#nebraskastrong

#nebraskastrong If you live in Nebraska, near Nebraska, or have friends in the state of Nebraska I'm sure you've seen this hashtag used generously in the last 2 weeks. This hashtag quickly emerged from one of the most catastrophic spring floods the state of Nebraska has ever experienced. I don't know all of the scientific details, but they call it a "bomb cyclone." Half the state was experiencing historic blizzards while the other half of the state was experiencing historic flooding. If you live in a Nebraska community a phrase you've probably heard repeated over and over in the past 2 weeks is, "We've never seen anything like this before!" I'm simply speaking from my experience, from my daily view, from how I've been affected. Several neighboring states to us have also experienced catastrophic flooding and our hearts hurt deeply for them too.

Spring came in like a lion. It's been unexpected and devastating! We aren't out of the woods yet. A very wet spring and further snow melt headed our direction is projected. I'm sure you've seen the images on social media of entire towns swallowed up by flood waters. I'm sure you've heard the stories of them bringing teams out to do livestock carcass cleanup as the floodwaters subside. I'm sure you've heard about how ice chunks ripped through dams leaving them shelled out like they'd been bombed. The stories are endless and when I stop to read them and ponder them my heart is ripped in two. I know people who were personally affected by this natural set of events that led to disaster across our entire state. You can see all of that, read the statistics, hear the stories, on social media and google. But today I want to share just a snapshot with you of how I've personally seen Jesus show up in tragedy.

Thursday, March 14th 2019 - It seemed every creek and river in the state of Nebraska was swelling beyond it's capacity. Roads begun closing left and right. Something big was happening.

Wednesday, March 13th, we had a foot of snow on the ground. In once crazy day of 50 degree weather and rain it was gone. We were down to bare ground after being buried all winter. So the rivers swelled, the ice broke and cracked and pushed mightily against itself and everything in it's path. This begun the set of events that lasted well into the next week and the damage of which we will be dealing with for months and years to come. 

But as the rivers and creeks exploded all across the state of Nebraska. As thousands of pounds of ice chunks bulldozed through homes and dams creating damage we never fathomed possible, the people of Nebraska swung into action in an unbelievably strong fashion. C. S. Lewis once said, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." I have seen the resilience of the human soul and spirit demonstrated in the most genuine way I've ever experienced in Nebraska in the last two weeks!

Let me clearly state that I never ever would have wished to happen to our state what has happened through the flooding and blizzards that we have experienced this spring. The number of people affected, the livestock and cropland lost, is staggering. But I have learned that Jesus shows up on the scene of heartbreak and tragedy in ways that we sometimes don't see Him in the workings of every day life. Scripture supports this theory. As we follow the story of many Bible Characters we recognize that Jesus loves to come through when things look hopeless, when life is turned upside down, when circumstances are incredibly bleak. Daniel in the lion's den, Paul & Silas in prison, Jairus' daughter who had already died when Jesus arrived on the scene, Paul shipwrecked and yet him and all the crew were miraculously saved. Time and time again we see Jesus show up when things have gotten really bad. When hope is lost. When humanly we can't fix it and only He can!

This is what I have witnessed first hand in Nebraska this spring. The church I attend, Riverview Community Church in Ashland immediately swung into action in response to the flooding. Opening their doors wide they begun to accept donations to be extended to those in affected areas. The community and state of Nebraska's response was overwhelming! Donations poured in seemingly non-stop. Not only were we receiving donations from our community locally, but trucks were driving in from other areas of Nebraska and even other states.

Wednesday morning the 20th, almost a week since the beginning of the flooding, I went over to the church to hold the donation center open for a couple hours before I headed off to work. Since it was the early morning hours it was very quiet. I walked silently through the donations accessing them and taking in the enormity of what had been given. I paused in front of our Imagine Banner covering the wall behind one of the tables filled with food donations. Our Imagine Banner has little ideas that different members of the congregation have written on it of what they imagine God can do through us, His people. Immediately tears sprang to the surface at the corners of my eyes. Although this terrible tragedy was something we never would have imagined or wished upon Nebraska many of the notes scrawled on the Imagine Banner were being lived out on a daily basis through the events of this spring. Notes about caring for our community, about being the hands and feet, the love of Jesus to our community.

I continued to walk through the donations and stopped at a section where we were assembling 5 gallon buckets full of cleaning supplies to be sent to those who's homes had been damaged. The bucket supply was running low. I pulled out my phone and sent our pastor's wife Ashley a quick text message regarding the limited amount of buckets we currently had. Her reply was simple and faith filled, "We will pray those come in over the next few days. Every time we ask, He gives." With buckets on my heart that morning I lifted up a simple prayer, "Lord, we need buckets. Please provide buckets." 

Friday afternoon I received this picture and text message from Ashley, "Your prayers are being answered! Buckets at a time!" Some generous donor decided to donate 720 buckets to Riverview's donation center. 720 Buckets!! It felt so unbelievable and yet believable and so something that only God could carry out! Every time I see this stack of buckets I'm reminded that God sees and hears. Not only does He see and hear, He shows up and He answers!

I could go on and on sharing with you stories of lives touched, of even the smallest of prayers being answered. Of the simplest of needs being met. Of tears shed, of hugs given, of hours volunteered as neighbors help each other in recovering from this terrible flood. It has taught me an incredible lesson about the strength of community, the strength of this state, and the strength of God's love in the midst of suffering.

God doesn't need us to get accomplished what He has planned. He allows us to be a part because He loves us and He wants to work together with us on bringing His love to this broken hurting world. It is our loss if we choose to skip out on being a part of how God is working and moving. This world is overlaid with pain and loss, but Jesus is alive and well. We are welcomed into a relationship with Him where we are invited to be the vehicle that brings His love and grace to the world! Who doesn't want to be a part of that?! Watching Him work, watching Him do His thing, watching Him come through. . . there is nothing like it!

I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings. Don't you realize that in a a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.  

1 Corinthians 9:23-27

Intense Healing

I have debated for a while now whether or not I should write this post. It feels so incredibly vulnerable to share what I'm going to share today. Sometimes you just know deep down that it is time for something, and that's what I'm feeling about this post. If this particular post can help, encourage, or let someone know they're not alone, than it is worth it!

God has a beautiful way of tenderly taking us through seasons. He knows how we are going to respond to each season we navigate before we are even walking through it. He knows what we can handle, He knows what's too much. For a while now I have felt like I am in a season of intense healing. If you cracked my journal open like I did last night you would quickly discover that the past year of my life has held some pretty intense struggles and dark days. I don't share this to gain anyone's pity or words of sympathy. I simply share it because it's the truth, it's real, it's raw, it's genuine.

I'm all for real and I'm all for genuine. But when it comes to my struggles I tend to keep those pretty close to my chest. There are a select few who get to hear about the journey, the struggle, the sorrow, the victories, the triumph. But it's not something I care to share with many. I tend to have a, "If you put your back into it you can muscle your way through anything," philosophy about life. Although this has gotten me places at times, it has also not gotten me places, or taken me places I didn't want to go.

Y'all, God's been doing something in the past year. As I look through the pages of my journal a common thread emerges. I've been broken down to be built back up. I've been wounded to be healed. I've endured hardship and faced failure to comfort others and offer genuine love. If I could go back and pick the past year of my life I wouldn't pick for it to look and feel like what the pages of my journal disclose. I don't know of anyone who if they were told their year was gonna hold heartbreak, broken dreams, loss of direction, and failure would say, "Sign me up for that." I surly would not have and I didn't, but I got it anyways. Here's what's pretty special though. You cannot know the greatness of the healing you've experienced if you don't feel the deep pain of the wound that's been inflicted. That thing I said about being strong enough and muscling through earlier, yeah, it's bull crap! You can't be strong enough, you can't conjure up hope in your own strength, you can't muscle through again and again when you get knocked down for the 100th time. That thing I said God's been doing in me in the last year, yeah, He's been teaching me how to stay. Stay through the ugly, stay through the broken, stay through the tears, stay through the disappointments, stay through the intense healing process.

I think when we think of healing our immediate response is a positive one. We immediately run to a place in our minds where the healing has already transpired and sunshine and roses abound. That isn't how it works. Have you ever had an injury or a wound that didn't hurt while it was healing?! I've had a plethora of injuries in my life and not a one of them have felt great while they were healing. They ALWAYS hurt in the process, it isn't until the healing is complete that the pain resolves. You can't expect healing in the absence of pain. Healing and pain coexist together. Pain means that healing is occurring. It means those broken bones are fusing back together beneath the cast. It means the old skin is sloughing off and being replaced with new on that deep cut. When it comes to us healing emotionally and spiritually the pain indicates that we are digging deep, that we are not settling for a complacent life, that we are pushing into Jesus and letting Him use every bit of the process as we stay!

When pottery is being created it goes through a definitively ugly stage where you literally cannot even tell what it's going to be when it's completed. If the vessel being tenderly fashioned and created decided to jump off the wheel at the ugly stage because it didn't like how things were looking it would never reach completion. Jesus is asking us to stay. He knows exactly what He's doing! The imperfections He's working out as we spin on that wheel can be dealt with in no other way. Does it hurt? Yes, it hurts like crazy some days. Does it look perfectly curated and beautiful in the process? No, it doesn't. That's the part that you have to accept. That's the part you have to embrace. Sometimes you have to stay in the tension. Sometimes you have to keep living life in the ugly and know that it's okay.

I didn't like it for a while. I fought it. I tried to fix my life up to look the way I wanted. I tried to muscle through and be strong, it left me beat down and broken. The irony of it is that when I quit trying to be strong and accepted the weak place I found myself in, when I began to lean deep into Jesus, that's when strength started to rise within me. That's when hope found it's voice again. That's when this journey of intense healing began to feel like it is actually taking me somewhere better. Somewhere that I need to be.

 If you find yourself in a place of weakness beyond what you imagined possible, it's okay!! If you feel the intense pain of the healing your body is fighting for don't push back against it, lean into it, embrace it, stay for the process!! I'm not gonna promise you that it will be fun, I'm gonna promise you that it's worth it. I know, because this is me. This is it. This is what my life looks like right now. My heart has shifted and softened in ways I didn't imagine was possible. I have hope in sorrow and disappointment that I didn't know could exist! I feel strong and sure in weakness in a way that has restructured my entire outlook on life. Most importantly in this intense healing I have witnessed and am experiencing the great healer, Jesus, in a way I never have before. That right there my friends makes it all worth it! So just stay. Stay on the wheel. Because what it is that Jesus is creating? That we can't imagine, or guess, or request in our wildest dreams!

God can do anything, you know--far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:20 The Message 

Then Hannah prayed: "My heart rejoices in the LORD! The LORD has made me strong. Now I have an answer for my enemies; I rejoice because you rescued me. 1 Samuel 2:1 NLT (Emphasis added)