A Little Higher/Song-My Wish

I found myself this weekend speaking on Mother's Day. Sometimes when you do a message around a holiday there is a little pressure to include it in some way in what you're speaking about. Thankfully, my cousin who pastor's the church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee rid me of that responsibility. However, as I began studying the message for that morning, I realized that it held an element of parent and child within it.

I've always been a huge admirer of my mother. (My father too, but have never said this about him because, well, he's a man.) I've always thought if I could turn out remotely like her, I would be fortunate and so would those who knew me. I've worked on filling her shoes since I could slip my feet into them, literally. This is a picture of me with her red pumps on from 1976.

But as I was studying the life of a King named Jehoshaphat from 2 Chronicles, I realized I was called to do even more than that. My paternal grandfather was a minister with his brother Louie. In my dad's generation there were three ministers. In my generation there are nine of us in the ministry in some regard. (This is where the half as good as my father comes in.) See, King Jehoshaphat's father King Asa took a step beyond his father and decided he was going to rid his country of idols. But he didn't get all of them. Because scripture says that when King Jehoshaphat began to reign he removed the idols from the "high" places.

As I thought of this in regard to my own life I realized that I'm not called to be half the woman my mother is. I'm called to go even farther. I thought of how many times we just want to deal with the issues that people see, kind of like King Asa. But Jeho-was willing to go to the places that people didn't see. Probably not real different from a lot of us. Maybe we're not the alcoholic our parents were, or maybe we haven't had an affair or something, but we've grown accustomed to our temper. Or being a little manipulative or controlling every now and then to get our way has never bothered us much.

Ever since that day that I got dunked, I knew Jesus had my heart. But even through this last year, I've realized there are a few places He has never had. Maybe those are my high places. I have to be honest with you, scaling what I've had to scale to get there has stunk. I've found myself battered, left pretty bruised at times and even been bloodied. But the amazing thing about going to the high places is the view of God when you get there. I've never seen Him the way I've seen Him this year. Of course, I've never depended on Him the way I have this year either. Of one thing I'm certain, the journey could have been a lot worse. I could have broken something. Oh, I did break something, my heart. I'm even learning to break my selfishness. But thank God He hasn't broken my will. In fact, I think I've found that to be fortified.

I've been reading a book that I got a few years ago called "Blue Like Jazz." My book "Savannah Comes Undone" had just come out and I was going to be signing free copies to give to book sellers at a book convention my Publishing house was at. Donald Miller, the author of "Blue Like Jazz" must have been coming after me, because he had a huge display of books in the center of the booth. So, I took one home with me and stuck it on my shelf with all the other books I have that I will one day read. Almost three years later I finally picked it up.

It is more of a musings on life kind of book. I really didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect that. I also didn't expect the range of emotions it would conjure up in me. One minute I'm furious at him, the next I'm laughing hysterically, like when he talks about a friend who said he once had a three hour conversation with Abraham Lincoln and found him very "delightful". The next minute, I'm checking my gut, checking my motives, rummaging through my own garbage and realizing all the places inside of me that still stink. All the broken places that still are sitting there in their little pile waiting for me to give them some attention. And I'm climbing once again. Realizing there is another high place I haven't tended to.

And I get jealous of Donald's complete transparency and then realize if I'm jealous of that, then what is keeping me from it? The need to simply sound religious? Like the fact that earlier in this blog I changed the word to "stunk" when I wanted to say, "sucked" because that's what I would say if you were my mother or my father or my friend sitting across the table from me. But I was afraid I would offend someone. And if I have, then I'm sorry, but there are some things in life that do more than stink.

If you asked my parents they would tell you how immensely proud they are of me. They would honestly probably say I had gone farther than they have gone. But everyday I see another place yet to go. I think the challenge in this is realizing that there will always be a high place to tend to and not to let that overwhelm us. Because if I think about it too long it could make me not want to bother. But what I try to focus on is how I've seen God when I've gotten to those high places and I wouldn't trade that for all the bloody knees I've had on this journey.

(This is my favorite picture of my mom and dad. If I'm ever blessed with children one day maybe they'll post a picture of me. But more than that, maybe they'll go higher still.)