in the springtime, when kings go to war

I found myself falling in the last few months, putting off my quiet times until “later” and “after the kitchen is cleaned” or “after the chickens are fed” until “later” becomes an exhausted realization as I close my eyes that the day is over and I never connected. It’s become a nightly ritual, “God? I’m so sorry. There’s no excuse. Let’s meet tomorrow.” Except that the next day is no better. I rush from meeting to meeting, chore to chore, and then –zombie-like – I flip from channel to channel and fall asleep again, apologies on my lips. 

This morning, as I was trying to scrape together enough energy to take a shower, I asked, “God, what’s wrong with me?” Immediately, a verse came to mind and with it came a disturbing understanding.

“In the springtime, when kings go to war.” (2 Samuel 11:1)

I don’t know about you, but anytime the Spirit answers me with the opening salvo to David’s biggest “oops” I sit up and take notice. Honestly, I didn’t think I was that bad off. And maybe I’m not. But the choices I’m making are becoming consistently more self-centered and less God-centered. I suppose that’s what happened with David, too. Not only David but countless men and women who were following God and then woke up one morning to realize that, simply put, they weren’t. Not where God wanted them to go, anyway.

If I am so out of step with God that I cannot even recognize my disobedience for what it is, then you might as well call me David because when we stop chasing God’s heart we don’t stop chasing. We simply chase other things. We end up completely unfulfilled at the close of the day, wondering, “God, where were you today?” Worse, we may wake up in a bed where we don’t belong, or engaging in activities that we shouldn’t, or enslaved to addictions that God didn’t choose for us. All these things- every one of them- begin (for believers) by not being where we are supposed to when we are supposed to be there. In the springtime, kings go to war. In the springtime, husbands go home to their wives. In the springtime, mothers care for their sons. In the springtime, ministers put down their ‘work’ and go home to the greater covenant- their families. In the springtime, children spend time with their fathers.

Except that I have not. Life has been so good, so pleasant, so mild. I’ve spent far too long on the rooftop admiring the stars and the still air instead of going inside to spend time with my Father. I’ve committed many good things to my heart and the Spirit gives me insight, discernment, wisdom, and knowledge. These I carry with me. My Father still speaks to me and uses me. During the springtime, I prayed for people and they were healed!  But it’s not enough. I need HIM. I need the daily, intentional contact- beyond the prayer (because I pray all day long)- I need to take time to snuggle with my Daddy, to listen to His voice not because I’m trying to discern the right path but because I love His voice.

And I do. I do so very, very much love His voice. It is the only melody that can soothe this ache deep within my soul. How I’ve missed it so! My life has become a series of transactions without His infusion of Grace and –now that I recognize it – I find it repugnant, unacceptable. I want to go back to living within the symphony of His plan, instead of the harsh monotonous monologue of mine own plan. It is a far, far more beautiful existence that he has for me and I will only experience it if I choose to go where He calls each and every day, beginning with the long silences on the little white couch in my studio. It’s springtime, and it’s time for this “king” to get off the rooftop and “go to war”. 

One Little Mouse

Late one night a few weeks ago the stillness was shattered by a high-pitched squeal coming from my roommate’s room. I wasn’t sure quite what to make of it, especially since I’d never heard her emit that particular pitch before. I thought that perhaps she was excited by something she found online since she’s quite animated when it comes to things like Buckeye football and Glee. To be fair, that was before I found out about the mouse in her bedroom.

Personally, I think mice are adorable when they’re in a pet store. When they are invading your home from the field out back they are, at best, a nuisance, and, at worst, a really nasty health issue. Sara, on the other hand, is terrified of them. That took me by surprise because she is hands down one of the bravest people I know. She kills all the spiders in the house, has held a tarantula, watches my boys once a week, and even teaches high school. I guess I just thought that she wasn’t scared by anything tangible.

As she stood in the doorway to the living room tossing nervous glances behind her, I heard God ask me, “How much do you think I can teach with one little mouse?” I turned my head to hide my smile because I’m not a nice person and, despite Sara’s predicament, God’s question amused me. I remember thinking something like, “God, that’s not nice.”

So far, we’ve disposed of three dead mice. Just when we think we’ve got them all, another one pops up in Sara’s room. Let me tell you, it’s getting old. The other night one of them even ventured into the living room (I guess the little guy likes So You Think You Can Dance). I don’t know what God’s teaching Sara with these furry little professors of panic, but in this fiasco I see an illustration of my own life.

One of my bad habits is something my husband calls ‘stuffing’. That is, when company comes over, I stuff things out of sight so that the house appears tidy. Closets are usually the first casualty of my vain-glorious version of house cleaning. I think that before this debacle the last time I cleaned out the closet in my front room was… January of 2007. It was so bad that no one was allowed to open it (yes, this was an actual house rule) lest someone get hurt by falling debris. When we saw a mouse run back there, I was horrified. Mice might not scare me like they scare Sara but the idea of having to clean that closet so that I could set traps for the mouse absolutely terrified me.

The next day, I pulled out the broken ceramic face mask, the bags of left over Mardi Gras beads, the purple carnival masks, three different backpacks, two mismatched gloves, an entire feather bed (stuffed into the bottom of the closet), two boxes of homeschooling material my mother gave me, a ceramic plate (somehow unscathed), several candles and boxes of chem sticks, Christmas presents for boys, hats, broken hangers, a chess set, a Singer sewing machine, a fold-out sewing board, two bowling balls, an old collection of toy airplanes, 4,837 expired coupons (I really don’t think that’s an exaggeration), an old broken dog collar, 57 VHS tapes (which still boggles my mind since we don’t even have a VHS player anymore), a set of wooden shelves, a woven basket, a bunch of ‘decorative’ spiral willow wands, and a couple coats that I forgot I had- probably because they were actually hanging up where they belonged instead of stuffed wherever surface tension would ensure they couldn’t fall. It was embarrassing. Did I mention the set of surround sound speakers and the phone we’ve been missing for two years were in there, too?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a dirty person. I always meant to clean that closet out. I even had plans to build some shelves in there to store our DVDs and ‘get organized’ (ha!). It just took a mouse in the house to move it up the ‘list’. While I was cleaning that closet out I had plenty of time to think. I thought about how much easier it would have been to catch this one little mouse if I had cleaned the closet out months ago, like I intended, instead of watching old Stargate re-runs on hulu. I thought about the things that God’s been asking me to get rid of in my life: things like anger, pride, ambition, fear, laziness, a lack of understanding of who I am, a lack of understanding of who God is. I thought about these things in much the same way that I thought of the mouse: I know that they are there, I can see the evidence in my life like mouse poop on the closet floor but I can never see them, much less get rid of them.

Standing there in the middle of the living room, surrounded by all the junk I pulled out of the closet, I had a quiet epiphany. If a real living and breathing creature was this hard to find, how much harder would it be to track down the intangible things God wanted out of my life? I’ve been dismayed in the past because, every time I think I have one of these ‘critters’ taken care of and thrown out with the garbage, I yell at my kids or have an ugly thought about my husband. You might say that I get a glimpse of something that’s not supposed to be there from the corner of my eye and turn my head just in time to see a tail disappearing under the closet door. Honestly, I think I’m more afraid of opening that closet than I am of tracking down these things in my life, too. Who knows what I will find if I really start to look around in there?

Psalms 139: 23-24 says,

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

You see, I am too easily distracted and clumsy to effectively search out all the hidey-holes of my heart -the places that sin escapes to when the lights come on. Thank goodness I can trust God to take care of that part. I just need to listen when He comes to the living room and tells me that He found another mouse. Of course, listening isn’t worth much without obedience and, at the risk of carrying this analogy too far and becoming –ahem- cheesy (sorry, I couldn’t resist), I imagine the spiritual disciplines are ‘mousetraps’. We sit silently before God to see if there are any mice hiding in the walls and we fast and pray to learn how we might get rid of them.

Mostly, though, God is teaching me that I need to put things away. I need to take care of the small things as soon as He tells me about them instead of stuffing them into a closet (As if I can hide things from God!) and smiling at my cleverness.

Next time God finds a ‘mouse’ in my house, I plan on having a clean closet.

Psychology of a Modern Priesthood

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." -1 Peter 2:9-10


I wanted to pray the New Year in this evening so, groaning, I got up to turn off the Time Square special on NBC and turn up the lights (so that I wouldn't be tempted to 'sleep' the New Year in). Letting go a great big sigh as I turned back to the couch to pray I had a thought. Why do we regard prayer as such a burden? I've been taught to think of it as something that I must do - to the point that, when I don't, I suffer from a lot of guilt (which, consequently, makes me put it off even longer). Even at it's best and most celebrated prayer I’ve thought of as an emergency help line. Prayer Hotline, This is God, what is the nature of your emergency?

I would really like to know how it was that we have been able to twist the truth of prayer around into something that is so... ceremonial. It really isn't. Prayer isn't just another chore to be accomplished somewhere between making dinner and washing the dishes and twice on Sundays. Prayer is one of our highest and most treasured privileges. In the Old Testament, it was an enormous honor for a priest to be chosen to even approach the Holy of Holies once in his lifetime.

We are sanctified and encouraged to approach the throne room of the Most High God, heads held high, and... tell Him about our day. Our frustrations, our joys, our hopes and our dreams. This wasn't always the case, it is by God's mercy alone that we are justified and that, surely, is something to celebrate!



This year, I am going to pray not because I have to but because I can.