Extraordinary Mundane Moments

Sometimes I wonder how to encourage people to embrace the ordinary moments in life. I’m pretty sure no one is simply waiting for me to tell them about the mundane moments of my day. But what I hope touches your heart as deeply as it touches mine are the moments when God shows up and makes something extraordinary out of my ordinary, mundane moments. I had one of those moments today.

I was planning to finish a significant amount of writing this afternoon, but as we all know, things rarely turn out as we expect. And since my mind was somewhere else entirely, well… I didn’t write at all today (unless you count the rewriting of the poem that has been pounding in my brain for the past 24 hours). What I did do was start feeling a little artistic, dig through all my photographs from the past four years, and meticulously edit and form them into a masterpiece. Four hours and 22 pictures later, my masterpiece was completed, but I felt as if I had wasted my entire afternoon.

But God didn’t agree. “Rebekah,” He gently reprimanded. “This is a beautiful form of worship.”

Worship? Is that really what I was doing? Was meditating on a poem about the greatness of my God and forming it into something that would serve as a continual reminder, truly a form of worship? The way God’s Presence saturated my living room in that moment left little room for argument.

What I experienced today was an extraordinary mundane moment. And I almost missed it. In fact, I think we miss them most of the time because they don’t fit into our agendas. God tends to show up in the little things that we didn’t plan on experiencing – probably because we otherwise don’t leave enough time for God in our days. But when I take a step back from my plans and agendas, the only thing I can say is this: “Giver of Abundant Life, what a glorious day to embrace the mundane with You.”

Live the Journey

We interrupt the normal schedule of this blog to bring you an important message:

God has been doing something in me these past four months. I wrote a book, boldly presented it to a publisher, started a blog, and am slowly sinking into the world of ministry to my generation. It’s been amazing, and I’ve been learning so much. But tonight was one of those nights that God just smacked me in the face. You see, sometimes I get distracted from what I’m supposed to be doing and God has to set me back on track. I was skimming through my new book, A Heart Exposed by Steven James, when I stumbled upon these words:

you dance on the breeze in the evening light, you leap on the curl of a wave, crashing white. you twirl on a star in the darkest night, calling, “Live the journey! Live!”

With four more rousing stanzas, Steven James reminded me of my passion and purpose. It’s the reason I started this blog. God called me to live the journey, and when I looked around at the world I live in, I saw that many of my friends and loved ones weren’t walking in the freedom God called His children to when he told us that He had come to give us life to the full (John 10:10). It was my calling to echo the cry my God shouts, whispers, and screams. “Live the journey. Live.” I regret to say that I haven’t truly been challenging anyone to truly live the journey. I allowed myself to be boxed in by structure and say, “This is the routine.” But I never really gave God much freedom to step outside the bounds of my pre-conceived categories. Not that this has been bad… I simply believe that it could be so much better. God wants to make it so much better.

I’m one of those people who strive on structure, yet I hate when routine gets in the way of the Spirit. But there I was, doing the very thing I hate. I convinced myself that it had to stay the way it was because I had to stick to the singleness theme. But honestly, this isn’t about singleness. It’s not about marriage. It isn’t about dating or courting or whatever else you may use to define relationships. It’s about moving beyond waiting for the things that won’t come until the future and refusing to get caught up in the past. It’s about living the journey. It always has been. Until I let myself get caught up in traditions and routine and whatnot.

But I’m going to warn you that tradition stops right here. I’ll still try to post three times a week, but it’s going to have a little less “Rebekah-shaped structure.” I’m not going to force anything I’m not feeling. I will only post what I feel the Spirit is sharing with me to share with you. I’m going to expose a little bit of my heart on this page. The only goal I now have is to live the journey. And I want to encourage you to live with me.

An Undivided Heart

God created mankind to be with Him, but we turn away from Him time and time again. I think it’s about time our “60 seconds” come. I think it’s about time we wake up and realize how intricately our hearts are connected to His. And I think it’s way past time that we realize that all our wants can never fulfill the void that eats away at our soul. God’s love is the only thing we truly need. It’s time we come to understand that with our whole hearts.

Scripture is full of stories of people who have turned away from God much like I have. At one point in time, when the people of Israel were in exile, God sent the prophet Ezekiel to comfort them with this promise:

“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws. They will be My people, and I will be their God.” -Ezekeil 11:19-20

I believe that God is tryng to do the same thing for us today. Accept the undivided heart that He offers you. And while it is okay to have wants, you must first be content with the only thing you truly need. And that is an undivided heart that beats in perfect rhythm with His.

Someone You Can’t Live Without

Perhaps DragonHeart isn’t what you think of when someone says the word “fairytale,” but when you grow up with three brothers, you are just as familiar with it as you are with Cinderella. And since it has all the fantastical qualities of a fairytale (an evil king, a dragon that sounds like Sean Connery, and a knight in shining armor who beats Prince Charming any day), we’re going to learn a few things from this masculine fairytale.

The story begins with a battle in which the young prince Einon is critically injured. The queen’s longstanding family history of peace and friendship with the dragon race is the only thing that can save her son.  She swears that her son will not follow in the footsteps of his wicked father, but be trained in justice. Because of her promise, the dragon agrees to give half of his heart to the dying prince. His heart keeps Einon alive. The prince’s life depends on that dragon, not only in the moment when he receives the heart, but throughout the rest of his life. When Einon hurts, the dragon hurts. Einon cannot live without the dragon, nor can he die until the dragon is destroyed. Their lives are intertwined, and their deaths are likewise.

The one quote that has struck me most strongly regarding singleness/dating is the statement made by Shannon Kubiak Primicerio in her book The Divine Dance. “Don’t look for someone you can live with; look for someone you cannot live without.” The thing I find most fascinating about the idea of marriage is the mystery of two people becoming one. They are still two separate people with two different personalities, yet somehow they are as one. When he hurts, she hurts; when’s he’s happy, she’s happy. Their lives are intricately connected in a way that I suppose I will never understand until I’m married.

I’m one of those people who believe that God created me with a certain man in mind. And while He gave me my own heart and own passions, one day, my heart is going to mold perfectly into the heart of another. I’m holding out for that one somebody whose heartbeat matches mine, who hurts when I hurt, and sings when I sing. I’m holding out for the man whose passions compliment mine, who values the things I value, and whose vision comes into alignment with my own. And while I’ve met many guys who I’ve figured I could live with, I’m not settling for something as simple as that. I’m holding out for the man I was created to become one with – the man I cannot live without.

A God Who Loves

Christianity is the only religion that is centered around a God who loves. Maybe the thought that a God who created the heavens and the earth and everything in it is too much for people to handle. I’ll admit that it can be pretty mind-boggling at times, but I’ve learned to accept it. I figure that if God loves me as much as the Bible says He does,  He probably wants me to accept His love. How would you feel if someone never accepted the love you extended to them?

Before I ever learned to dance with Jesus, I witnessed another person’s dance with Him. Some friends of my family (a married couple portraying Jesus and His bride) were going to dance for their church, and I was able to watch them practice. I guess my heart has always secretly longed for this dancing relationship with God because I was enraptured by the beauty and romance of this dance. In the end, they were asked to re-choreograph their dance because it was “too intimate” to be performed in church. Too intimate? Jesus is very intimate. Ephesians 5 talks about how marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. Could God explain Himself as being any more intimate? Traces of His romantic love are scattered throughout the Scripture. It could take me all day to pull out every reference regarding God’s immensely intimate love for us, but I’ll leave you with this one thought from Hosea 2:19-20:

I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.

Those are God’s words – His promise to us. Maybe that promise doesn’t capture your heart like it does mine.  Maybe you aren’t moved by verse 15 where God says we will call Him “my husband.” And maybe your heart won’t leap when you browse down to verse 23 where God says He will show love to the one He called “Not my loved one.” Maybe your heart isn’t stirred by the fact that God has called you “His people,” but I know that mine sure is. And sometimes it makes me feel like dancing.

Once Upon a Dream

Flashback into a Disney scene in Sleeping Beauty: It’s a typical fairytale set-up including the woodland creatures skittering about the beautiful forest. Lost in a world that is entirely her own, our fairytale heroine reflects on a dream she had recently experienced. And since this is a Disney film, of course it came out in the form of a song.

I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
Yes, I know it’s true
that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you’ll do
You’ll love me at once
the way you did once upon a dream

As she’s vocalizing and dancing about to the memory of a dream, her song is suddenly joined by a masculine voice, strong arms wrapping around her waist as her Prince materializes before her eyes. She melts into his embrace and they dance as one, both enraptured by the same dream. It’s so charming, so romantic, so… perfect. This is one of those scenes that elicits the statement: “Walt Disney gave me unrealistic expectations of men.”

Now, I’m pretty sure Walt Disney didn’t set out to crush the hopes of young women everywhere. I know he was an advocate of dreaming big, but I don’t think his intention was to set us up for disappointment. I think it’s our own skewed perspectives that are breaking our hearts. Fairytales weren’t meant to be realistic. I mean, come on, Sleeping Beauty, fairies, magic spells… When’s the last time you pricked your finger on a spindle and fell asleep for a hundred years? And would you really want to watch the movie if Prince Charming had simply walked up to her in that moment and said, “Hey, you’re kind of cute. Want to go out?” Whoo. Exciting.

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. We’ve taken fairytales to a level they were never meant to achieve. Stop blaming Disney for your heartaches, leave Prince Charming in your dreams, and live as if you believed your life was meant for something far greater.

A Time To…

I think the one thing that is most harmful to single women who hope to be married one day is that horrible word called “timing.” We rush into unhealthy relationships because we don’t want to wait, or because we think we are ready, when in truth, we are not. I’ve come to learn that even good things can be bad things when done in the wrong timing.

I recently finished the book Lies Young Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Dannah Gresh. Aside from revealing some hurtful lies in a candid, compassionate manner, this book made me question something I had never really thought about before. Nancy and Dannah surmised that the tree that caused mankind’s downfall was probably meant for good… if Adam and Eve would have waited for God’s timing to enjoy the fruit. But they didn’t wait. And instead of enjoying the blessing that could have been, mankind was faced with a terrible curse. That my friend, is what is happening to us. We’re rushing ahead of God’s timing and turning relationships (which are a good thing) into a bad thing.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells us that there is a time for everything – a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… and so on. There is a time to be in a relationship and there is a time to embrace singleness. Don’t rush God’s timing. Don’t think that He is wrong. It may just be that He has a blessing beyond imagination waiting just around the corner. One day it will be time to dance with your husband, but until that day, enjoy the freedom of dancing to your own rhythm.

No matter what else may be eluding your grasp, there is one thing that never goes out of season… Now is the time to live.