Author: Guest Author (Page 2 of 4)

Zechariah 4:10 NLT

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.

Why do we fear small beginnings?   Maybe because of the uncertainty they bring.

What will I say to others when they ask what I’m doing?

In the words of Brené Brown, this is a shame gremlin for me.

These are the questions that nag at me when I’ve moved out of that dreaming space with God and into the everyday motion of walking out the dream:

Are we really going somewhere with this?

Did I really hear him on this?

Will this amount to anything?

But the real question for me is one of faith: Can I have the sustained patience and vision to invest small deposits of faithful action, believing God to multiply and take care of the rest?

On this journey of really allowing myself the space to dream with God, not letting anything hold me back from taking the next indicated step, I have seen my good Father cultivating new life in me: in deeper faith and in truer worship.

He is cultivating faith through my small beginnings, the deep conviction that progress is possible. As I turn back to his heart each day, he is showing me how to take small steps—even half and quarter steps—toward the dream he’s placed in me.

As a new mom of a ten-month-old boy, never have I understood how important small, patient steps toward a goal can be. The sum total of these small steps is beautiful because he walks with me, before and behind me, trailblazing, holding me up, and picking up the pieces I’ve dropped along the way.

Do you relate to this feeling? Have you ever seen God’s nearness more dramatically because the output of what he creates is so evidently beyond what you put in?

As a visionary for a new organization for women in leadership, I stand amazed. All I can give in this season are small deposits—one hour of writing while the baby naps. 15 minutes of reflection before sleep overtakes me. Webinars while I bounce the baby on one hip and stir the pot that boils over. And yet these small snatches of time are perfectly tailored to his purposes for me. They are just the insight and refreshment I need to do the next thing.

Do you need to hear this today? Do you need to hear that his provision perfectly matches your days?

I know I’ve needed to live out this lesson over the last year. And it has peppered my days of early motherhood with such hope and purpose and beauty. A legacy I hope to build for my children by saying yes to Jesus in every season. This season of greater limitations in time, energy, and attention span is leading me to greater worship when his sufficiency stands in stark contrast to my own limited resources.

Sisters, I am learning that our limitations lead us to worship him. They do not disqualify us from dreaming with him and stepping out in our dreams. Limitations can keep us in step with his spirit, relying on him, abiding in his wisdom and heart.

How good he is to use these loving limits to remove my pride again, so I can experience his magnitude. All I am is simple, fragile, limited. But I’m a daughter of the king. All I am is an earthen vessel with holes and cracks that spill and leak. But he overflows into me with water that is deep, complex, profound, never running dry.

I praise him for this journey.

-Sarah

Sarah Bond resides in Folsom, CA, with her husband, Scott, and son, Ethan. She loves forging new connections with women of all ages, especially by leading hikes, opening her home to neighbors and friends, and creating relationships that promote social justice and bring freedom in places of spiritual and physical captivity. Sarah’s background is in community development, life coaching, and human trafficking prevention. This January, she and her mom, Jan Kern, launched a new organization for women in leadership called  Voice of Courage. She loves to invite women of all ages to dream in new ways about what God is inviting them to walk out freely and powerfully as change makers.

As writer, speaker, and creator of UpcycledJane.com, Bekah adores connecting with women, students, and parents. She has published over 20 articles on parenting, inspiration, and faith, contributed for Orange County Register, and guest writes for Yellow Conference.   Bekah is passionate about encouraging women to find their identity and freedom in Jesus, to live intentionally, and to celebrate their created selves .When she’s not playing with her two sons or hubby of eleven years, you’ll find her at the beach, reading, baking, or rearranging furniture. Bekah shares with a relaxed, storytelling style, as if you were sitting on her couch and catching up as old friends.  

“Gosh, every life-changing lesson I learned when things were going perfect,” said NO ONE EVER.

Creative businesses are oftentimes birthed from personal pain.

My own father’s death was an invitation to live in awareness of God speaking through simple, tangible, everyday experiences.

We learn most from our mistakes, from our failures, from pain and suffering and black bruises.

Yet there is something in our human nature that wants us to avoid failure at any cost.

Just hurry up and fix it.
Get happy.
Move on. Get over it.
Try harder.

I’m afraid we have it backwards, friends.

My biggest failures have actually paved way to more authenticity, more freedom, more of an eternal perspective, and less of an emphasis on what I do. I can feel my shoulders release as I write.

Failure, I’ve come to applaud you, and I trust there is a nuggety lesson waiting to be learned when we next meet.

Would you agree? Have your biggest lessons been birthed from easy street or mistakes?

All weekend I’ve been saturated in the truth that beauty from hardship is beauty appreciated.

Maybe it was in the swing my hubby built- hours of sawing, measuring, and white-washing. The four of us donned floppy gloves and varnished the heck out of it, only to discover the white paint had dried gross yellow, which made our poor swing look like our dog had lifted his leg on every square inch. And that made us sad. Clear varnish = Big. YELLOW. Mistake.

Sure we failed. But only temporarily.

The next day while Bry was at a meeting, the boys and I painted one coat of WHITE, very NON-YELLOW chalk paint, then two. We cranked jazz music and brushed our hearts out.  Painting is like gardening- it offers much time to get lost in the sky, in one’s thoughts, in the peace at the gradual process.

I thought about so-called failings in my past, the times I hadn’t been able to pull it together because of massive transitions. I thought about when we’d lived at my folks with a toddler and a newborn as we experienced every major life transition AT THE SAME TIME.
Because that’s how we roll.
As if we’d planned it.

You know what would be fun? If we lumped all these crazy changes together. Yea! Let’s short sale a home and look for a place to live. And while we’re at it, let’s process a job change, and shifting communities and churches and friends. And what the heck- let’s throw TWO YOUNG CHILDREN in the mix to make it really fun. And maybe I’ll shower once in a while. And did I mention we were living at my parent’s home through all of this? (bless their hearts).

Cue situational depression and a small-ish dose of IN.SAN.I.TY!

It was not how our life was supposed to be. It was an epic fail, or so we’d questioned.

Time offers perspective that one can’t typically see in a fog of suffering.

Hindsight sheds grace rays on the sweet reality that those hard months- and yes, they were beyond hard- were pivotal to the memories our oldest has of living with his grandparents. When Tanner lost his grandpa at 4 years old, those months spent with them are what stand out in his mind. Even now.

Failure isn’t always what it seems. Suffering and pain and mistakes are pinpricks in the bigger scheme of yellow varnished slats.

When we stand back, we see with brave clarity that those marks of perceived shortcomings, were, in fact, opportunities to be human.

To be imperfect.
To extend compassion and grace for others that are hitting their heads against the wall wondering when gray clouds will lift.

There’s a beautiful truth in journeying much, failing often, and appreciating the realness today brings.

And today I say with whole-hearted confidence, When I’ve failed, when I’ve suffered, when I’ve experienced pain and shortcomings and mistakes, is when I’ve GROWN the most.

And with failure, an awareness of beauty like never before.

-Bekah Pogue, Upcycled Jane.  

Be on the lookout for Bekah’s FIRST BOOK to be released at the end of the year!!!   You can also subscribe to her blog at www.upcycledjane.com.    

To know her is to be inspired. Like many college seniors  Brittany Attwood is seeking God about what is next for her life.  However, Brittany’s story is unique from her peers in that she knows what it is to live with suffering. She was born with Spastic Cerebral Palsy and has lived through various surgeries and chronic pain her whole life, but that is not what defines her.  God has given her a passion for orphan care and four years ago she began to dream of traveling to Haiti. With the limitations of her physical condition it looked like an impossible dream.  UNTIL…God made a way where there seemed to be no way and this radiant daughter courageously obeyed.

When I was seven, I remember being in class during an art lesson where we were told to make art worthy of placing on the fridge at home. To start the project, the docent handed us all a black sheet of construction paper with one direction: draw a picture. I remember grabbing all the beautiful colors out of the crayon box and starting in on my flower with vigor. After about thirty seconds of coloring with robin’s egg blue though, I realized there was one large problem: it wasn’t showing up. What my young self didn’t know at the time, was that only if I used the white crayon, would a picture become visible.

I would suggest today that our courage to pursue God functions much like a white crayon. It’s unique, under-appreciated, and the fruits of its labor are hard to see if not pressed up against the blackness- a  life of embracing struggle, yet running towards His opportunities.

To give a little background on myself, I was born a twin with a disability called Spastic Cerebral Palsy. I’ve always understood the depths and shades of suffering. However,  my form of this disability graciously only wreaks havoc on my physical body and not my mental faculties.

I grew up in a non-Christian home where the name “God” wasn’t introduced into my vocabulary at all until my neighbors started taking me to church in middle school. Not to mention, I don’t take lightly the opportunity of life as I’ve gone to more funerals  (including my 47 year old mom’s just five years ago) than there are eggs in a carton.

In summary: my autobiography is strewn with stories of how the paper of my life has only continued to blacken as a result of hardship…yet I find such joy in God’s story, knowing that if I choose, a white crayon can come and make it a masterpiece.

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”-Hebrews 11:8

Ready for this?

I recently returned from a missions trip to Carrefour, Haiti.

             Did you catch that? Me. The disabled, (might I add fresh out of surgery), English-speaking me. Miraculous.

You see, when I originally applied for the trip, I was using a four-wheeled walker, attempting to recover from a sudden surgery to the hip, and out of a job. Haiti seemed not only to be out of the question, but down right delusional. Not to mention I had tried this whole, “respond to obedience and go to Haiti” thing before, and yet God shut it down and decided to give me this surgery. This turn of events left me both questioning if I had even heard HIs voice and then crying as I had never had the day my team left for the airport without me.

Three months later God placed Haiti on my heart again and I wanted to bolt out of there. To be asked to expose my heart to the possibility of it breaking a second time was terrifying. Long story short: God confirmed that despite my fear and the opinion of others, there was no escape route, and I had to protect this call He gave me.

Getting me to Haiti required a million little courageous steps, but the masterpiece revealed itself the moment I stepped on Haitian soil. Every second I spent in Haiti was a glorious reveal of just how wide and great the beauty and power of our God is. I endured moments of weakness there too of course, but I needed no more validation of my heart for orphan care and Haiti once I arrived.

In Haiti, I was home. I was ready to learn from my teachers there who, just as I, felt more of God’s joy during the moments where the world would say we were “suffering”. Haiti was God’s marvelous masterpiece for me- the culmination and redemption of four years of dreaming and overcoming.

Being home now, I’m realizing that God doesn’t want to just give me one white crayoned masterpiece of courage; He wants me to have a life full of them. Since returning from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, I realize my relationship with Haiti is forever because :

Haiti is teaching me how to live.

I fully submitted myself on that trip, knowing that if God got me there I didn’t want to miss anything else He had planned.  When I returned nothing changed, and yet everything did. I was begging for more of Him. After three weeks of prayer and testing what I heard, I knew God was asking me to give him my courage and control in literally everything even with still not having a job and not knowing what the future holds.

The Type A, control freak in me is still shaking in fear, but I’m obeying. I’ve downsized my possessions, which I’m ashamed to say made me look like I had a family of four. I’m trusting God with my finances, knowing that I’m only now earning the exact amount to pay my bills and tithe…not a penny over. It’s a scary place–to stand with courage through obedience. Everything is changing.

Sometimes He simply asks me to love on a professor, and sometimes He asks me to give my jacket to a homeless little girl right on the spot. It’s a permanent lifestyle change, and my flesh doesn’t like it.

  Nevertheless, don’t minimize the value of the final masterpiece. 

So what are the white crayons in your life? Where can you choose to pick up the white, unused crayon- instead of your worn down crayons of control- and trust that the masterpiece of your fear, pain, and triumph will show more of God’s beauty?  I promise the pictures our God draws are more than fridge worthy.