My Mistake

I met a certain gal about 15 years ago. We were very different in many ways, but we found ourselves in the same season of life as young mothers and became fast friends. During this time, 2004-me had become wrapped up in pro-life meetings and agendas. I was part of an organization that fueled my passion. I made my stance clear whenever “politics” came up. I felt as though it was my duty to inform, and shock, and change minds.

My dear friend had an opposite opinion than me. While I discounted her opinion as lesser, she had come much closer to the complications of abortion than I ever had. Yet, I never cared to really listen to her. 

In the end, this friend, whom I had counted on in my challenges as a young mother, couldn’t count on me to make her feel safe with what she’d endured before we met. While she may have mourned and found peace with her past moments in life, every time I blared and shared devastating materials on the matter, I tossed her backward into a deep wound—one that was not my job to hash out.

Finally, our friendship melted away. She won't even accept my friend request on social media. Of course not. She's not sure what she'll see. The sad fact is, I would have never changed her mind on the matter of abortion. But, I will always regret losing that relationship. I am not sure the way I shared that opinion was worth the burnt bridge. 

Since then, I have been given the chance to love friends through experiences that I've never had nor hope for. I've been near to unborn life and I've carried dying life within me. Miscarriage was one of my most devastating and humbling experiences. I have heard stories of desecration of life outside the womb, and I have friends who openly share their horror stories of abuse and shame, yet now use their life as bright ministry to help others. Honestly, I probably treasure life--unborn and born--more now than I ever have.

I am shaken by the news on so many different issues these days. I feel the sadness over many decisions that disregard all sorts of life and humanity. I am aware of the darkness around us. 

 Maybe there are those out there who take advantage of the legal procedures in our society, and certainly there are corrupt lawmakers and doctors and practitioners…but confronted with all these stories and posts and memes, I cannot help but grieve along with the many, many women who are wounded by the choices (not just abortion) that come with unborn life, as they scroll through their newsfeeds these days.

2019-me does not want to be the friend that is viewed as the last person to share wounds with. 

I am called to be the first—the first to reach out in compassion, love, acceptance. 

Yep, acceptance. 

I love my friends more than what has happened to them or the choices they make. I want to be a safe place. I want to understand. I want to give hope. That is all. 

No judgement in 2019. Learning from my own mistakes.

Standing in the Contrast

Last night, I sat with my husband and celebrated 19 years of marriage. Almost 23 years of knowing him. That’s over half my life with the guy. I can honestly say...we’re not sick of each other yet. :P
Trust me, there have been seasons....

 The last half of 2018 was weird for me...and it has stuck through the New Year. It’s like I am standing in a big room of treasures and all the shine has dulled, and I want to fall to my knees and cry. Pretty specific, right?
But life’s joys have only come hand in hand with trials and heartache, and the world’s stuff has suddenly become clutter and ridiculous—like partying among the starving, dumping money while a man without a roof sits and watches. I am not saying that I don't enjoy life, but in some instances I sense that my heart is stripped bare, and I realize that I've been a sucker for a wrong way of thinking--being. I feel like 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games are more than fiction, but dire warnings of what world I am offering to my kids.

Yesterday, I sat in my son's counselor’s office and flipped through the book of The Great LIFE Photographers. The photographs mostly dated between 1930’s to 1980’s. I’d see dolled up Marilyn Monroe amidst horrific shots of massacres and POW’s. There were gorgeous first photos of life in the womb and devastated humanity weeping over carnage. I wish I could say I walked away appreciating life, but my heart is still disturbed by the contrasts.

No one moment in time is pure and good. I breathe air in my comfortable suburban neighborhood and kiss my kids before they leave, while someone sits among rubble and weeps over their dead child in a war-torn country.

 The gratitude I felt for this media mingled with the hypocrisies I hear for/against the same media. These days, we think reporters, photographers, newscasters are either lying to us in the most underhanded way, or we completely devour what they tell us if it aligns with our own opinion.

I see the poles of extremism wreaking havoc on our world when I look at the pictures of the past. And after the humanity captured in these pages, and shown to us in each generation,  I don’t understand how we are still gathering around those poles today.

We are just not enough. Everything is dulled. We can't save the world, and the world is certainly not saving us. Our cultures are bankrupt--some in the physical sense and some in their very human spirit. The good deed will always pale in comparison to the horror over there.

I sat at our anniversary dinner last night and shared with my husband my impressions of the book. I am pretty careful with him when it comes to “overspiritualizing”. I used to be preachy and angry, but then I grew up. Now, we have some great conversations learning to talk in the contrast of atheist vs. believer.

 But, last night, I was so overwhelmed by the havoc of that book on my heart I just spilled it...

 “I get Christ more.”

 And, my husband, gracious as he is, was ok with it.

I get the message more. The absolute explosive message of Christ. Everything Christ pointed out and condemned was followed up by Grace that really didn't make sense to the listener. Obviously it didn't because look at us still--cringing at the different, celebrating death for gain, ignoring the breadline forming beneath the billboard of a happy suburban family living "The American Dream".

These worldly boundaries that defy, or deny, the human spirit aren't in Christ's message at all.

Yet, in our corrupt humanity, we are valuable. Christ came to salvage it all because we are all valuable. Do I treat every person I see as valuable? I am the worst of these...

 So, these past 19 years have brought me to a place where I stand in the contrast. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to be duped by the pull of bankrupt life. I have this partner who allows me to weep and fume and smile and share—for 19 years we are finally getting real.
 Life is real.
And it’s fleeting. It’s fleeting here in Suburbia, and there in war-torn Syria. I pray that for as many moments my husband and I have shared in 19 years, we discover and grapple with the realness of life enough to fill up and pour out my humanity for another 19.

Different is Less Than ME

From the time I could talk, I would look at the world around me with this critical lens of "If it's not like me, then it's not worth my time."

Life is so much more pleasant when I draw hard lines around what is acceptable, what's not, and how far I want to distance my care from the edges of my boundaries. Many times growing up, I never asked "Why" someone was different than me. I just walked away and mentally-noted they were less than me.

If you are thinking, "Man, Angie is a jerk," then I would really love to meet you. I think many of us have or had some form of criticism in our hearts. And if you don't know what I am talking about, then this post might not be worth your reading time.

I endured great suffering to chip away at the legalistic, critical, biased shell around my heart. Like, pain that cut through the very thick of my soul. A devastation so brutal that I went through the gamut on the mental health spectrum. No joke. At one point, I seriously felt like I had no reason to breathe anymore.

God led me through this very deep dark valley and only brought me out of it in a heart-shaped tunnel.  I found sweetness again. I found love on a deeper level. And I found joy in living--even if my deepest prayer has yet to be answered--even if it never is. I found FREEDOM. FREEDOM in the same God who many would never associate freedom with.

But my God adjusted my flawed eye sight through the suffering, and gave me a perspective that blows away what I was "trained" to own as a believer in Christ.

Before, I had been trained to "own" the stuff-- the motions, the ideals, the platforms, the striving to fit society into my pretty little box.

I had lived within the confines of my pretty little box for quite some time, unable to cope with the idea that I was suppose to do something more radical than hold on to the stuff that seemed strong enough to hold up my box.

When the person I loved decided that the box was a sham (the catalyst for my suffering) my perspective began to shift. As the walls came down, I clung to the the foundation it was laid upon--Christ--even if that person took a jackhammer to that foundation too.

Funny how I lived with Christ as my foundation all that time, but let the "stuff" block out His fullness.

Through the suffering, I discovered that the value I'd put on the stuff of my box had really just marked me as a Pharisee. And not only that, it was actually blinding me from the truth of what God called me to do as His child.

I had never learned what it meant to live outside of the box...or even, that it was in the will of God to do so. Actually, most of my influence was loud in saying that the world was the no-man's land for a Christian. That we could be kind and throw money at the right efforts, but that we should fight against anything that wasn't a brick in our walls. I was only permitted to go out there if I tried to convince those poor souls outside of the box to believe in Jesus and join me in the box.

I never considered that the ways of the world didn't need my permission to BE, but that the ways of the world need my compassion to SEE Christ beyond the stuff.

On the brink of this hideous election (and if you haven't heard it described that way, don't you think it's pretty accurate?), I am sad to see that the walls are being built high around the heart of Christ, and that the world only sees the man-made confines, not the ordained love and compassion. An old feeling creeps inside me and makes me want to throw a fit.

I am called to a Holy Priesthood, to this beautiful race in the footsteps of a Savior who felt every temptation and sacrificed everything so that I might live--that ALL might live.

Why do I feel like I have to control everyone else's footsteps, especially if I run the risk of Christ being considered a sham? And believe me, many call Him this because of the way His people have represented. Sad but true.

Is it really my job as a believer to lay down the bricks of faith in an imposing, exclusive way that blocks any light from the world that desperately needs it?

Or is my faith not imposing at all, but a Yoke for the burdened and oppressed, that ALL may come to Christ and find His rest? 

Does any non-believer even see that my Christ is anything like that? Or do they see Christ as the oppressor, just like my old self--oppressing and unloving--pointing fingers, agendas, and fears at everyone who is different than me?

I think, as Christians, we should be the first to stand up for the poor, the oppressed, the unloved, the mistreated EVEN if we don't agree with what they've chosen. 

IT IS NOT ABOUT US.

It is about our Savior. The One who allows us to come to Him in our messy, broken lives and find Grace and the chance to live more fully.

Can't we give the same to those who are different? Maybe that's the key for changing hearts anyway?

I mean, it worked for Jesus's ministry.

Wonder how much we would see God move if we tore those walls down and did what we were suppose to do--LOVE?

You are no less than me, even if you are different.

God=Good=Life

Faith-Filled Friday: My Angel Baby

My family and I are camping at the place where I first found out I would lose my angel baby. This is a collage of pictures I took that May weekend. It's been 5 years, but the memories still tug at my heart. Life is precious, no matter if it's 8 weeks in utero or 8 weeks breathing this earthly air.

Praying at least some in our society never forget that, even if it seems that some have. 

Life is a gift.

Two Journeys, One Heart

I reflected on my life today. That's what happens when I get by myself and walk in nature. Well, nature today included a mowed soccer field and a dormant corn field in the heart of America...the great bread basket of the world.

But still.

God's breath was loud and moving--the leaves, the grass, the dried up corn stalks.

It seems that most of my memories consist of a walk. A trek of some sort. A journey. No matter how insignificant (although, I wonder at the significance seeing as how I remember the walks years later).

Like the walk I took along a curb with a friend named Zoey. It was a hot West Texas day, and we were ants on the concrete expanse of an Air Force base. She taught me that we could curse the devil with a certain finger, and not feel guilty one bit. Why does that stick out in my mind so much?

And then I think of the walk I took to school every day, clear on the other side of the world...through a quaint village nestled in the fields of East Anglia. Steps forward to a wooden gate that led to a path along the back of villager gardens, ending at the wide lawn sprawling from the little junior school of my youth.

Why do I remember that so much?

That time of my life was life. My eyes were opened to the beauty of literature, history, culture...and I had no idea at the time, but it was where the seed of a writer planted itself firmly in my soul. My heart opened wide as I read the stories upon pages of Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis, and Roald Dahl, feeding and coloring the experiences of an American transplant in a world of old. I may have walked toward school and back home again, but really, I was walking toward a future that would not even meet my itching toes until twenty-eight years later.

There was a pretty coveted walk a few years later...one that I took several times over the course of high school. I found myself absorbing the life of characters upon a stage. I lost myself in the poetic verse of Shakespeare, the drama, passion, and rhythm of sixteenth century verse. How much my heart leapt with the emotion of my part. How odd to think back on those steps upon the stage and realize they were actual steps to my future...now just twenty years away.

But as with any good story, or worn journey, things do not find the future brimming and waiting unobstructed. And the heart gets in the way of that forward motion.
And I walked down the aisle...bashful and awkward, but hope-filled and assured in the love of a waiting heart at the altar.

And we walked toward a family--enduring the labor pains of a first child as we walked around a mall, stepped toward a future assured by each-other's security--walking around a neighborhood of our first house pushing our son and bursting with the new-found parental love--and ascending the steps of the church, to dedicate ourselves to the spiritual growth and guidance of our child...as we did with the next three children as well.

Every step moves toward something, doesn't it?

And while I was taking those steps, I thought I had a pretty good idea about what would meet me along the way.

And how wrong it was to think that I knew for certain.

I walked today, looking at my feet upon the path, remembering a most recent walk. One with my journal tucked beneath my arm, and my heart set on hearing God's voice. And I think I heard Him...and I reveled in His message to me. And I thought I knew. I thought I knew that this journey could only get better...but then everything stopped.

Who would have thought that from all the steps, the forward motion, my steps would dissolve in quick sand, and I'd not just take steps backward, but I would sink deep and low, finding myself in the darkest valley of my existence. My toes rested upon shards of broken dreams and expectations.

Even now, I can barely see the light. There is a crumb of my journey left...as I see those steps on British soil and upon the stage well up and create a story so close to my heart and so ingrained upon the pages of a novel, that I find hope there. I am not all lost.

And then, as I walked in a pitiful nature today...a manipulated one... I remembered the breath of God on my walk not long ago. It makes me wonder, if He really is still close to me...even in this darkness where the bramble of lies covers my ears and my heart?

I will keep walking. Hoping for that story--penned from the steps of a child to an adult, by the voices, literature, and art of those in history--to blossom on the paths of others' journeys pushing their hearts in steps of their own futures. This is my hope for my writing.

But mostly, I pray that the valley will not last much longer...that I will find a way out...that I will see God's hand once more, and He will pull me to the surface again. This is my hope for my heart.

Life is Too Short!

Life is too short.

My journey this past year has stripped away the lens of a very serious, very stuffy perspective, where those who were different from me seemed to "need to know" and "the way" was very stifling indeed. But when I think of life back then, I realized how shackled I was to joylessness, seriousness, and life-sucking worry.

It is just not what God wants for us at all. And yet, the world has a way of deceiving hearts and imprisoning minds...and I am not just talking about the world beyond God's people. I am talking about the world-all-inclusive, because really, God's people have an amazing way of falling short of abundant life as much as anyone else.

I would have never believed a year ago, that I would be having a blast as a Jamberry Nails Consultant, writing an intense conspiracy-theory-type Historical novel (check out my writer's page here), while feeling my faith and my heart have blossomed in the deepest way (scroll through this blog!) Joy, Passion, Love, and God, have poured into me abundantly when I let go of a stuffy attitude that true, purposeful life only fits in this tiny box that we might believe.

I am excited to be on this journey called, Life. And I can't wait to see what is in store next!

My Short Story, Part 1

I am going to post a short story I wrote, scene by scene. While there are truths woven in it from my own life experience, it is fiction. It got an honorable mention in a recent contest...was hoping for more, but that is how this writing journey has been...lots of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best.

WHEN LOVE POURS DOWN, Scene 1

I may have doubted God. Maybe I did. I was the one who saw the blood. I was the one who carried the lifeless babe. Truth and horror pressed in on me at a crossroads, promising a tempest greater than I'd ever imagined. Though, I chose the path to the King, leaving behind the fairytale of a happily ever after on my terms.

It was His ever after that would bring the most joy anyway.

Steve and I had tried to process the ever after as we sat in his truck the morning when more than one dream had died.

“What did the doctor say?” he spoke with a sympathetic hush.

My words were trapped by a net of agony. Heavy and unbearable. I shook my head and squeezed my eyes to fortify the flood.

“Oh. I am so sorry, Lisa.” His voice cracked just as big globs of rain plopped on the windshield. I leaned into his body, cradling my torso and the flitting life within it.

Over those days and months, I cried to God and clung to knowing that He is a God Who Sees. It was He who watched as I mourned the loss. Within me, He gathered my spirit from every corner, every crevice, and pulled it toward my heart. In that quiet huddle, it was He who whispered,

“Comfort and peace, my love.”

Yet, Steve did not cope well. And it wasn't long after that, when he spoke the venom my soul could hardly bear, dousing the match and striking it to set of a wild fire on whatever remained of my dreams.

“He ain't real.” He flung the Bible across the room. “What God would allow for that baby to die? We are good people, Lisa. And we trusted Him. He ain't worth it.”

It's often that the flowers in my windowsill fade to a deadly brown. Yet with some care, their color returns and life is okay. Steve's deadly brown caused no fear in me at first. Mourning tempts us to ludicrous bouts. But my love was not enough. God's heart was hidden by Steve's scales which grew from his grief. Soon, he crumpled to a brittle soul with no scent of God to promise life.

 His soul was dust.  

Living Love...and what else is going on.

I've been very absent.

And while I've been gone, life has done a few summersaults. Some have landed on good, some on bad...some on new ground. But what I am most excited about are two steady places where my feet find momentum to move forward:

First, A NEW NOVEL! I am trucking along on a story...one that I feel I have been prepared to write since I was a teenager. This novel is by far the most intense thing I have ever written...but it is soooo rewarding to hash out! I am super excited, nervous, and encouraged all at once!

Secondly, and most importantly...I have come to an active, participating forward motion of

LIVING LOVE

It's a place where I can be reckless with my love yet nurture my heart in a positive way. Like one person said to me long ago, life is not about "majoring in the minors". Life is so much bigger, Love is so much bigger, GOD is so much bigger. I don't want those little things to trip me up anymore...those doctrines, those negative words, those prideful strongholds. Living love is wrought with PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, JOY, GENTLENESS, PERSEVERANCE, FAITHFULNESS, SELFCONTROL. Practicing those more and more.

In much more fun news, I have taken a plunge and have started a new venture! I am selling Jamberry nail wraps. It is an exciting thing...not uber dramatic (like the rest of my life has been HA!), but uber cute and creative (over 300 designs)! If you are interested in finding out more, checkout my Facebook page,

www.facebook.com/angiedickenjamberry

Don't know how consistent I will be with posting this next month. Life's still throwing me curve balls every now and then!

Have a great week!