Guys! #ilovemydgroup is an understatement. Not only do I get the privilege of working for @mydgroup but also I get to enjoy the weekly in home meeting studying the Word, praying for sisters in Christ, memorizing scripture, and sharing our lives, serving our neighborhoods and partying with the joy we share.
The best part?
I want you to join me!
If you are a lady living in North Dallas looking for a deeper dive into what God says and looking for Christ-centered community, come 👏🏼on👏🏼yall👏🏼. Comment, DM me!! Our next study is launching the week of August 5th and lasts 6 weeks! #letsgochurch
one of my fave coffee spots in Dallas.
royal blue sonnet
came here for the light, shades down to keep cool
speakers blaring yacht rock to set the mood
creative playground for a pretty fool
prohibitive pricing meant to exclude
privilege, the only prerequisite
But for part-time, work-from-home, drink it in
admission price, reluctant to exit
thoughts begin floating up, above the din
new perspective granted by a lofted view
cold-pressed juice // cold brew gives life a new hue
I have never really gotten these Rubik’s cube things. I have played with several over the years, but never got around to solving one. I always saw people moving them so fast, and they must know some trick, because I really had to plan ahead and make calculated moves, like it was chess and I couldn’t go back if I regretted a move I made. I went slow, trying to see the end of the game, when each side would only have one color.
This is the Lord. He is the best at solving Rubik’s Cubes.
Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and that is especially true with the Lord. Whether here or in heaven, we will be able to see the bigger purpose in every celebration, every trial and suffering endured, and each reason for every seeming inconvenience. God gives His people the perspective of the possibility of each interaction being a divine appointment, each hardship as an opportunity to lean on God and depend on Him more fully. Sometimes I can question the timing of God. All the time, actually, Why did I have to get sick that week, Lord? Why isn’t my husband here yet, Lord, pursuing me with intention? Why did that baby have to die? Couldn’t you have given that couple one more hour together? Can’t you come back now and solve the human trafficking horror and cure cancer?
One day a few years ago, I thought of this illustration – He is slowly, carefully, intentionally moving many pieces into their place to orchestrate His perfect plans and purposes. It could even look like we are being taken away abruptly or dramatically from where we thought our life was headed, or not moving at all, our surrounding looking the same day after day. It might not seem like He is moving at all! We look to history, in days past and in our own life, and we lean on His pattern of faithfulness. He is a good Father, working all things together for His glory and the good of those who love Him.
When I was growing up, there must’ve been some sort of national initiative for science programs for younger students, because everyone I knew had to do a Science Fair project 4th and 5th grade. For 5th grade, you had to do a circuits project, so I did something with dog breeds. But the real fun was actually with the soldering iron. With parental supervision, we had to create a circuit board, and I just remember being taken with the way the iron just seemed to bond and meld things together that were previously separate and divided. I began to see the world through a soldering lens. I would walk on the sidewalk and where it had cracked and broken, I would aim my finger and close my eye and pretend I could solder it new, and the hotel metal would fix what had been broken. When I heard of a rift in relationship between two of my friends, I imagined their lives from a bird’s eye view, and would solder them back together. Wars over border lines? Soldering Iron’ll fix that. Hurricane bust through a levy? Not to fear, Soldering Iron is here. Obviously these things didn’t happen in reality, but I couldn’t shake the idea that if life had an equivalent of a soldering iron, we could all rock this life thing a little bit better.
In a better way than I could’ve ever imagined, God is wielding his Soldering Iron.
For those who He uses an instruments, He melts our hearts, breaking our hearts for what breaks His, and puts us in places, equipping us to meet needs. Giving my friend Dyann a heart for those who don’t yet know God and putting her continually in front of West Dallas, Haiti, her family, and the young adults she meets weekly, He has equipped her and is soldering the world back together with His daughter. For a new mom, He gives her a song her toddler can gurgle along with instead of a meltdown over spilled goldfish. He can use anyone and anything to bring about His purposes, and if He is doing anything, He is playing the long game. There is so much broken in the world: divorce, human trafficking, poverty, hunger, materialism, pornography, opiate addiction, abortion, slavery, racism, sexism… What is He doing about that? Everything. ... continued in first comment.
In Texas, you can start taking driving lessons at 14 if you make some certain date of birth cutoff – which I did. So at 14 I learned how to drive, at 15 I got my permit, and at 16 I got my license. I could not wait to drive. My sister had this beautiful blue Honda Element – her name was Ellie, and I couldn’t wait to drive her. She became mine for the next 10 years, what a great car – she’s off delivering flowers in Memphis now, living her best life. But I digress. I remember taking the test with my high school bestie Viv, and I nailed parallel parking (still do) while she “went the speed limit” and “took lefts on protected turns”, or something law-abiding like that. We both passed, but it wasn’t real quite yet. Ye old DMV was the final barrier between my license and my vera bradley coin purse. We went on my 16th birthday after school, and I had straightened my hair for the occasion, which held up only slightly under the oppressive Houston humidity in August. I got my number, stood in line, had my documents clutched in my sweaty hand, took the vision test, and got a temporary license. I took my inaugural drive in Ellie by myself to school or Sonic, I think – but it filled me with more than pride, it filled me with an independence and happiness I can’t really nail down.
In the purest way, this is what the Lord does.
With Him, there were no tests to take, no screening to pass, no sweating hands hoping nothing would thwart the fulfillment of what society had promised me. He is so much better than some rite of passage, some cultural milestone. He gives us a new identity freely and fully, no conditions on the back of our card. No amount of speeding tickets or wrecks or vehicular manslaughter or fire hydrant parking ever revokes our new identity in the Lord. He pursues us, time and time again, bestowing this gift no matter our qualifications or age or ability, but by His blood, paid for by His life, His sacrifice – through this alone He gives us an ID that transcends earthly laws and geopolitical borders and political agendas. He grants us an eternal, irrevocable citizenship of Heaven – the best identity there is.
My father almost became a geologist, so clearly I have a lot of expertise to be writing on this topic. I practically hold the degree. There’s two types of rock, at the end of the day.
Sedimentary rock is almost always derivative of other rocks. Igneous rocks like granite are broken down into small pieces, transported downstream to the sea, where they form sediment beds and then under immense pressure from all that weight, it turns into rock. These sedimentary rocks are made out of particles of other rocks – so they are a patchwork of other identities.
The other type of rock is igneous, made from a volcanic eruption, lava spewing and spilling out, and cooling to become rock. Igneous rock forms from molten rock, so picture a 1500-2000F degree, sudden, violent explosion…. it’s a fiery way to be born.
Both take time, but where sedimentary rock can see the layers coming down on top of itself, igneous rock is more like being a frog in a boiling pot – you don’t notice the rising temperature until you are too hot to escape.
This is the Lord.
He picked us, chose us before the foundation of the earth. He surrounds us with His love, His people, His provision, His protection, His loving correction, until suddenly (even if it was gradual from our perspective) we are enveloped in His perfect grace with not only a full knowledge of what He has done for us but a true understanding of what it means, the life we now get to lead in light of what has been revealed when the scales finally fell from our eyes. It brings us to our knees and at times feels like things get stripped away and taken and new things are added and it’s painful, but the transformation is beautiful. From being derivative of other rocks, conforming to society and the culture around us, sin keeping us stuck in a rut, cycling around an unoriginal life, to being guided and inspired by the most Creative Creator. From dormant matter, asleep to abundant life, kept in darkness, then in a momentary burst of light, thrust into the light, into a new reality. He takes what has been prepared and wooed and loved and seen in darkness and loves us into the light.
