who don’t see life the way you do is a good thing for both parties and the community.

The longer I stay married to a man who doesn’t see life the way I do, the more I see how amazing Christ is… he is the great unifier of the most diverse people. He makes a new person. And he makes a person new. “And such were some of you...” The goal may be to win a person to Christ, but it’s never to win an argument about Christ. Required: humility, faithfulness and love. May he bless me with those three treasures. Oh to be made new! And the wonder that he is making me new. “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.”

Sunday Thoughts

I want to be a better writer. I’ve decided to challenge myself to a series of writing prompts, which I plan to post here.

Writing for me is a way to digest life. Reading what others have written is like going out to dinner. Journaling is like making my own meal. Writing publicly on a blog is like having everyone over for dinner. I want to have my own food truck/catering biz- freelance? And maybe even my own little hole in the wall restaurant- book? If I am going to reach those goals I need to sharpen my culinary, uh-hem, writing skills. No more margarine. Time for real butter. Maybe the challenge of writing prompts will help me refine my menu.

Today at Valley Life Church Surprise, the guy who leads the team that helps people get connected at the church, Michael, preached about the second commandment from Exodus 20.

It always hits me when I’m at church how strange we are. We Christians. I mean what we do on any given Sunday in most Christian church gatherings. We sit and listen to someone proclaim truths gleaned out of reading a book that is thousands of years old. Our souls sing… hence for many raised hands, eyes closed, tears flow. We sing songs about God’s sovereignty and power and grace and love and we sing amazed. We eat bread and drink juice and remember Christ’s sacrifice. We confess our sins and weep over them and rejoice at forgiveness and the help we find in the scriptures and each other. I mean, I don’t know first hand what happens in gatherings of Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists, but from what I read and hear, these religious gatherings are more like corporate prayers. Memorized prayers and chants. But not adoration in singing and proclamation of God’s self-sacrificing, heart-changing love. And for the irr-religious, its even more weird what we do. A morning spent singing songs of praise to the unseen God for an act done in history 2000 plus years ago that has changed the course of life for a millions of people from the inside out, causing them to no longer live for themselves but for the One who died for them? Why? Why not just clean the garage. Or binge on Netflix. Or work on your golf game. Why do all that stuff?

Listening today to the comparison between the God of Israel and the multiple gods of the peoples Israel lived amongst (and got entangled with) I realized thousands of years may have passed, but the God of the Bible and his people still stand out in a world full of idols as different. And we still get entangled in idol worship. John’s closing sentence at the end of 1 John is a relevant and needed message that we shouldn’t pass so easily over: Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

The God of the Bible wants all of me. My heart. My affections. My love. He has given himself to me in covenant love. No easy access idol that makes me feel good about myself for a little while should ever get between God and I.

I start my online Introductory Algebra class on Tuesday. I have no idea how this will work, but I am anticipating lots of hair pulling and frustrated Facebook posts. Hopefully at the end of summer I can test into the math I need to get into the BSN program.

Math is my nemesis.

confessions and desires of a world-digesting writer/eater cell

Merriam-Webster defines a writer as: (noun) One that writes.

Big shocker.

I’ve been writing, well since I was about 5. First just letters, then short, three word sentences without punctuation, then onto complete sentences and paragraphs. By seventh grade when I had Mrs. Spicer for English I was writing essays and stories and poems and loving it. In between there around the age of nine I started journaling. For me, writing has been a way to process my thoughts, feelings and circumstances. When Jesus became real and beautiful to me at age sixteen writing was the way I processed what I was reading in the Bible and the conflicting feelings I was experiencing as an insecure girl wanting to find my place in the world. I wrote a play for my youth group and more essays and poems and filled a few more teddy bear and flower decorated journals.

Between those early teen years and now I have married, graduated from nursing school, labored two sons into the world and moved several times. In between those words are years of trials and joys. Some too hard to speak about. All digested in the writings of my private journals. Also in there somewhere I discovered the blog. I had no idea. Up till my discovery of Blogger all my writings were private letters, journals, poems and word docs. As women in my church, close friends and family encouraged me, I began to blog more.

In the past 10 years or so of blogging I have been introduced to the endless voices in the public square. It’s quite overwhelming actually, the volume of published content by anyone and everyone on the internet. A simple google search on any topic will give you pages and pages of links from the famous and professional to the stay-at-home-mom who managed to squeeze in a half hour of blogging in her day full of household management tasks and human-raising efforts. (A thought-provoking article here about the tsunami of un-governed writings and teachings available on the internet for the consumption of the church and it’s implications.)

In the beginning of my blogging efforts I set out to promote my blog- reading other blogs, commenting, participating in mommy-blog contests, etc. And then my marriage took a dive into troubled waters. During that time I stepped away from public writing and became aware of my mixed up priorities and the praise-seeking sin at the root of all my efforts. Writing had ceased to be a tool for processing life. It had become an obsessive exercise to be known. I hated finding that out about myself. But it was the beginning of dealing with a besetting sin that was dragging me down on my race of faith.

As I returned to meditating on God’s words more and processing what I was finding there in private journals, I slowly returned to selectively writing on my blog again. This time with a decision not to self-promote or to check stats or seek comments, but just to offer in a public way my meditations on God’s word and life with a prayer that it might encourage someone out there.

Writing for me has never been an identity or profession. To me, calling myself a writer because I write is sort of like calling myself an eater because I eat. It’s a fact. Big deal. Writing is the way I chew on life and digest it. Ignorantly I’ve sort of thought everyone does that. Having two sons who don’t enjoy reading or writing like I do has taught me that not everyone experiences life best with books and ink and words. Not everyone feels a sense that heaven might smell a lot like the intoxicating paper pages scent of Barnes and Nobel.

Somehow, the process of digesting life that is so necessary for me has encouraged others. I’ve been told it’s a gift. I haven’t thought of it that way. But listening to others and hearing God say, “Do your part in the body of Christ! Use your gifts for the good of the body,” (my paraphrase of Romans 12:3-8), I have started to take more seriously the stewardship of a gift God has given me to process the Word and the world in writing for the purpose of pointing others to him. I want to do this while thinking of myself soberly and less. For me this means beginning to submit public writings not just here on my blog at my will, but to men and women in the church (worldwide) who can help me steward this gift for the good of the church and God’s glory.

Desiring God has been a source of much encouragement to me in my walk with Christ and so was the first venue through which I have submitted a couple articles and have been so humbled to have published there. The decision to submit writings to editors and people who give feedback and criticism and sometimes just a simple rejection opens me up to learning to take this gift God has given and start stewarding it for the multiplication of his kingdom. I’m excited to learn. I really don’t feel comfortable calling myself a writer because I need to write. But I do feel comfortable calling myself a glad and happy servant of my Servant King Jesus to the people he loves!

I mean, I am a nobody. Really. There are plenty of famous and much better writers out there. But, I am a cell in this body. And maybe it’s just another cell or two that needs to fight off some invading sin or needs help to lift it’s spiritually-anemic head. If that’s one of the ways God wants to use my life I say a hearty, “Yes!”

If you’re reading this I’d appreciate your prayers that I would seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and forget about myself and be more others minded for their good and God’s glory in my writing. Pray that I’d learn to use writing as a means of building up the church and bringing God glory.

May God build up his people, even with a world-digesting writer/eater cell like me.

Refuge in the Unchangeable.

I haven’t written consistently over the past few years. In fact, I stopped blogging and journaling about 4 years ago when my husband and I separated. I felt like God shut my mouth (or hands). In part I couldn’t write publicly because I was afraid of what would come out and the further damage it may cause. But mostly I just didn’t have the overflow of thought to pen or keypad like I had before that major earthquake hit my life. It wasn’t really until my pastor encouraged me to write more that I started doing so. But, even since then, I’ve been very inconsistent. Tonight, while reading his blog, I was immediately reminded that I need to “stir up the gift”. I may have had a season of being quiet in my writing/blogging, but it’s time to start again, and if I don’t shake these cobwebs off, and keep writing I’m gonna be wasting something God gave me. Not that each post will by any means be “inspired”, but I certainly could improve at being more disciplined in writing for the value of the exercise itself.

I watched the eighth graders at Wildflower (the school where I’ve been employed as a nurse for four years) commence into high school today. These four years have gone by so fast. So much has happened. When a period of time is eventful it seems to go by more quickly. When I started at Wildflower I was at a very low place in my life. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want my life to be the way it was. But God put me there. And I’m convinced, after these four years, there were at least some specific children I was put there for. Not that I was the main instrument of ministering. Those children were used of God in my life more than they’ll ever know! I was never “Nurse Sheila” before. And being called “Nurse Sheila” will feel like a hug to me henceforth.

Watching those kids walk in the commencement ceremony today, it hit me: Connor is going into fifth grade this fall. That’s exactly the age these kids were when I began caring for them at Wildflower. This means my firstborn son is going to be graduating from 8th grade in a flash! Oh dear. I haven’t much time.

There are so many changes on the horizon, and, although I know and have great assurance that my good God is sovereign over them all, and has, in fact, ordained them to be, I am still a bit queasy for all that movement and change occurring right now. I’m starting a new job in the hospital this month. James purchased a fixer-upper house which we will be moving into at the end of this month. The house is on horse property and is in a county-island with a Surprise zip code. The boys will either have to be driven daily to the school they went to this year (it’s a good school) or go to the school where our new house is. I like the idea of them going to a school in their neighborhood. I like to know my neighbors and have my kids involved with the kids in their neighborhood. Going to the same school as your neighbors is a good way to do that. But I also don’t like switching schools. They both love the school they’re at now and so do I. It’s a decision we have to make.

All of this is going down and the boys and I are taking off to Oregon and Northern Cal this weekend for our annual trip home. We’ll be gone for two weeks and when we get back, all those changes will be upon us.

I say all the changes have made me queasy cause that’s literally how I feel. Uneasy. Unstable. It sure is good to know the Rock in times like this… to know where your anchor is.

So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. – Hebrews 6:18-19

Quieted,

Sheila

Sojourning Sheila

I’m thinking of changing my blog title to: Sojourning Sheila {and so I did}.

What I write reflects who I am. Six years ago, when I started blogging, I was inspired by the beauty of making a home and being a helper Imago Dei. I’m still inspired, yet, refined. Several years ago, my vision of being a homemaker (albeit inspired by scripture) had begun to crowd out who I really am- a sojourner; not finding here any continuing home, but rather looking to the eternal home promised me in Christ.

Psalm 39 is a template of my recent life. Spiritually, the rhythm of things {the last 7 years} has been harmonious with David’s expression in Psalm 39.

I was off course and I realized it at the correction of my good Father. I decided to shut my mouth and guard my ways, hence a nearly complete backing off of all my blogging and writing 4 years ago. But when I don’t write, when I keep my mouth shut, a fire burns in me. I have told others I feel as though God has shut my mouth. He has.

“I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it.”

In the past year I have begun writing publicly more often again. And every time I write here, and see that title: A Homemaker’s Meditations, I am reminded of my previous obsession with being home and my off-course plan from which my Lord has lovingly corrected me (although like David I have often felt his discipline has consumed like a moth that which is dear to me- even so He is exceedingly good. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!).

Yesterday we received keys to our new fixer-upper home. It was as I drove there that the words of Psalm 39, especially verse 12, washed over me like clean water. God has moved us there. Doors have been shut that seemed to be unshutable. Doors have opened fast and wide that seemed very likely to close. And there’s fear in the air hissing it’s temptation to grab hold tightly and yet the Prince of Peace pervades, pushing back fear like an invisible shield.

This world is not my home
I’m just a passin’ through.
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.

If a man has Christ and nothing, he has infinitely more than if, without Christ, he has all the family, finances and security this world offers! I have Him. I am His and He is mine! I can hold every thing He gives me with an opened hand.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither. – C.S. Lewis

Quieted,

Sheila