A Christmas Confession

Below is a facebook message I sent out to the freshman girls in our 2014 Bible Study. It felt right to be a christmas post:

Sweet Girls,

My prayer for all of you has been that your break might be peaceful, restful, and restoring.

Today Brie and I had over an hour-long phone call discussing life and everything we needed to get caught up on since we departed ways before finals. During our chat I made some very real confessions to Brie of inadequacies I feel in my everyday life/ who I am… I saying things like “how well I ever be this” or “how will I ever do that”. First thing Brie encouraged me to do is throw those ideas away. She said “Rebe, put those lies in the trash.” Second thing was she challenged me to memorize a bible verse to replace those lies. For example mine was ‘I am going to be a horrible counselor this summer’ and the verse I am memorizing for that is 2Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

The reason I share this story with all of you is because I want to challenge you all to do the same thing. I don’t know what the lies you might believe right now are, but I think I can take a swing at one of them that I think we may all be fighting this time of year, and that’s the lies the world tells us about Christmas. See I opened this message with my prayer for you girls, and that was for a peaceful break, but I think what I hope the most for you lovelies is that you find the truth in Christmas this year.

If your break has been anything like mine then it has not been restful or restorative. I have been running around getting Christmas gifts for family members and running errands for my mom and neighbors that I’ve almost had all I can take of the mall and the grocery store, that I would love to stay away from both of those locations for a year. I believed I have coined the term “I love Christmas, but hate the holidays”. And here is how this came about. I believe I was so stuck in mall parking garage traffic the other day and 30 minutes late for meeting my aunt that I found myself on the verge of yelling in my car to myself “I hate Christmas”… But I didn’t, one because I know I really don’t and two because it feels like taking the Lord’s name in vain. So that is when I admitted allowed to the Lord in my car (in the parking lot of Northpark) that I love Christmas and the fact that He sent us His only begotten Son and everything this day means. But I told them that I hate what we, what I, have distorted it to become. I realized in that moment that I made Christmas a season of looking for the right gift to give instead of remembering the greatest gift of all. Its cheesey but I believed the lies that commercialism sells me, that its all about finding the best scarf for my sister, and newest game for my brother. And all this holiday PC mombo jumbo… So I’ve decided I needed to memorize a few truths about Christmas this year and I just wanted to share them with ya’ll.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. 
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. “ Isaiah 9:6


“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us).” Matthew 1:23

So if I may I am going to pray a new prayer over you girls right here in this message:

Father, thank you that you have chosen us and that while we were still sinners you sent to our world a baby boy, your Son to come and live a life of perfection to one day bare all of our sins and pay our debts. God what a time of waiting Christmas was and is, and then it was your people waiting on this baby to be born, waiting on their deliverer. And now here we are still thousands of years later we are waiting for you to come back. I pray for each of these girls that you would take out the lies of “the world’s holiday” and remind each of us that unto us a son has been given. He is wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of peace and we eagerly await and expect his return. I pray you would bless and keep our sweet girls this Christmas. Let them live this Christmas eagerly and courageously. Amen.

I speak not only for myself, but for all the leaders when I say we love each of you so much (even if you never come to bible study and are just in the facebook group- we love you!) and we care about you. Have a very Merry Christmas.

~Rebe & 2014 Leaders {Brie, Chloe, Hannah, Kelly, & Lauren}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z75tEiGet3Q&feature=related

Some news, family reunion, and a whole lotta grace

I’m on the flight home and I can’t help but sing Bethany Dillon’s “Waking up” song in my head as I peer out my air plane window and realize that I’ve been chasing the sunset across the south for the past hour home. The view is a beautiful sight- its like someone turned the flame from a gas stove upside down so that a magenta orange blends to a light tangerine that perfectly fades into a pale yellow meeting baby blue to the hottest part of the flame- a true indigo blue. On the plane I’m sitting next to my two best friends- my mom and dad. My mom sits on the isle and has been flipping through the September issue of Instyle magazine holding it up to show me cute fall coats and to have my dad smell and comment on every perfume scratch and sniff ad. My sweet dad has been sitting in the middle currently reading “Radical” by David Platt in between testing fragrances and serving as my pillow. In the past 48 hours my parents and I have watched my younger brother come in 42^nd in his cross country meet in Dallas, flown to Jackson, MS to celebrate the 70^th Birthday of my cousin Johnny, and drove to Memphis, TN to see my older sister’s new house and roommates. Now the three of us are flying back to DFW airport where we will part ways and I will go back to College station and they will go back to our home in Dallas. As I stare out the plane window I start to think about saying goodbye to my parents and warm tears pour down my face, so I close my eyes and pretend like I’m falling back asleep for a nap on my dad’s arm. As he feels my head hit his shoulder he reaches his hand around to pat my head, which at this point makes the tears worse so I pull my scarf up to my face to soak up the tears. I’ve been a private basket case all weekend and really all week, which I didn’t want him to know about since I know it only makes him feel worse. On Tuesday of this past week we got a call from his doctor that one of his scans showed spots, spots in new places on his liver and lung. My dad has had cancer before in his colon and this will be the second time its come up in his lung and the fourth time its come up in his liver. He has undergone countless rounds of chemo totaling up to 18 months, three surgeries, and countless hospital visits, MRIs, and CT scans. But three times prior to this he’s been pronounced “in remission”. I remember in June I gave him a hug after his last round of chemo and with tears in my eyes I said, “I feel like I’m hugging a miracle”.

Today when I press my face into my scarf and nuzzle my head to his shoulder it feels like no less of a miracle. I think I cry a little in part because I am scared to loose my dad and don’t want to know what life with out him is like. I think I cry a little in part because I do remember that his presence is such a miracle and such a gift I know of several kids who have parents die with little notice or warning. And so I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with grace and mercy. Who am I and who are we as a family that the God of the universe would hear our cries. We are but broken and unclean sinners. So who is God that he would shower love upon us?

Man! Our God is Creator and Power! He is Faithful and Compassionate. We are a lowly people so indebted to a God who owes us absolutely nothing, and yet he gives us His son. He saves us, and adopts us. In Him we are new and in Him we find redemption.

Sometimes things so wonderful and so undeserved make me cry. Like a sweet gift or an ‘I love you’ after a big fight or an ‘I’m still proud of you’ after a big disappointment. Those things just make me well up inside, probably because grace and the math of grace I will never fully comprehend. And probably because grace is such a beautiful picture of the Lord that when we see it demonstrated I feel like I’m being shown a little more of his face.

Miracles while lifeguarding

The last Sunday in April I was back in Dallas where I was finishing up lifeguard certification course for one of my jobs this summer. It just so happens the class was at Tom Landry Fitness center, which is connected to Baylor hospitals. The indoor pool where I was being trained backed up to a beautiful park filled with statues of children and fountains and all sorts of lush green flowers and plants. And on Saturday most of my classmates and I took their lunch break out there, but on Sunday we noticed the park was occupied.

There were all sorts of bounce houses and slides set up, there were big tents filled with cute tables and chairs and lots and lots of food. I would have attempted to casually crash the party outside and snag some free munchies but I noticed that most everyone at the picnic was wearing either a green or white shirt. And I'm pretty sure I'd stick out like a sore thumb in my navy blue swimsuit and hot pink shorts. So I asked one of my instructors what was going on out there and they told me it was the Transplant reunion picnic.

The words transplant reunion replayed softly in my head, as I watched through the window I could see so many people's stories unfolding. Some families had both white and green shirts in the family (I'm thinking green was recipient and white was for donors), I saw what I made out to be two sisters both in their 40s with their husbands and children standing there for a picture one in green the other in white and both families beaming. I also saw a dad and his teenage daughter wearing a white and green shirt and him holding his daughter's hand. For some people today they were maybe meeting their bone marrow donor for the first time. Another family there may have lost their college age daughter in a car crash last year but they were coming to the picnic today to meet the sweet 10 yr old girl who now has a second chance in life since receiving a heart transplant. Whole families came together to mark another year of life a new organ had given one of their loved ones. It was poetic. God's glory and grace was made alive in that park. As I looked on I began to cry and not just misty eyed but the kind of streaming shaking tears that won't stop till you turn away. I wasn't crying because I thought of how long each transplant recipient must've waited for a new organ, and I wasn't crying because I was thinking about the pain it must've caused the donors or their family. I was crying because God was revealing to me His utter goodness and compassion. How perfect is our God that he knew before he formed all of us in the womb what struggles in our life we would face but not only that he knew how he would hold us and keep us through those troughs. How majestic is he that he would reveal to us medical breakthroughs so that a little boy born 7 yrs ago who got leukemia would survive thanks to someone else’s bone marrow. My mind cannot comprehend how loving our God is that while we live in a fallen world and while we are still sinners he never forsakes us. He rescues us out of darkness and showers his love upon us. He heals us. God brought me to that lifeguarding class that weekend to show me one of his modern day miracles. As I composed myself and jumped back in the pool to hide my tears I felt the Lord just reminding me- Rebe, I am healer. I will deliver my people. Rebe, I hold the world in my hands. Nothing is too great for me. Remember.

IF you want to check out more about the picnic the Dallas Morning News wrote an article about it : http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042610dnmetdonorwall.3786.html

Also Kari Jobe wrote a great song called Healer that is definitely worth downloading