whitneywilson87

[whitneywilson87]

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/my-hand-in-my-fathers-ep/id1223191597

This past year, between adventures, I had the opportunity to go home. To a desolate place. A home front where desolate is full. Full of breakfasts with my retired father, laps at the pool where I taught swim lessons and earned my first paychecks, walks with a dog who does not know how to get out of the way of passing cars (my apologies to anyone who lives on Dutch Lane!), Sunday afternoons with my sweet and fun nephews and nieces, road trips to sit on furniture and walk in living rooms of family and friends I love, visits with influential Christians via biographies on a porch swing overlooking our pond, and evenings of my mom on the couch reading a magazine, covered in a blanket and lamplight, while dad plays guitar and we watch whatever sport is in season.

While soaking in this blessed desolation, one of my dad’s music buddies, Steve, offered to record a few songs for us (and it turns out anyone can put something on iTunes, so here we are!)

We met him in the sanctuary of Fouts Church where he brought his traveling recording machine that fits in a suitcase, dad brought a Subway sandwich he ran to get between teaching Sunday school and preaching a sermon and playing for me, and I brought 4 songs mostly written over the course of a year that was piercing and pure, crushing and liberating, heartbreaking and heart building.

I played them once through for dad, cleared my throat (which you can hear if you listen not-too-closely in the first track), reminded him of the keys, and let the mercy and mess of songwriting spill out, as dad added six string flourishes and feels under my simple chords and limited vocal range. Straight through on a Sunday afternoon: that’s what I’ll remember about making this lil’ album.

These are simple recordings of simple songs that are my personal postmark on a time my heart’s eye watched my heavenly Father grab my hand and not let go and lead me to a classroom I didn’t want to enter for lessons I did not want to learn. 

Here’s what I believed then and know now: I would rather have my hand in my Father’s, being lead where I do not want to go, than stay where He does not want me to be but where I am comfortable. I would cry every tear, say every goodbye, pack every suitcase, hear every false remark, wince at every reckless explanation, grieve over every implication, wade through every confusing relational reality, break every jar of what had become precious to me and watch it spread on the floor and not understand why again and again and again if that’s what it means for my hand to be in my Father’s. He does not lead us wrong. He also does not force us anywhere. (ref: the rich young ruler who walked away from everywhere Jesus wanted to take him).

The good news is it will probably take you less time to listen to the songs than to read this description. And the lil’ album will be cheaper than a bag of Skittles at the airport (*she says with experience, sugar dependency, and a lack of self control.)

I get uncomfortable “promoting” myself. I don’t know how to do that or if we’re supposed to do that? There might not be a thing on these tracks that would impress you or keep you listening. 

So this is what I confidently promote beyond “my” anything: hope and faith in God’s faithfulness. His is a trustworthy place to place your hand, your obedience, your future - no matter how much each is shaking. He’s there. He’s in the future. He’s in the classroom He’s leading you to with your stumbling, unsure feet and goodbyes over your shoulder. He’s on the water you don’t know how to walk on. He’s in the heaven you desperately want to be real. He’s on the cross you don’t know what to make of. He’s in the tent where you are doubting His promises and provisions and visitations. He’s breathed on the scriptures and the stories you would find yourself in upon any honest examination of your own heart and His salvation. He offers life - not perfect or ever pleasing or practical - but real and righteous and redeemed.

It is my prayer that these songs would promote that. That you would start the journey to knowing what Sarah knows - that God places the stars we will one day hold in the darkest of skies.

Thank you for listening/reading/iTunes-ing and supporting my Skittles and song habit. This year has contained plenty of both. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/my-hand-in-my-fathers-ep/id1223191597

[whitneywilson87]

“This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Luke 2:12

He could have been held by what was prestigious and distinguished. He could have placed his presence in shiny and new, attractive and impressive.

The Ark could have had its resurgence, ushering in the revamped God-with-us. The shepherds could have received the message, “You’ll find him in an intimidating and costly box. You’ll find him in the matter and material instantly recognizable as special and set apart from everything around it.”

But that wasn’t the announcement. Not this time. Not this way. Not when God would re-enter the story and introduce himself to the world He created. He wouldn’t be God in the Ark or God in the cloud or God in the fire. He would be God with hair to brush. God with feet to ache. God with a voice to laugh. God with tears to cry. God with us. God like us.

For this, “Nice to meet you,” He chose to be held not by what was already precious and pure but by what was common and strange. A manger. A dirty, dingy trough where horses congregate and cattle backwash. Not the prince’s palace, but the donkey’s watercooler.

This time, this way, He placed himself in what was plain and passed over in order to fill it with what is pure and precious. The value of the manger is not innately in the manger. The value of the manger is in what it holds.

That first Christmas, it held the holiness of God. And this Christmas, we can hold the holiness of God. Not just those of us with illustrious resumes, golden exteriors, and gilded garments. Not just those of us who would qualify as pretty, polished Ark people for God to understandably place himself in.

God made a way for us -us with splintered pasts and jagged edges - to be holiness with hair to brush. God made a way for us -us with grimy unseens and pyrite offerings-  to carry His love and peace and joy and patience and humility and heart. God made a way- not because of who we are but because of who we can hold.

Cradled in the Christmas story, we see the beauty and the wonder and the miracle that God would associate with a manger. He would associate with me. He would associate with you. He values the lowly. He resides in the unexpected and unesteemed.

I’m not golden. I’m not impressive. I’m dirty and dingy on my best days. But I can hold the holiness of God. So can you. 

Because God has made a way, we are never too weathered or too worn, too weak or too wasted to be the modern-day mangers holding His presence. Because God has made a way.

God has made a way, in a manger.

[whitneywilson87]

Mind of Christ (Heart of a Girl)

When I have had a hope and then watched it die, it always falls across the threshold of my prayers, so that with each crossing, with every attempt to meet and hear from and talk to God, I have to step over it. I have to see it lifeless there, knowing that I do not have the breath to resuscitate it, and I do not have the strength to remove it, and I do not have the supplies to whitewash it. I can smell it, decaying, in the room. I can hear it not-breathing. I do not have to look at it to know it is there, and I have no idea how to: A) bring it up or B) bring up anything else.

The first feels irreverent, accusatory. “Um, God- remember how what I really, really wanted to happen looked like it was really, really going to to happen and then it didn’t happen? You know that thing I keep stepping over but never getting over? Remember how all the packaging and pieces appeared promising and then it fell through, crushing me underneath? Remember how now I am confused and disappointed and discouraged? Remember how you are a Father, who I thought wouldn’t want to see me hurt, but who would have had to know how much this would hurt me? Yep. (long, pregnant pause) Sooooo, forgive me my sins (like probably this prayer?), bless this day, and thank you Jesus for all you have done. Amen.”

The second feels insulting, immature. “Hey God- it’s me again. I’ll try to talk to you about other things today…but nope. J/k. All roads still lead to that dead hope horse prime for the beating, right there in the doorway.”

When the balloons have been taken down, when the cake’s been cancelled and the banner’s been rolled up, when the party I had started preparing for is in the discard pile, when I am coming off a loss, that is when I most know the annoying and painstaking disconnect between head and heart.

I try talking to someone. I try reading something. I try working out some derivative in my stacks of journals of how this is for the best and how I am really not that upset. Anything to remove the heartbreak hindrance from my prayer room. Every conversation, every turning page- I am really asking, “Can you help me move this from faith’s passageway, so I don’t have to look at it anymore- so it can quit blocking my view of how I want God to be and how I expect him to operate? Can you help me give it another name- like “lesson” or “virtue”…instead of “harrowing disappointment”?

Sigh. It does not budge. It does not answer to another name.

All the listeners and advice givers and pro bono counselors mean well. Of course they do- just as I do when I feed head knowledge to hurting hearts. Still, sometimes, this snarky, yippy, growly, insensitive thing will start to rear inside me and want to scream, “Don’t you know that I already know that? Don’t you know that I have read every book on that shelf? Don’t you know that I have dog-eared those pages, underlined those verses, and cast that line bottomless times? Don’t you know that I have lead small groups on that very topic and written “Amen” in the margins of study guides to punctuate my agreement?!”

Still. It does not budge. It does not answer to another name.

Once the snark cools and the growl becomes a voice - a broken voice- again, I whimper and wrap words around what I really mean. “I have, and earnestly want, the mind of Christ. Thank you for appealing to it- but do you also have something that can appease the heart of a girl?”

Eventually and unexpectedly, moving day comes; it begins when I pick up the hallowed work of Elisabeth Elliot (of whom I know no greater earthly hero or saint). In the closing of her book These Strange Ashes she comes with her gracious truth, with her well-worn faith shoes, with her mind of Christ, and her heart of a girl and harbingers what would speak most clearly to mine:

“To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the Cross. And the Cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact. It is not by any means an easy thing to recognize, within a given instance of personal loss, the opportunity it affords for participation in Christ’s own loss. What, we ask ourselves, can this possibly have to do with that? We are not by nature inclined to think spiritually (ref: me sarcastically “Yep’ping” in my prayers). We are ready to assign almost any other explanation to the things that happen to us. There is a certain reticence to infer that our little troubles may actually be the vehicles to bring us to God. Most of us simply grin and bear them, knowing they are the lot of all human beings, and our memories being marvelously selective, we simply cancel them out, none the better for the lessons we might have learned.”

There it was, waiting right there in every line and ligament of the passage: the loss I kept trying to liquidate, the lesson I might have learned.

Loss. I could personally encounter it- without having to keep countering it to my heart as something to be grinned and beared. Loss. I didn’t have to dress it up. I didn’t have to call it by another name. And I didn’t have to pretend it didn’t hurt or affect me in some ridiculous attempt to appear more “holy”. If this loss - this, “Could this really have to do with anything bigger than this?” loss - could be a vehicle intended to bring me nearer to God, didn’t I want to get in? If this loss- and not the fruitions of all my hopes and dreams- invites me to participate in discipleship’s work, didn’t I want to accept? I could not hail it down fast enough.

Neither my mind nor my heart has been shielded from what baffles me, from what hurts, from what puts tears in my pillows and mascara streams down my cheeks. And if you follow the Lord and take seriously becoming like Him, yours will not be either. Faith does not ask our opinion on what will produce faith in us. When our losses are fresh, when our disappointments are heavy, when our minds are learned but our hearts are achy, when hopes crumpled take vehicle form and pull up in our driveway, we can focus on the mechanics of the car or fuss over the interior or exterior being different than we’d like (none of which will get us moving)- or, we can look to the driver and take a seat.

As I sit, a passenger in this subject matter, not a professor of it, I remember that the soundest mind of Christ will always direct back to the sound love of Christ- the love going before and behind, covering every corner and nuance and grief-trampled doorway between where I am and where He would have me be. The love that stretched itself on a cross to become the only immovable matter on the threshold of my prayers. It is this love that steers the wheel and determines the route. And this love does not ask me to draw conclusions or erase results. It does not ask me to figure it out or feel it right. Love calls me to trust and to get in the vehicle.

I do not know how the vehicle works. I cannot explain its parts, what makes it go, what makes it brake. I do not know where it is taking me exactly or how far it is to get there or just how long the bridge will be between loss and gain. I only know that all of me -head and heart- is all aboard and is headed for God, with God. He is, and therefore love is, the driver. Any loss we cross is taking me to Him, if I will just get inside.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

Sincerity.

I have a weird thing about drinking sports’ drinks when I have not worked out. Blame 90’s commercials, I guess. Never did I see a girl in jammy pants and a messy bun tending to her Saturday errands- balancing the checkbook between loads of laundry while trying to remember to throw chicken in the crockpot- break for an electrolyte boost to Jock Jam music and cheers from an invisible crowd. Not once did a guy after sitting at a computer, pouring over a Sudoku, adjusting his Bluetooth, eating his egg salad sandwich- reach for a 20 oz. Riptide Rush from an icy cooler as a camera spun 360 catching every gulp of that purple power while the sweat from the bottle met the sweat from his hand.

No. It never happened like that. Those drinks were there to congratulate and reward those who earned it: those who scaled mountains, those who repelled cliffs, those who stepped in a gym and actually knew what to do (not just the elliptical clingers, like myself).

As a result, when I walk out of 7-Eleven carrying a prized red Gatorade - having done nothing more in the day than make my bed and check my Facebook- I feel like confessing to the world, “I AM A FAKE! My heart rate only goes up when road ragers honk and call me names. Any sweat I have acquired has been by accident and because I live in Florida and still choose to wear layers. I have much more experience with kettle corn than kettle bells. My last adrenaline rush was someone suggesting we get cookies ’n cream milkshakes. I am not an athlete. I am not a thrill seeker. I am simply someone who likes Fruit Punchy flavored things.”

It is the same story with workout attire. On days when I dress the part…wind resistant shorts, racerback tank, ankle socks and neon New Balance’s…in hopes that it will inspire me to do the deed and burn some cookies ’n cream, I feel like a sham until I have actually done the work, run the miles, wiped the sweat, and earned the Gatorade.

I do not think this, “Ok, I drink like/dress like I worked out…but I really didn’t” shaming is all a result of a master marketing campaign by Gatorade, New Balance, or any other player in the exercise industry. I think it markets to something else- something soul deep and heart wide: the want to be sincere.

When I take inventory on the kind of person I want to be, about the qualities I want to have, about the character I want to attain- there really is nothing I want more than I want genuine. Without true, honest sincerity pulsing behind the kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, friendliness, and love I am striving for, they will never survive, never sustain, never mature, and never matter. Sincerity is the only soil from which good fruit- lasting fruit- will grow.

Sincerity. It is what enthralls me most about Jesus, and it is why I believe even people who do not follow him and do not agree with him could still examine his life and be amazed at His authenticity.

He lived without a speck of pretension. He taught and told that true glory hides in honesty and integrity, not fame and fortune. He had no ambition to be flattered. He had no care for how he was perceived or parodied. He showed only interest for doing the will of his father and made decisions based not on who was watching or what would appease popular opinion- but on what love would do and what holiness would require. He never had Gatorade stained lips after a lazy morning. In his coming, in his going; in his talking, in his teaching; in his happiness, in his hurt- he lived and loved sincerely.

I want that, too. I think we all do. It’s just sometimes, the pull towards perception can be so strong and enticing that suddenly we want to be perceived as kind, gentle, faithful, friendly, and loving more than we want to actually be those things. It is easy to throw our own parades- pretend to be whoever we want to be, lavish street attenders with cheap candy and quick floats of grandeur, direct the band to play whatever will make people happy and like us- all in constant motion, free from the fear of close examination, where we can turn the street, climb down from the stage, and stop the show once out of sight.

Building perceptions is painless and quickly attained. Building being is work and mostly overlooked. It takes time and training. It is not soon paraded or celebrated.

But to be as rather than to be perceived as: it is so much greater. The difference between rich, real, top shelf, gold foiled milk chocolate…and a tootsie roll. 

Agree with who he claimed to be or not, Jesus did not live a tootsie roll life, nor did he leave us with a tootsie roll gospel. Real love, authentic love is milk, divine, delicious chocolate: the more we receive it, the more we run to it and alongside it, the more we cherish and consume it, the more we become it.

And then, becoming it, we trade out our waxy tootsie chocolate-imitation junk for the pure and irresistible taste of sincere love - active love - the world craves. Then, we exchange our Gatorade toting fibbery for the very feet running to the field, being love; for the very hearts pouring sweat and sacrifice in the darkness, being light; for the very muscles building up from lifting the least and the lonely, being Jesus. That is when we earn our Fruit Punch. That is when we discover that the Gatorade was never the prize. The sincerity developed along the road to achieving it was.

There is nothing I want to be more than genuine. To give what is real, we have to get what is real- and it cannot be purchased at a gas station. It can only be earned on the track. To be as rather than to be perceived as- it must be run after. Let’s run for it.

When the world holds out its hand, begging for substance, begging for sustenance, let’s have real, rich chocolate to give…and leave the tootsie rolls along the parade route.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

I answered my usual Saturday morning call from my mom to her usual first call question: “How’s your week been, Whit?”

“Ugh…it’s been a crazy one.” And it had. That was not a dramatic inflation. It had been 7 days packed fat with meetings and mayhem, agenda and itinerary. Nights gone. Floors unswept. Laundry unfolded. Calls unreturned. Messages unopened. Crisper drawer casualties thrown out, unprepared and unpacked, leaving my heart as wilted as the romaine atop my trash.

Life. A teeming apparatus of commotion, intricately stacked end-to-end pieces of a combustible puzzle where not one segment could be moved or maneuvered without the whole system collapsing. (This could very well be an exaggeration- but it is very well how it felt). 

Her response was not what I expected.

After a couple seconds of pause, my mom sweetly invaded what I failed to see. “Whitney, you say it’s been a crazy week, every week.”

My mind flashed back to our last several Saturday calls and the weeks they tenured. She was right. I had said it every time and meant it every time. Then the frustrating internal questions beep in, as if on call waiting. 

“How do you keep having these weeks of doing, doing, doing- but get nothing done? How do you keep looking back on 7 day stretches of solid moving and going- but not arrive any place you want to be? How do you spend all this time, every drop you have- but the areas you want to contribute towards most, your loves and life-infusers, remain untouched and unattended to?”

It felt like going to the store, filling a cavernous cart with armfuls from every aisle, pushing and prodding its wobbly wheels to the checkout, paying my bloated bill, only to get home, unload, and see that I bought junk and magazines and still have nothing to eat.

And I am hungry and combusting and it is not going to be another personal planner or stronger resolve to make more “me time” that is going to fill my belly and put out the flames. 

In one of those sacred moments when scripture is counselor, I read these words, with one word holding the hope and harbor I need.

“This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best…” Phil 1:9,10

BEST. The lifeboat sailing in to take me to a shore I am desperate for. 

Not what is busy and impressive. Not what keeps up with everyone else. Not what makes me appear put together and on the move. Not what is right from wrong. Not even what is good. 

What is best.

There is an inexhaustible supply of “good” causes/works/pursuits we can give our time to, but if our only determiner of how we spend our days is, “Is it good?” we will invariably choke out, and even leave out altogether, the “best” from our lives.

I do not want to spend my 20’s, my 30’s, my 40’s- and not know how I spent them. I do not want someone to ask me what I have done with my life, what I invested in, what I worked towards, only to say, “Well…I stayed busy?” (never mind that I no longer remember with what). I do not want to continue robbing myself of the best that could be mine, pawning it off for lesser “goods” that never amount to anything.

That proverbial shopping cart slams into the back of my ankles, forcing me to wake up and realize that I am the only one behind it, and thus, the only one to blame for what goes in it.

That, is mine.

A Mary Poppins figure is not going to fly through my window and start telling me what to do and what not to do, to look over my plans and preoccupations and assess if I am doing too much or give me the go ahead to say no to good, so I can say yes to best.

Like a prospector at work, head bent, shoulders slumped digging and delving, I have to mine what is mine. I have to confront where I have confused busyness for best-ness and break down the dust I have allowed to make the cart heavy and harrowing.

Mining is hard- in some ways, even harder than continuing to stack high-on-crazy, low-on-productivity weeks on top of each other and live through them, because mining requires a new thing: a daily, devout decision to ascribe to and serve what is best. (The latter just requires I keep doing what I have always done- the quickest formula for no change). Mining means disappointing people and knowing up front, I will not meet someone else’s expectations. It means getting comfortable with the uncomfortable task of telling people “No.” (<- I want anxiety chocolate at the thought). It means tuning my heart to hear the Lord’s thoughts and directions, instead of merely chasing after what someone else throws at me (or I throw at myself).

Mining is hard, but it is the only way to get the diamonds in my (and your) mine; scattering our time and attention to the less-than-best will not do it.

To determine the diamonds from the debri in our lives, we do not need another time management lesson. We need another way altogether; graciously, Jesus’ entire message at every front of life is still, “There is another way.” And His way, is best.

I do not need Mary Poppins to tell me that discerning what is best will always be best. Maybe I just need the motivation that another Saturday call is coming- and this time, if the week has been heavy, may it be from carting diamonds, where what is most mine is most His.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

“But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.” Psalm 37:11

If the world is lacking motivation, it is not for a lack of motivational posters lining the halls and walls of our childhood.

I envision sitting in youth group, where we splatter painted the walls and lounged on mismatched couches donated from the basements of church patrons. On one wall hung a poster purchased from the local Bible bookstore of a kid on a skateboard, sailing in the air, with funky typeface overtop reminding us to face our fears.  I remember walking through my grade school cafeteria, at the end of the line because we were always in alphabetical order (“W’s” unite!) and passing the big stainless steel cooler while negotiating lunch trades with my classmates. Bannered above, Michael Jordan told me to drink milk and be tough, so I could be a world-class athlete, saving the earth from a cartoon alien race, if need be. When I went to class, a bald eagle, wings wide in true spread eagle, flew over a canyon rim and clear sky; in black border below, white proverbial writing encouraged me to dream big and achieve greatness.

My whole life I’ve been “poster-prodded” to be bold, stand strong, fight for ambition, forage for determination, and chase down my dreams, by any means necessary.

And I think it’s great. Really, I do. We all need to pump up our jam every now and again, be it through a low quality image sharing its way around Facebook (which an unacceptable amount of times, contains a typo) or a good, encouraging quote from “Anonymous”.

But when I envision the dance halls of my dreams, I see it decorated differently, with a less popular adage that I have never seen in a fluorescent 90’s printed graphic. It’s a less favored poster in a less fashionable frame. It isn’t flashy, and it isn’t always exciting. Still, it’s what I want more than I want anything else.

BE MEEK.  It’s the keychain hanging and clanging from my every dream and hope.

BE MEEK.  It is not the same as BE TIMID. BE TRITE. Or BE TRIVIAL.

BE MEEK. It does not negate or neglect boldness or persistence or bravery or a work ethic. Instead, it takes those qualities and filters them through a humble patience, a diligent peace, and a steadfast belief that God will provide, not when I in immaturity and selfishness think the time is right, but when He in ultimate wisdom and perfect love deems that the plan is righteous, that my heart and motives are pure, and that my character and faith are ready.

Meekness is powerful and inherits what pushy and proud never could.

Meekness compounds a fervent and faithful devotion to working and waiting with a complete trust in God’s provision and plan- that He sees all, that He knows all, that He wastes nothing, and that He withholds no good thing.

Meekness leaves a gentle, yet courageous, impression; it molds and upholds a quiet spirit and an unassuming heart, pressing out pretension and selfish ambition.

Meekness means I don’t push myself to the front, but I yield to the Lord’s way, even when it’s the slow way, the obscure way, and the lonely way. Meekness means I do not complain or contrive, scheme or demand.

Meekness means I serve. Meekness means I follow. Meekness means I trust, whether I am dancing or waiting to be asked.

There are lots of dances I want to do in life, but I don’t want to do any of them without being asked. I don’t want to crash the dance floor when it is someone else’s turn. I don’t want to cut in when I have not done the hard working and waiting for my part.

When the dance floor door opens, I don’t want my handprints all over it. I want God’s hand outstretched through it, leaving no doubt whose hand it is and whose leading I follow.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

“Waiting on the Lord means doing all you are supposed to do until God does what you cannot do.” Tony Evans.

I used to be a Twitter mooch. I didn’t want the trouble of tending to an account, but I wanted the quick slices of inspiration or wit. (I love good writing- and good condensed writing? Well, that’s like an all-you-can-tweet candy buffet.)  So, I would look around minus the login from time to time, peruse the Twitterverse until I got a good quote, or at least a lil’ baby snort, and then be on my way.

In one of those magical moments where the Internet accomplishes more than wasting time, I came across a tweet that amplified in my heart’s ears and stuck to my every dream and secret wish like a tacky bumper sticker. Upon seeing it, it could not be missed or forgotten.

It was simple. Direct. Boundlessly truthful. Not in danger of surpassing the 140 character limit. Harsh at first glance but harmonious to wisdom and application the longer I looked.

 “Hope is not a strategy.”

#Duh. Of course it’s not. We know this. I know this. So why had I been living my life and banking my aspirations –both what I want to do and more dangerously, who I want to become- as though hope alone was the ticket to take me there? Why had I been treating noble character traits and healthy habits and fruitful skill sets and wisdom and pure heartedness and constant communion with God and fervent love for other people as though they arrive inevitably instead of intentionally?

The best, furthest reaching passions and prizes in life are not inevitable; they are investable. They are destinations of determination that require a stronger, surer, purer strategy than, “I hope so...”

Hope comes with a reason behind it and a responsibility towards it. And more often than not, I think the responsibility- I think the strategy- looks a lot like faithfulness; it looks a lot like simply and diligently doing what we know to do and trusting God with the results.

I’m not a great strategist. Actually, planning anything past an afternoon away sends me into respiratory distress and brain deadlock. I don’t always know what a strategy for success looks like, but I know what faithfulness looks like. When I focus on faithfulness, the pressure lifts and the passion and peace kick in. I’m no longer confusing hope with a strategy; I’m hoping alongside a strategy and trusting the Lord’s faithfulness to guide me in my own.

That’s my hope. That’s my strategy.

Whitney Wilson.

*I have since joined Twitter officially...but am not a huge Twitterbug. The 140 character limit, for me, is like cramming a couch into a suitcase.Turns out brevity is not my strongsuit, and I do better reading condensed bursts of wisdom or humor than I do writing them. I am not surprised by this.

[whitneywilson87]

"Never in peace or war, commit your virtue or happiness to the future." CS Lewis

My friends and I started swapping prayer requests one night, bringing about one of those conversations where no one’s making direct eye contact with God, but we’re all aware he’s in the room, so we hope he’ll eavesdrop and intervene accordingly.

Sharing our wants- both deepest and surface level- I noticed a pattern, a cadence, a structure we all derived our life’s great wish list into: “When…Then…”

The when’s encompassed the requests (promotions, romance, travel, adventure, accolades, advancements, accomplishments…) and ensured the results (happiness, contentment, joy, generosity, faith, trust, peace…) This is how we presented it to be, because this is how we believed it to be- our virtues contingent upon resources idealized and desires realized.

But that night as we disbanded and went home, I could not believe it any more. I could not believe that the good, Godly, holy, nourishing qualities of our character lay in escrow until some “when (fill in the blank)” comes around to redeem them.

I know better, because I know people who contradict the “When…Then” system. People who shatter that formula and shame that belief by personifying peace and gratitude and authenticity and graciousness - yet, live without all they want or hope for, who endure suffering and hardship and have received No’s or at least Not yet’s, to their sincerest prayers and silent heart cries.

I do not want to settle for just knowing contradictions- I want to BE a contradiction. When I catch myself in a “When…Then”, I want to break from the fallacy and faithfully trust 2 Peter 1:3. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Everything we need for godliness we already have. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness- the attributes of God- they are not waiting for us at the advent of a coming attraction. They are available now. Those when’s? We can keep working towards them. We can keep waiting on them. We can keep telling them to our friends and encouraging the Lord to overhear. They will be great and fun and exciting when they come, but they do not own or bring about the goodness and value of our hearts and lives. We do- when we set our hearts, our minds, our attitudes, and our outlooks on things above, not things ahead.

Let’s contradict contentment’s dependence on a future date or lucky break and assign our beliefs and virtues to truth. For when we redeem what we already have, then we will be who we already are.

When, then. When, then. We will be so gloriously different…when, then.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

Nothing Good Gets Away

It happens every time I step into social media. I scroll through the barrage of posts, piles of pins, heaps of tweets- with all the "Read this!"s and "Watch that!"s lining the cyberspace runway- and inevitably see titles and descriptions I am genuinely interested in and assign them a fake mental marker. "I’ll definitely be back for that one….later". Then I scroll on mindlessly, with as little chance of return as my Red Box rentals within 24 hours. (I’m the reason companies have late fees.)

But one day I caught- and surprised- myself in the self-deceptive act and clicked the link on the spot. Any time I do that, I can hear a little victory processional in my head and think, “This must be what it feels like to be Type A.”

The link featured a collection of personal, recently published letters by literary great John Steinbeck. In the first, he writes to his son after learning he’s fallen in love while away at college. His gentle and rich response to the matter hit my soul like hot chocolate, his closing remarks the kind of wisdom that tastes real and raw from living and loving, not artificial or processed from gaming or guessing.

"Don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."

Nothing good gets away. Four words that trampled all the other traffic in my brain.

It wasn’t a newly introduced truth. I had read it in a different translation, by a different author, hundreds of time. It’s underlined in my Bible, in fact, fashioned a little differently but voicing the same concept. I had let it get sleepy, and it took John Steinbeck to wake it up in my heart again.

"No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless," Psalm 84:11 promises. The Lord assures us of His knowledge and determination of ultimate goodness in our lives and points us, not towards trying to determine it for ourselves, but towards walking blamelessly, living righteously, and trusting Him with the rest.

So often I whine- evidencing my immaturity and insecurity- to my mom or my notebook about all the “good” I’m waiting on, all the “good” life’s withholding.

There’s a huge, humbling issue with this though. I’m not an authority on what is good. Like a child insisting to his parent that candy corn and Kool Aid is a “good” dinner, I just think I am. I’ve confused knowing what would immediately taste good with what would indefinitely be good.

The Lord doesn’t ask me to do what I don’t know how to do- delegate and regulate what would be good in my life. He asks me to do what I do know how to do- walk blamelessly. Any excuse of, “But I don’t know how to do that!” is met with a Holy Book, a Holy Spirit, and a holy-seeking community of people He’s provided so I can know and learn how to do that.

When I remember the difference between what God knows and what I know (which is a lot), I’m back where He wants me, where He can teach me, where He can change and use me. I’m back in the truth that my first aim isn’t to collect or receive “good” things; it is to walk righteously in His love and guidance. And that place, that sought, goes down like hot chocolate, too, because it’s where fear, worry, and whininess go away, in the sweet peace, assurance, and promise that nothing good gets away.

Whitney Wilson, who is humbly grateful that you clicked this link instead of adding it to your mental marker list. 

[whitneywilson87]

Normal.

I wrote this song on one of those nights where you pull into your driveway and have no idea how you got there. It was late. The roads were clear but my mind wasn’t and somehow, the tunnel of streetlights and the miracle of muscle memory brought me home. My mind couldn’t have- it was too preoccupied with a question.

"Am I normal?" My heart kept approaching it. Defensiveness would steer me away. Sincerity would veer me back.

It wasn’t a question I had asked before. Yes, I had put those same three words together as the lone kid in kindergarten who had glasses or as the only literate human who didn’t think The Hunger Games was that great (I need grace as much as anyone)- but this was different. This time I wanted a different answer. This time I wasn’t asking myself. I was asking Jesus. I was asking Him a question that He would go on to ask me.

Scripture refers to believers as strangers and aliens in this world- and I had to know, did my life reflect that? Or*anxious confrontation*, had I become normal?

Sure, I frequent the “Religious Reading” section of Barnes & Noble. I mostly have a Twitter account because Beth Moore has a Twitter account. I know a song to the tune of “Michael Finnegan” that can get me about half way through the books of the Old Testament, before I tap out at Ecclesiastes. 

Obviously, I have racked up some Christian adornments, but could they be costume Jesus jewelry draped on a girl still driven by world-induced normalcy? Under all the spiritual bangles, do I have the heart, the passions, the lifestyle, and the homesickness of an alien? Am I brave enough, patient enough, trusting enough, wise enough to turn from typical and live a life worthy of the calling I’ve received, no matter what’s on the receiving end?

That night on my ride home, I awoke to the uncomfortable realization that Christian culture offers lots of accessories we can keep throwing on typical lives with typical tendencies that never typify Christ. Christian adornments won’t make us strangers and aliens. Our jobs, locations, style, marital status, and education won’t either.

Only Jesus does. Not the things we’ve marketed as Jesus. Jesus- himself. His life enveloping our life. His character enveloping our character.  His kindness, gentleness, humility, authenticity, integrity, truthfulness, wisdom, and impartiality replacing our typical selfishness, pride, and hasty indulgences- these attributes of God make us strangers and aliens, hitting the world with heavenly flavor amid the bland and brittle taste of typical.

As His followers, our ambitions, our gratitude, our spending habits, our speaking habits, our joy, our relationships, our attention to the poor and lonely, how we talk about people, how we talk to people, what we care about, what we don’t care about- they cannot be normal. Normal gives nothing of substance to the world and asks nearly nothing of us. It robs life of fullness, and it robs people of seeing the beautiful counter-normalities of Jesus.

Normal probably won’t change anytime soon, but we can. 

We don’t have to be normal. We can want more than it has to offer. Jesus antidotes normal, not when accessorized by us but when characterized in us. 

p.s. He also causes occasional distracted driving…but not typically ;)

Whitney Wilson, a Fervent Dreamer in Her Generation’s Capacity to be Atypical

[whitneywilson87]

Stones Against the Clay

John’s account of the woman caught in adultery* ranks high on my “Endearing Stories of the Bible” list. And if you’re a Jesus follower it probably does on yours, too. Anyone who believes that Jesus saved them from their sin and paid their wages of death can cut and paste themselves into this scene.

"And today, Whitney, you’ll be playing the part of the adulteress. Caught in the act. Rightfully accused but wrongfully abused. Found out. Put out. Strung out before an authority that strips you of dignity because of your own irresponsibility."

And then my face hits the ground. And the dust is humiliating. And the enclosing circle is intimidating. And just as the weight of punishment and shame aims to crush my bones and break my spirit, Jesus steps in. He scribbles something in the sand. He makes a mockery of my accuser’s authority, and I hear a thick chorus of “thud”s as stones start hitting the clay and not my back. And everyone leaves in contempt. It’s just Jesus and me now. And he doesn’t condemn me, despite my guilt. He sends me away on grace and credit- for the debt I racked up in sin is on his tab and will be taken care of at the upcoming cross. End scene. End beautiful, gracious, thematic scene. I take my bow and curtain call as someone hands me flowers and I wave to the crowd, exiting the stage until the next time I’m called in to play this part.

But lately, as I’ve been examining the script, I realize the rescued sinner hasn’t been my sole role in this story. Well, at least not the rescued sinner I’d always assumed to be.

Painful admission: I have been part of the circle (not just in the middle of it), too. The gross, arrogant, devaluing circle of accusation and comparison. The circles we go to in our minds or conversations to drag people to the middle of, in order to pick up rocks of jealousy or self-exaltation or whatever is sharp and throwable, and begin knocking them down to build ourselves up.

We need saved from being in the rim of the circle just as much as we need saved from being in the circle.

And Jesus does that. We don’t have to spend our lives making circles and putting people in them so that we look/feel/sound better. He enacts for us a different way to live and love. He reminds us that we stand on common, never higher, ground with those we are accusing or comparing ourselves to; He shows us the very stones we want to pick up and throw at other people are the ones that were dropped, that were stopped, for our behalf. 

At this realization, at this role reversal, I don’t want to throw stones that would have been thrown at me had grace not changed their course, and I don’t want to stand around a circle that I could have been standing in (for acts both caught and uncaught) had mercy not broken it up.

Ahh, I play the rescued sinner again. Once saved from within, now saved from the rim.

At that circle of incrimination, I hear Jesus’s words to “go and leave your way of sin”, and I take the invitation, stretching my hands and changing my direction.

The scene has a soundtrack. A beautiful score- of heavy stones falling on common ground. And the sound they make leaving my accuser’s hands and sinking into the clay below is just as beautiful as the sound they make falling from my own.

Whitney Wilson.

*John 8: 1-11

[whitneywilson87]

Impossibilities

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Mark 10:27

I used to limit the “impossible” factor of God to VBS stories. “With God, all things are possible” painted the immediate picture of mountains moving and Red Seas parting and coins showing up in fishes mouths- and resulted in bystanders and participants knowing, “That could only be God. It’s unexplainable any other way.”

But -as with most things in life- my perception, definition, and recognition of faith based phenomenons has changed through experience and mercy…and good coffee and conversation with a good friend.

Recently I met up with Emily at Starbucks to hear about her trip to the Philippines and the encounter with impossibilities she had on the plane ride home. She described how alone in the aircraft, high above land and life as usual, the Lord’s presence boarded the cabin, coming as close as the skin she was in, and redeemed her impossibilities. He began changing her wants. He started rearranging her desires. He made her content in areas she never thought she could be content. He calmed and stilled fears of failure that might meet her on the ground. He took anxiety and shame over fractured compliances and fissured reliances and replaced them with trust and faith in His trustworthiness and faithfulness. That is the power of God. That is the loving, active, merciful power of God demonstrated over impossibilities- not in giving us what we want but in changing what we want.

As believers, we constantly face challenges to our contentment, joy, and allegiance to the Lord’s way of life that feel impossible. Remain grounded in the onset of plans and hopes dissolving? Impossible. Stop caring about things that are really humanly hard to not care about and start caring about things that are really humanly hard to care about? Impossible. Experience humble excitement toward the future and pure wholeness within the present even when life gives things we never wanted and withholds things we thought we had to have?

It doesn’t take much life to learn that we can’t will ourselves to change. We can’t conjure up contentment when life isn’t consentient to our wants and plans. We can’t close our eyes really tight and start saying over and over, “I’m going to be o.k. with this” or “I’m going to be o.k. without that” and expect to open them and be changed by our own mental strength or stamina. Live enough life, and we learn that with man this is impossible; but walk enough faith, and we experience that with God all things possible. Mountains move. Red Sea’s part. Taxes come from tilapias. And God changes us. He impossibly and unexplainably changes us.

Emily’s story probably won’t make the VBS circuit, but it massively expands the canvas on which I see the possible in impossibilities. I don’t have to peel cash off a fish’s tongue to say, “That could only be God. It’s unexplainable any other way.” I need only to grab coffee with a friend and I plane-ly see. He is the possible in impossibilities.

Thanks for sharing the view, Em!

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

Gradually

"The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day." Pro 4:18

I would sum up the last 5 years of my life as a gradual miracle. There’s not always been exact moments when I knew a prayer had been answered or direct hits when I knew life was blooming out of rocky, dry soil or instant instances when I saw life transitioning from dark to light. 

It’s been gradual. It’s been continual. It’s been a miracle.

When I first think of Jesus’ miracles recorded in the Bible, I jump to the “at once” ones. The stories where he commanded the situation to change and “at once”, it did.

"Pick up your mat and walk," Jesus said, and the man invalid for years and years walks away. / "Go and your son will live," Jesus replied, and before the boy’s father even reaches home, he receives word that his son lives. / "Daughter, your faith has healed you," Jesus spoke and the woman’s bleeding instantly stops.

But not all miracles occurred at once. Some materialized out of obedience and time- obedience that seemed strange, unconventional, even uncomfortable, and time that was gradated and (seemingly) gratuitous.

My favorite scriptural backing of a graduated miracle is in John 9. "As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth…he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’. So the man went and washed, and came home seeing."

A man, who had never known what it was to see, received the miracle of sight. And it took spit. And it took mud. And it took obedience to go and wash and trust that somehow all this spit and mud and going and washing would change something.

He did what Jesus said to do, and gradually, a miracle happened. Our walks of faith are just the same. Some grace will come instantly, but some will occur when we start walking where he’s told us to walk and don’t realize we’d been scaling a mountain until we’ve reached its peak and take in the view. Some will occur when we plant seeds he’s asked us to plant and keep watering and trusting and weeding until one day, a miracle blooms that had gradually been working under ground in the soil of faith and obedience long before we saw it blossom.

As believers, we are encouraged to ask for miracles, and we are commanded to obey and trust the obedience and time it takes to bring them to fruition. Jesus is a miracle worker who’s main objective is not that we encounter miracles for the sake of wonder or novelty, but that we experience his miraculous grace in order to accurately see who he is. 

Whether “at once” or gradually, He knows what we need to miraculously come home seeing.

Whitney Wilson.

[whitneywilson87]

Meant To Be (Easy)

If we are going to live adequately and maturely as the people of God, we need more data to work from than our own experience can give us. -Eugene Peterson

I don’t know how people get through life without a big sister. Daily I borrow from mine’s wisdom, humor, and vantage point to help me see and trust what I miss on my own. A few weeks ago I called her disappointed and confused- airing out my frustrations over what I perceived to be a lack of progress in a stagnant process of getting where I wanted to go. Discouraged, I determined that surely if I’d made the ‘right’ decisions and understood the Lord’s leading, I wouldn’t be dealing with hardships. “It’s gotta mean that I got it wrong,” I told her.

I had unknowingly entered faith’s classroom in that moment and my sister stood at the front of the class, about to give a lesson that would invaluably adjust my perception to be more Christ-like. “When you are in the thick of despair over where you are,” she said, “go back to what took you there in the first place. It hasn’t changed just because the difficulty level has. We somehow believe in the call until it gets hard; we feel the faith until there is friction- when really, we’ve confused meant to be with meant to be easy.”

It was as though my glasses had been knocked off and she picked them up off the floor and set them on my face. That truth brought sight, entered my senses and cleansed my convictions. It took hold of and capsized my defunct and immature logic that I ought to gauge the accuracy of my call based on the ease of its attainment.

Scripture backs her up on this. The lives and callings of heroes in the faith back her up on this. Paul’s imprisonments, floggings, shipwrecks, and sleepless, hungry nights (2 Cor 11:23-27) did not negate Damascus; David’s brush with death at the king’s hand, seclusion in a lonely cave, and a long, hard wait before taking the promised throne did not rescind the anointing oil poured on his head years earlier.

Damascus ensured the call, not the ease of the road ahead. The oil established the promise, not the instantaneous or painless fulfillment of it. Like Paul and David, we can trust our call because of the One calling, no matter what it calls for.

Whitney Wilson.