Storms of Perfection

I decided to switch Reflections of a Ragamuffin from Blogspot to WordPress this morning…mainly because I wanted the flexibility of having multiple pages on my blog. (If you notice up top, I have include a tab called “My Story” and have written and uploaded Act 1 thus far.)

The transition was fairly simple, although I am still learning the WordPress interface. Since my header image on Blogspot did not fit the new WordPress theme that I chose, I had to spend some time rethinking what I wanted that image to look like. I started thinking about visuals  and imagery that could represent the journey that Melody and I have been on for the last 10 years. Our journey has been painful and has taken turns that we never imagined. Through it all, however, there was a thread of hope…a ray of sunshine.

With that thought on my mind, I did a search for “storms and sun” to see what kind of images would pop up that contained those contradictory elements. The image that I used in the masthead was one of those images, and here are a few more. Let me know if you like some of these better than the one I chose.

Each of these images really struck me, but the one below haunted me. I found myself staring at the photo for at least 7 or 8 minutes, thinking about our story and how this image symbolizes so much of what we have been through. I used it for one of the headers above, but, because of the height limitations, it really didn’t do the image justice.

Here is the full image.

The raw power of the tornado is captured incredibly in this image and provides quite a contrast to the rays of sunshine exploding through the storm clouds. As our relationship was torn asunder by my addiction and infidelity, through it all I can look back and honestly say God provided rays of hope on even the darkest of days.

Which masthead do you prefer? What do you think about this image?

Single’s Life Group

(Just a little thing, but I have noticed how many of my recent posts have started with some variation of “Melody and I…”. Today’s post is no exception! I would apologize and try to be a bit more creative with how I begin a post, but, frankly, I am so blessed to once again be able to say “Melody and I” or “Melody and me” after years of longing for that but NEVER thinking it would actually become a reality that I think you can allow me a bit of redundancy here. Maybe when you see “Melody and I” or “Melody and me” simply insert “God’s grace”.)

Melody and I will be sharing our story tonight. Melody will be in one house with the single women and I will be in another house with single guys. We woke up this morning talking through the details of our journey together (and apart) and honestly, it was again a painful experience. Through tears, we talked about how we worked so hard for years to force our life to fit into this clean and neat little box that we could show to the world and other believers as a type of formula for how to live the victorious Christian life. As hard as we tried to pretend that life was predictable and tidy, the more messy it became and the more our delusion was exposed.

This we know to be true…LIFE IS MESSY! Over the years we spent so much time and energy denying this simple truth rather than embracing the messiness and asking God to show up in the middle of it. Real life has a way of drop-kicking trite Christian cliches that we so desperately want to cling to. Through much pain and much chaos, God showed Melody and me that we could run to Him when life made no sense and seemed to be careening out of control. He showed up in the middle of our pain time and time again.

Please pray for us tonight as we share our story. Pray that we would avoid the temptation to gloss over the messiness and only focus on the getting back together. God continues to teach us so much about the process we went through to get to where we are today and we want to be able to effectively communicate that process to the Singles tonight.

Journals Tell the Story

I am having such a blast reading back through my old journals and sharing them with Melody. This morning I picked up one of the first journals I started writing in after the divorce…thoughts recorded from July 2003 til July 2005. This continues to be such a faith-building exercise for us as we see God’s hand at work in our story…even when it felt like God was nowhere to be found.

This journal starts with Psalm 71:20…a promise I started claiming back in 2003. God is so faithful!

Tho You have made me see many troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth You will again bring me up.
Psalm 71:20

I recorded this entry on Saturday, July 26, 2003 at 12:50 AM while at the beach with the kids…

I prayed for Melody while I was on the beach. First time in awhile. I can tell that God is changing some things in my heart toward Melody. I am much more understanding as I think about her situation. I can honestly say tonight that it is my hope that God would restore my relationship with Mel. It will truly be a starting over. I trust that God is at work in her life as He is in mine.

Grant me creative ideas on ways to serve her. What I’m feeling now is exactly what I was feeling when we were separated the first time. The difference now, I think, is that I have gone through an intense dislike for her and have not been in the “keep the family together at all costs” mentality. She is my true love. I love her guts. I love her idiosyncrasies. I love the way she laughs. I love her passionate heart. Her voice. Her way with the kids. Melody, I love you and have never stopped loving you. Oh dear Jesus, how I hope there can be reconciliation. Continue to mold me into Your image. Lead on, Lord Jesus!

In some ways I have felt naked sharing these vulnerable postings with Melody. I am so very thankful that I continued to record my thoughts through all of the crap I was wading through. I find myself being tempted to gloss over the six years we were divorced and forget all of the healing pain that God lovingly walked me through. These journals are helping me to see and understand that pain and what it took for God to expose the Imposter and help me to discover my true, authentic self.

For those who don’t know our story or have forgotten the timeline, Melody married again in December of 2004…over a year after I recorded those thoughts in my journal. After she married, I thought that God had forever closed the door on reconciliation, but I was wrong. It took a second failed marriage for God to begin to do in Melody the same thing He was doing in me. Through lots of pain he has helped us to understand His wonderful, scandalous, audacious work of Grace.

Sin Boldly, A Field Guide for Grace

Met a good friend of mine this morning for coffee. Chris is launching a new ministry to the marketplace and wanted to share with me his vision. As we talked, I felt some things begin to gel for me as I consider what God wants to do with our story of reconciliation and the many changes that God brought about in our lives to make that possible.

Melody joined us as we were finishing up and we decided to go the Christian bookstore to get a few books for our trip to the Bahamas next week. (Check out our sweet digs here and please be in prayer for us as we pray, rest, and reflect next week.) The main book I wanted to get was Dan Allender’s Leading with a Limp. (We left with almost $200 in new books and Allender’s book was not one of them!) I do have an interesting story to relate, however.

First, a little background…

God has used my trips to the bookstore over the years. A powerful part of my testimony is not only the books that God has used in my life, but the order in which I have read them. For example, the Men’s Ministry at Oak Mountain studied Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz a full year before I read it, and I realize now that I needed to read Dekker’s Circle Trilogy and Gordon Dalby’s Healing the Masculine Soul before my heart was ready for Don Miller’s approach to faith and life in general.

I was standing in the Christian Living aisle and saw a book title that caught my attention…

Sin Boldly, A Field Guide for Grace

As the title began to register with me, I picked up the book and instinctively started reading the back cover. When I got to the inside flap, I read…

“Grace is the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, ‘Without it, religion will surely suffocate you.’”

For some reason, these words spoke to a broken place deep inside of me and I lost all control of my emotions right there in Family Christian Bookstore and healing tears began to flow. It felt so good. After a few minutes I regained composure, only to have the tears start all over again on the Men’s aisle. It was powerful worship as I simply listened to Him through my tears.

God is faithfully fathering me and these moments are becoming more and more common lately.

Here is the complete list of the books we walked out with…

Walking with God by John Eldredge
Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Alex and Brett Harris
Connecting by Larry Crabb
Out of the Question…Into the Mystery by Leonard Sweet
The One-Life Solution by Henry Cloud
Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys by Stephen James and David Thomas
30 Devos for Kids Who Love Football by Various
Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World by Jill Rigby

Journal=Perspective

I’m in Memphis, TN tonight and had dinner with some great friends from Samford, Grant and Terri Guffin. For all of you Bama fans, Grant’s company has produced an amazing 5-disc set of The Crimson’s Tide’s Greatest Plays called Defining Moments. (You can order your very own set by clicking HERE.)

I didn’t know if I would be staying overnight tonight or not, and I happened to grab one of my old journals before I left the house. This particular journal contains entries from February 10, 2005 until February 17, 2008. I have been journaling since my Sophomore year of High School and one of the many benefits I get from this exercise is being able to go back and read my life narrative. It is such a faith-building exercise!

My journals give me perspective and allow me to see how God was moving in seemingly unrelated events of my life. Like Joseph. Old Testament Joseph, not carpenter-step-father-of-Messiah Joseph. Anytime I start to have a pity-party, Joseph’s story will usually snap me out of it pretty quickly.

In Genesis 37 Joseph is minding his own business tending his Father’s flocks and his brothers conspire to kill him and relieve him of his multi-colored jacket. Older bro Reuben talks the others out of murder and convinces them to throw Joe into a hole instead. Imagine that scene. Joseph looking up out of dark hole and he sees nothing but the silhouetted faces of his brothers looking down at him with eyes of pure hatred. I think that qualifies as a bad day. But then you flip over just a few pages and get to Genesis 41…just 5 chapters…and discover that things turned out pretty good for young Joe. He was all of a sudden the second most powerful man in the most powerful nation…truly a happy ending.

But wait…was it all of a sudden? Let’s look closer. I am guilty of taking Joseph’s predicament in the pit, slavery, and the dealio with Potiphar’s wife lightly because…as Paul Harvey would say…I know the rest of the story. But when Joseph was in the bottom of the pit looking up at his brothers, he was scared for his life and definitely wasn’t saying, “This is no big deal…This is all part of God’s plan to get me to Egypt’s second-in-command.” Absolutely not. Joe had no idea if he would live to see the next sunrise.

Genesis 41:46 states that Joseph was 30 years old when he began his work for Pharoah, which means he had been in prison for a crime he did not commit for around fourteen years. Fourteen years! Fourteen years thinking about what his brothers had done to him and how he didn’t deserve it. Fourteen years to sulk, seeth, and grow bitter. Fourteen years wondering if he would ever be free again. Fourteen years to complain to God for allowing him to be falsely accused.

But God had a plan for Joseph to be #2 in Egypt. Wouldn’t it be nice if God’s plans always worked out neatly from point A to point B with no struggle? Do you think Joseph would have opted for a different career path if he had been given a choice? One thing that I get from reading this incredible story is that Joseph…in spite of his many negative circumstances…believed that God was good.

Too often I am more like the Children of Israel than Joseph. Just like them, I have seen God show up big-time over and over again, but somehow, I convince myself that THIS time, God isn’t going to show up so I had better have a contingency plan in place.

Which brings me back to my journal…

Re-reading entries from 2005-2008 tonight made me realize that my journal gives me the ability to flip ahead a few pages in my story and get new perspective on what was unfolding during a particular entry. I see how God has connected the dots on seemingly unrelated events and that strengthens and builds my faith.

Here is an example…

As I type these words, God has done an amazing work of grace and has reconciled my relationship with Melody after 6 years of divorce. (We are working on getting our story written out and having it available to download here on the blog.) But for many years, I did not know for sure what God was up to. Consider this journal entry from Saturday, April 7, 2007…

Father, the feelings that I have been feeling for Melody for almost a month now I have to attribute to You. I have not given reconciliation a second thought since the Fall of ’04…until recently. There have been too many coincidences lately to ignore that You are up to something.

On my way to Jasper last Thursday I was talking to Mel…dropped the phone call…looked down at the phone to see if I had lost the call…and when I looked up again I was staring at a church named The Church of the Reconciliation. Some might say coincidence…I do not.

And this one a week later on Saturday, April 14, 2007…

Picked up Tal and Gabe from Melody around lunch today. She mentioned that she had a date tonight and it was almost like I had been hit in the gut with a 2×4. What does this tell me about how I feel about her, Father? Reflecting on how that made me feel, I remember a slight sense of panic because the week before last I was so confident that God was/is bringing us back together. It was almost as if hearing her say she had a date tonight was the equivalent of her getting married. My trust is in God and I have faith that all will work out according to His Sovereign plan. Whatever that is. On my end and in the meantime, my needs must be met in Christ. When I am lonely, I must run to Him. When I am fearful, I must run to Him. When I am wanting to trust in my idols rather than in Him, I must run to Him.

I have to remind myself that the things I am so worried and stressed about right now…things that I just recorded in my journal that have me so worked up…I have to trust that in a few days, weeks, or months that I will be flipping back through my journal and re-read my entry from January 28, 2009 and I will have completely different perspective. God has called me to trust Him because He doesn’t have to wait a few days, weeks, or months to get that perspective…He has it right now.

So I rest confidently tonight knowing that my story is unfolding just as it needs to and that God is good and that He has a plan.

Father, help me to trust You completely moment by moment. AMEN.

Not Guilty Anymore

Nothing like getting up at 7 AM on a rainy Saturday morning, but that is exactly how my day started today. Melody and I did a garage sale at my Hoover home (which we are still trying to rent or sale, btw…) To top it off, it was a cold and drizzling rain. We left the kids sleeping and it turned out to be a wonderful time for the two of us as we made the 15 minute trip to Hoover (via Starbucks, of course!) We turned on an Eldredge podcast and were challenged by John and Craig to keep the Sabbath. We are very excited as we both sense that great opportunities are just around the corner for us.

After we shared a brief snippet of our story with our church back in November, I got a call from one of the guys who works with the Singles Ministry about sharing at one of the Single’s Life Group meetings sometime in February. Melody will address the single ladies at one house and I will share with the guys at another. We are expecting good discussion as we share our story of miraculous reconciliation.

Reading The Bobosphere this morning, I was introduced to an artist’s name that I had never heard before…Aaron Keyes. I took Bob’s advice and went to iTunes and bought the entire album Not Guilty Anymore. How refreshing as I rest in the truth that I am “not filthy or broken or captive anymore.” All is paid for! The Father loves me just as I am! Mercy is mine!