Stasi's Blog
New Year, True You
I haven’t made New Year’s resolutions for millennia. Ok, for centuries. Well, for decades anyway. But the turn of the calendar makes for such a great opportunity to look back and to look ahead. It’s affords a moment to check in with your soul and ask yourself some questions. Here’s what I’m asking: What is a destination I would like to visit? What is something new I would like to try? What to I want to spend more time doing? What is a habit I am going to break? What do I want to do/be better at? What would I like to work harder at? What is a skill I’d like to learn or improve upon? This New Year affords the potential for me (and you) to grow and become more our true selves. I’d like to become a kinder me. A less demanding me. A more grace-filled woman. A gentler version of myself on myself. I’m not championing the phrase “New Year, New You!” Instead, I’m embracing, “New Year, True You!” Cheers to the True.
Stasi Eldredge
To Know
“How will I know if he really loves me?” sang Whitney Houston in an old classic. It’s an important question. We live in a world filled with tangible realities but it seems that the most important questions of all remain in the realm of the immeasurable. Unquantifiable. Unknowable. You say you love me but how do I know? God says He loves us and that He has proven His love once and for all. Apparently, He wants us to know it. John 3:16 is often the first Bible verse anyone ever memorizes. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Or this one. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 Or how about this? This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10 There are some things that we need to KNOW. We need to know that we are LOVED. Christianity teaches us that we are. Christianity is not a religion based on feelings, experiences, or intuition. It is a historical reality that deals in facts. We may be more comfortable when we relegate our beliefs to remain in the realm of opinion, but we are not meant to merely believe. We are meant to know. Too many people today think that religious “truth” has to remain in the belief arena and not move into the realm of knowledge. But not only can we know that we know that we know the Bible is true and Jesus is real, we are supposed to. Not only can we know God and know Him intimately, we are meant to. And know Him here. Now. On this side of eternity. Now this is eternal life: that THEY KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. John 17:8 Don't worry. Being grounded, certain, and sure of our beliefs does not make us hard, dogmatic, rude, or unkind. In love, we are to be curious of others. Gentle. Inviting. Warm. Look at Jesus! He was certain. He KNEW. And He was welcoming, alluring, immeasurably kind, and sure. We can be sure. Unshakable. We can know. We can know God and the Son whom He sent. We can be certain of our eternal destiny, understand the world we live in, recognize the spiritual forces at play, and rise to our role in the Larger Story unfolding all around us. We need to be teachable, yes. Having a teachable spirit is a great good. So press in. Ask. Seek. Knock. Become a student of the Word. Read quality books and participate in Bible studies that open the Scripture to you. Follow leaders who are following Jesus. You are loved. You are meant to know it. You can.
Stasi Eldredge
A Word from Mom
It’s hard for me to let you go. I look at you and I see the young man that you are. I do. I really do. I see you but I don’t see you. I have to keep reminding myself that you are not 14 years old. Or 6 or 2 or 12. I look at you and I can still see you sleeping angelic like in your crib. Soft cheeks. Soft face. All mine. I want to cradle you. With no effort at all I can see you running to me with your eight year old knobby knee skinned and tears freely streaming down your cheeks needing mercy. I want to comfort you. I see you at twelve, awkward with a mouth full of braces and a heart yet to be broken, full of hope and I want to shield you. I see your grown man’s body and yet I can so easily see you in soccer gear that’s too big for you. I feel a surge of pride over you and when I remember an injury you suffered, the feeling of jealous protection that rises from within me comes out like a momma bear’s growl – my reaction as oversized as your shin guards. I do see you. But equally, I remember you. I am your mother. I always will be. I love you with a fierce devotion that defies measurement. I honor your choices, your desires, your difficulties, your life yet I struggle to reel my responses in. I’m not supposed to scream with joy when I see you on campus. It’s not helpful for you to have me throw things out the window when you are deeply hurt. I can’t cradle you or coddle you. But oh, sometimes…sometimes I really want to. Though you fit perfectly in my full heart, you no longer fit in my lap. Nor my arms. Your soft puffy hands have become firm, defined, weathered and strong and I love them. But sometimes my lap and my arms ache with longing and memory. My body remembers what my soul will never forget. I know I have to let you go. I have to let you grow. I need to learn who you are now and re-learn our relationship. Re-negotiate. I need to grow into becoming a strong, encouraging and good mother of an amazing and capable young man and I don’t quite know how to do that. I don’t yet know how to be the mother that I want to be -that you need me to be. But because of Love, because of God, I’m confident we will find our way to this new way. I want to always offer you mercy and as we enter a whole new life stage, I need mercy from you as well. Because we both know that I will make mistakes here. So will you. And that’s okay. That’s where love and forgiveness and security come in. I’m not going anywhere. And from that spacious safe place, I want you to know that my well-being is not up to you to provide. My happiness is not your responsibility. In the midst of growing up and away, in the changing and the learning, I cheer for you, son. I believe in you and I pray for you. I hope for you and dream for you and I even ache when you ache. That’s part of the holy goodness of being a mother. There is an eternal fiber of advocacy, truth and a deep seeing of YOU - what is now, what was and what will be, that time, distance or any circumstance is unable to unravel. I am your mother. I honor the young man that you are, the man you are becoming. You took my breath away when I first felt you flutter within me. You made my heart burst when I first beheld your miracle self. You still do. I see you. And I remember you. I see you. And I remember me. I love that I am your mother. I LOVE that I am your mother. Though I am your’s, I am not you nor are you me. You are separate from me. You have the right to live your life fully, independently and wholeheartedly. I admit I don’t like the separation but I respect it. And though I can no longer carry you as easily in my arms as I once did, I will forever carry you in my heart. It is my honor to do so. It is part of my calling as your mother to do so. And it is part of my calling as your mother to let you go. So I will let you go as far as you need to, are meant to and God calls you to. But never so far that you leave my heart. Never that. Never that.
Stasi Eldredge
Beauty Secrets ~ from Free to be Me!
In the tenth grade I went on a dare with my sister to see who could go the longest without eating anything. As we both had a few pounds to lose, my mother encouraged the competition. I was really happy when nearing the end of day three my sister called to tell me to go ahead and eat. She had caved. Hoorah! Going a day or two without eating was my modus operandi for many years. Just to keep within the normal weight range. I never crossed over into anorexia or bulimia. My obsession with food took (takes) the form of binging but without the purging. I used to kind of envy women who engaged in bulimia. At least they look good! I envied them a little, that is, until I got to really know a girl who battled it. It was horrible. The lengths she went to make herself purge were painful and extreme. Her toilet was her closest friend. She was damaging her body and ravaging her soul. Tormented, she was obsessed with food. Trying desperately to control her world, she found that bulimia was controlling her. She was motivated by fear and a deep self-loathing that no physical purging could exorcise. I know many young women who have struggled with anorexia as well. Except in extreme cases, these girls can look pretty good too. From a distance. But they are on a rigid regime of self-deprivation and intense exercise fueled by fear and self-hatred. They aren’t free. They are slaves to calories and nutrition labels. Their efforts to control their lives turn on them viciously. Their periods stop, they are cold all the time, and the damage to their internal organs can become irrevocable. One gal I love was nicknamed “Skelly” because she looked like a walking skeleton. But not to herself. What she saw when she looked in the mirror was quite different. Honestly, the ability to look in a mirror and see what everyone else sees is rare. We see our flaws. They might as well be blinking in neon orange. We can’t see past what other people do not even notice. (Sweetheart, if you struggle with an eating disorder, know that you are not alone. To become free of it—free from the desperate need to control your food, free from obsessing over it, free from the emotional suffering—you need help. This battle is not one you will be able to fight on your own. To be free from this horrible struggle you are enduring, please confess it to your parents, your pastor, a teacher, or a counselor. Help is available. You can be free. This overwhelming struggle is keeping you from living the life you are meant to live and offering what you are meant to offer. We need you.) Your beauty is under siege. It is being harassed and taunted and mocked because it matters. You matter. The enemy of your soul attacks the core of your heart by attacking your beauty in order to pin your heart down and keep you from being the young woman you truly are. You are a powerful child of God. Your beauty is powerful. As an image bearer of the living God, you possess a beauty that is deep and true and core to your soul. It manifests itself on the outside but is first and foremost an inward quality. It blooms in the soil of confidence, assurance and a happy heart. Beauty Secret: We are at our most outwardly beautiful when we aren’t obsessing over our outward beauty. The apostle Peter says, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight” (1 Peter 3:3–4). Peter is not saying, don’t fix your hair or wear jewelry. He isn’t saying, “only wear frumpy, out-of style clothes.” No! He is saying, don’t fixate on your outward appearance but center your attention on your heart. “A gentle and quiet spirit” does not refer to a woman who barely talks above a whisper and never gets angry. “A gentle and quiet spirit” speaks of a heart that is filled with faith. Not doubt. Not fear. Not anxiety. Faith. Beauty flows from the heart of a young woman who is resting in the truth that she is loved, seen, known, wanted, and lovely to her heavenly Father. Right now. That young woman lives with self-confidence. And self-confidence is beautiful. You can have that. You are a true beauty. Really. And it is right and good that you want to be because you are a reflection of Beauty, Himself. Ask God to show you your beauty.
Stasi Eldredge
A Shared Conversation
I was just hiding out of sight on the staircase eavesdropping on my son’s phone conversation. It was fabulous! It’s okay. He was recording a radio interview with my husband that will air later in the week. I was hiding so I didn’t distract him. I was listening in with permission. There have been so many phone conversations shared between my husband and sons that I haven’t been privy to. But the ones shared between Sam and John over many months a few years ago that arose from questions in his young man’s heart I now can listen in on freely and so can you. They proved the foundation for Killing Lions: A Guide Through the Trials Young Men Face. They’re conversations about faith. About dreams. About work. About women. Questions arose for Sam, as they do for all young men, about friendship and the journey of growing up and into the man he wants to become and figuring all that out. Figuring life out. Life in your 20s. It’s a critical decade laced with critical questions. Important questions. Therefore, important conversations. Killing Lions isn’t a question and answer book. Sam didn’t ask his father for the blueprint for his life. He didn’t want or need his father to tell him specifically what to do. They invited each other and then all of us into a dialogue. To explore life. Sam, like every other young man, needed to be treated not as a child, but as a man with his own life and yet—still and always a son. The generation of our children is the generation raised by more divorced parents than ever before. It is the generation called the “millennials” with their own take on life, values, questions, concerns, expectations. With so many young men feeling fatherless, who do they ask for help or guidance? How do we as adults guide them? Killing Lions is a guide. It’s a guide for young men and it’s a guide for the adults who want to help them navigate their way into becoming the man they WANT to become. My son has a father who loves him. The truth is that every young man breathing has a Father who loves him and He wants to help guide him on his journey. There are conversations to be had and dialogues that have occurred that are immensely helpful!!! I highly recommend that you listen in. I did. I still am.
Stasi Eldredge
A Fork in the Road
I put the silverware into the dishwasher prongs down. That way, when I go to remove the clean and shiny silverware, I only touch the handles. I don’t touch the scoop of the spoon where someone will put his or her mouth. I don’t handle the tines of the fork where licking may occur. It makes sense to me. It’s the way my mother did it. So it has been, so it shall be. My way is best. It’s not the way helpful guests at my home always do it though. Yes, I am the woman who can be found late at night before turning on the dishwasher– turning the forks over. Somebody help me. This controlling tendency thing in me would be great if it remained limited to the dishwasher but it does not. I am an opinionated woman. Take toilet paper for example. I like the paper rolling over the top. Doesn’t everybody? Ummmm. No. I congratulate myself on my personal growth that I now longer “fix” the toilet paper at other people’s homes when I am well, using their facilities. It’s sad really. Ok, maybe it’s not sad. It’s merely a clue to a deeper need to control my world (read other people) in order to feel settled. Safe. Better. Enter Jesus. Oh yes, please, enter Jesus. He’s compassionate and understanding and doesn’t shame me for my oddities. But I do sometimes feel him shaking his head at me over them. “Oh, Stasi, Stasi. Let it go.” He doesn’t shame me but he does invite me to change. To see. To be willing to engage with him so that he might reveal not only my other more harmful ways that I grasp for control but to reveal what lies underneath. So I might repent. So he might heal me. So I can grow to trust him with the little and the big. With the forks. With the friends. With my family. With my hopes and my failures. With my cares. With my everything. “All to Jesus, I surrender. All to him I freely give.” Starting with the silverware, moving on to the toilet paper and then,…well, only God knows.
Stasi Eldredge
For When You Feel Like Dirt
My friend’s son is in boot camp. He doesn’t hail from a military family but he lives in a military town and he knew what to expect. Further, he’s an athlete. He’s strong and lithe and knows intimately what it means to push himself beyond all limits. In a recent letter home he said it’s harder than he ever imagined. He gets three hours of sleep a night, four if he’s lucky. He’s pushing harder than he ever has before, every waking moment, while at the same time being yelled at. One of his letters contained only two sentences: “I am dirt. Nothing but dirt.” You understand he didn’t mean he was covered with dust and in desperate need of a shower, right? This was deeper. This dirt is something we can all relate to. Have you ever felt like dirt? Lower than low? Worthless? Trudged upon? Of course you have. Maybe you feel like dirt today. Maybe someone said something or did something to you that crushed you into the ground. Maybe you said something or did something and you feel covered with filth. My friend is amazing, loves God passionately, and prays for her son ceaselessly. She wrote him back with truth we can all claim as our own. Remember the story in John, chapter 8? A woman caught in the very act of adultery was thrown onto the ground before Jesus, covered by nothing but a bed sheet and her shame. Surrounded by her outraged community armed with stones, she kept her eyes down. Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin throw the first stone.” Then he stooped down and wrote in the dirt. After he did, one by one her accusers dropped their stones and walked away. Or how about the story of the blind man in John, chapter 9? Jesus spit into the dirt, made mud with it and applied it to the man’s eyes. He then told the man to go wash it off and when he did, his blindness had been washed away as well. He could see! Dirt + Jesus = the Miraculous. What a letter to receive. Here’s the deal. We were all formed out of the dust of the ground. Hand crafted from dirt. “For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3:19 reminds us. We may be gripped with anger, ready to hurl our judgment, or we may be lying flat out in the dirt ready to receive it. We may be blinded by others' sins against us or blinded by our own. We may be anywhere, really. It doesn’t really matter where. Because, wherever we are, Jesus has come to us and is coming even now. The Master Craftsman continues to form us, and our hope does not lie in the stuff of which we are made. Our hope lies in him. Dirt + Jesus = the Miraculous.
Stasi Eldredge
The Gift of Dependence
“Would you please get me some apple juice?” my husband John asked. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator longing for juice but unable to get it for himself. One broken wrist was in a cast, the other in bandages recovering from surgery to repair a major dislocation. But that is another story. John is a strong and capable man, used to being leaned upon. This needing thing was both new and uncomfortable for him. And it lasted for months. It was hard—for him. For me, it was an opportunity to love and care for him. I remember the apple juice moment because it was one of the times my heart rose up in irritation that he couldn’t just get it himself. What is extraordinary, because I am not by nature a patient woman, is how most of the time, I loved having him need me. He needed me! Clearly. Unapologetically. Indisputably. Externally and internally. The man needed me. What John learned in those months is partly detailed in his book Walking with God. What I learned is that I came alive being needed. His dependence was a great gift to me and also, in the end, to him. I’m remembering it now because I just washed my twenty-year-old son’s hair in the sink. He’s recovering from shoulder surgery and is unable to move or lift his arm for the next six weeks. He can’t drive. He can’t tie his shoes. He can’t yet wash his own hair. Call me crazy, but I was thrilled to do it. I still remember leaning over the kitchen sink as a child and having my mother wash my hair. Her fingernails gently working the lather into my scalp is a memory that is evoked every time I have the pleasure of going to the hair salon. I felt cared for. Loved. Safe. Did she love doing it for me as much as I just loved washing my child’s hair? Being needed is a gift. Yes, we value independence. To be mobile. Self-sufficient. Able to take care for ourselves. Yay. But we are a dependent people. Dependent for air, food, water. Needful of others. Needful of God. He is our Divine Helper, our Ezer, without whom we will not be able to live a life of meaning filled with what matters most. Truth. Beauty. Goodness. Love. How do we get our thirst quenched when we are unable to quench it ourselves? How do we care for ourselves when we are unable to move? How do our needs get addressed when they are too deep for us to tend? We need God. Realizing that we need him is a profound, humbling, and extraordinary gift. Because when we turn to him, we find him. When we call out to him, he answers. When we cry, he comforts. Not merely or even primarily in the tangible and immediate way we may yearn for, but more often in a deep, steadying encounter that becomes clear only as the moment has passed. We are not alone! We are not orphans left to figure out life on our own! We are dependent! Do you think that maybe God loves it when we realize it? Don’t you love it when someone you love needs you? I believe God enjoys it when we call out to him, recognize that we need him and lean into his unending grace-filled strength. Being needed is a gift. These days my son needs me in ways that are tangible, and his need of me is a gift to this mother’s heart. My availability to him is my gift to him. That’s how it works in the Kingdom of God. Win win. Gift gift.
Stasi Eldredge
His Banner Over Me is Love
Self-judgment can feel to me, well, justified. But that hard kernel of shame does not yield a fruit of self-control or change or any other good thing in my life. Instead, it turns into a shield that affects my capacity to receive Love. It becomes the foggy, warped lens through which I view my every relationship and myself. I simply don't believe I am loved or lovable. It couldn't possibly be true. In fact, left alone, the little hard kernel of self-judgment grows like an aggressive cancer, wreaking havoc in my life. The small stone becomes a massive rock that is too large for me to move. But God (still two of my favorite words), but God is in the business of moving stones. There is no grave-sealing, heavy, love-blocking weight that he cannot overcome. And I have a part to play. God has asked me to renounce self-judgment and as valid as it feels, I am obeying. I am finding that renouncing judgment breaks up the painful claim of hatred imposed upon myself and allows Love to come in. It allows grace to come in. I give up my position of judge and give it over to the One who is the rightful Judge, Jesus Christ. The core of my being is aligning with the Truth that judging myself harshly is not my right, nor even remotely godly. It can feel justified. But it bleeds into every aspect of my heart and life. It leaks out towards others. I become prickly and defensive. It prevents me from being able to receive and offer grace. It blocks my ability to believe that I am actually loved, right now, even in this weak place. I choose again in this moment to renounce self-hatred and self-judgment, and I surrender to God. I choose to believe him and all the incredibly marvelous things he says about and feels toward me. I know I'm blowing it. But "Judged" is not the banner over my life. "Loved" is. And that banner is flying high over yours, too.
Stasi Eldredge
Still Learning!
I am not a morning person. Some of my favorite words to wake to are, “Your coffee is ready.” To me that means, “I love you!” Also, I have broken more than my share of carafes in the morning because, like I said, I am not a morning person. I’m actually kind of dangerous before 9:00 a.m. So this morning, with my husband out of town and a meeting to go to at 10:00, the first thing I did was make myself some coffee. When it should have been ready, I went to get some but found I had not poured the water into the machine. I had put the coffee in there, measured it and everything! So I tried again. While I waited for it to brew, I got the fifty-pound bag of dog food out of the car, pulled the container it goes into out of the pantry, and poured it in. Well, most of it went in, anyway. Let’s just say Oban was happy. Once the container was out of the closet, I couldn’t get it back in because of the disaster that happened in there. Little gnomes had been busy in our pantry behind closed doors and caused disarray. Bags everywhere. Stray potatoes, onions, mystery what-may-have-once-been-food items and, yes, dog food littered the floor. I got a bee in my bonnet. Out it all came! I swept. I picked up my too many aprons for one woman and rehung them on the hook. It fell off the wall. Not to worry! I have time! I went into the garage and found John’s drill and some screws and attacked the hangy thingy. Before coffee. In my jammies. Okay, it did not go well. But after six tries, in went the hook, up went the aprons (except for two because now seemed like the perfect time to go through and remove the ones torn up and never to see the light of day again). I still had the power drill. What else could I hang? I had another hook I had recently taken down from the wall in my son’s room, so into the wall of the closet it went! YAY! I was going to hang up all the cloth bags that every self-respecting grocery shopper uses nowadays. (And which I constantly forget to bring when I go grocery shopping.) I’m organized! I’m a woman with a drill! The bags were too wide to go onto the hook. I need to recognize my weaknesses. I’m not a morning person. I’m a "cut first, then measure" kind of gal. Case in point: I painted a room yesterday. Totally wrong color. I’m repainting a room today with the help of a couple of more careful friends, because I’ve got nothing but time. Oy. They say necessity is the mother of invention. Think crock pots, spackle, white out, and caller ID. I needed to replenish the dog food. The room needed paining. I needed to ask for help. And someone else to make me coffee. Tomorrow, I’ll have tea.
Stasi Eldredge
The Heart of the Matter
I recently had the honor and the sorrow (yes, at the same time) of being at the Memorial Service for my friend’s 24-year-old son, Jason. Let there be wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Death is wrong. I hate it. God hates it, too. The service was holy. And I do mean h.o.l.y. Grieving his passing. Celebrating his life. Thankful for the truth that there is an Act IV coming when all will be restored. No more goodbyes. Ever. I hate goodbyes. But here’s the thing. At his service, nothing was shared about how Jason did or did not pick up his room. If he made his bed. Put his toys away. Nothing about how old he was when he was finally and fully potty trained. Not a word about his grades, his degrees or his titles. Tons was shared about how people felt in his presence. There were lots of stories about his sense of humor. Words flowed about how he loved people, how he lived passionately from his heart and the joy he brought by being and offering his unique, quirky, imperfect, wonderful, on-the-road self. It was his heart that mattered. And it’s yours that matters. How are you doing today? How’s your heart? How are you treating your heart? Are you being kind? Encouraging? Loving? To yourself? Jesus wants you to be. We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. The thing is – we will. We will love others as we love ourselves. So if we are merely harsh on ourselves…we will be harsh to others whether we want to be or not. It will leak out. How we treat our hearts is the way we will treat others. And it matters.
Stasi Eldredge
Life Will.
Sorrow is a heavy thing. Going through the necessary motions of the day, I have felt as though I'm slogging through knee deep mud. I have felt that way because I have been. What a week. A childhood friend dropping dead in Walmart. Two different friends' diagnosis of particularly vicious cancers. Desperate prayer requests coming in from others I love for various heartbreaking reasons. And then the gut-wrenching call from one close to me sobbing out the news of the unexpected loss of her son. Twenty-four years old and he didn't wake up. I fell on the floor. Grief will do that. Yet as crazy as it sounds, as I write that, I am smiling. Because I did not and will not stay down. Because though death will knock me down, I belong to the Resurrected One who knocked death down. Dealt it a death blow, as it were. Still, I grieve. And in my sorrow, my tears mingle with my God's. As the salty waters flow, the thick mud of grief is thinned. Lifegiving water overwhelms the weighty slough and though I am mired in muck, I will not remain mired forever. Inextinguishable. Undefeatable. Victorious. That's what we are in Christ. Jesus led the way. And though the Way includes sorrow, suffering, and grief, none of them get the final say. Life does. Life has. Life will.
Stasi Eldredge
A Ready Lap
I was twenty-two years old when my father told me that the cancer had returned with a vengeance. We had thought he was clear, done, finished. The CAT scans had told us the cancer had been defeated by the rigors of chemotherapy and radiation. I had shared the good report with my praying Bible study group to cheers. But it was back. And there would be no reprieve this time. At the unwelcome news, I was no longer twenty-two years old but six, and I crawled onto my father’s lap and told him I was scared. He confessed to me that he was scared, too. An unknown future. A fight for more years all but lost. What would this crossing over from this life to full LIFE entail? Many of you know. I will just say here that it was a painful, trying, grace-filled five months that followed my father’s confession. Yes, I will tell you that. I will also tell you that his last mumbled but well understood words to me were, “I love you.” Holy words that I treasure in my memory and in my heart. I face an uncertain future today. I am fifty-four years old and though I am not facing cancer ravaging one I love, I do not know what awaits me beyond the moments of this very one I am living in. I am fifty-four years old, but I still feel at times twenty-two, and yes, even six. Change is on the wind, and change always feels like loss. I want to climb up on my Daddy’s lap and confess my fears. So, in my spirit, in prayer, I do just that. Maybe you have a father who is still alive – in whom you are safe to confide your emotions. Maybe you don’t. But whether you have one whom you can see and feel and trust, or like me, you do not, we all have a good and trustworthy Father waiting. Understanding. Caring. His arms are open to us, even His lap is open to us, and though we do not know what is coming, He does. Though I am often uncertain or afraid, He never is. I’m climbing up there for a while today. And I’m not climbing down. Not until I’m good and ready. But when I am…I will still be held throughout every moment of this day and the unknown that is coming. I am held for the rest of my life. And so are you.
Stasi Eldredge
Abortion
I read in the paper today that according to a study done by the Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in the United States has fallen to its lowest level since 1973. 1973 was a big year. On January 22, 1973 in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion. Remember? Wikipedia states that “Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today about issues including whether, and to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional abjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere.” You bet the debate continues. While I volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center, I only encountered one woman who appeared cavalier about her potential decision. She came in with a male friend and when he asked her what she would do if she were pregnant, she reached down and ripped out a section from her fishnet tights. His reaction to her was shock. Her face was impassive. But I understood. She had steeled herself behind a hard heart. Or she was trying to. Her stony response covered a soul that she hoped was beyond hurting. After having an abortion myself, my companion was surprised by my stoicism. He said, “You’re so strong.” I said, “No. I’m hard.” It happens. In waiting rooms and recovery rooms all over the United States, women weep. Those who are not weeping are steeling themselves against feeling the sorrow of what to them was an agonizing yet ultimately unavoidable choice. One in six women in America have had an abortion and many of those women have had multiple ones. They are standing next to you in the grocery stores, sitting next to you in church, and staring back at you in the mirror. Women of faith have the same amount of abortions as women who profess no faith and they are haunted by shame and regret in immeasurable waves. Abortion brings destruction to every life it touches. Yes, to the unborn fetus never to know the light of day. Yes, to the woman who forsakes her unborn child and yes, to the men, to the friends, and to the children who surround her. It’s a devastating choice made in painful, pressure filled moments that wreaks havoc on our souls and on our nation and is not outside the reach of Jesus. Mercy, beloved one. God understands. He is for you. No sin is outside the reach of the blood of Jesus. No wound too deep for him to heal. No regret too defining for the love of God to remove. But let us not be silent here. Let us not look the other way or abandon women in the throws of heart wrenching decisions and loss. And let us not continue to lie. Abortion is a painful choice. A difficult choice. A gut wrenching choice. An agonizing choice. And the wrong choice. Death begets death. Life begets life. Let us come alongside those of us who are embarrassed or hurting or terrified or ashamed and feeling beyond alone to the point that they believe there is no other option available to them. Let us bring healing and life and restoration to the women beside us who still live under the weight of guilt and shame over their previous abortion(s) and have not been able to receive Christ’s forgiveness nor the grace to forgive themselves. Life and death are around us every single day. Let’s offer life. Let’s speak words of hope. Let’s do what we can to support those around us who are hurting and bring Jesus. And let’s pray that the number continues to fall.
Stasi Eldredge
Sometimes Love Is Silent
I remember the day well that a miracle happened. My weekly women’s Bible study had broken into our small group of eight and finished up going over the guide’s questions when a woman’s heart showed up. She didn’t have a question about the passage we were studying. Her question was about how to believe in the God of love when her pastor husband was anything but loving. That was the miracle. That she risked bringing her life, her story, her truth, and her pain to us. The study went immediately from the natural to the supernatural, from the rubber to the road. The next miracle that occurred was that she kept coming back to our little Bible study after we so badly mishandled her that day. None of us asked her a further question, but many of us were ready with a spiritual bandage of advice to cover her hemorrhaging heart. The young woman risked telling us a little more of her story and in our shock, we did not simply enter her grief and be silent. We did not gently probe with sensitive queries. We ran in fear to the nearest platitude and offered it as quickly as we could. “It will be all right.” We had no idea if it would be all right or not. In fact, it was never going to be all right. I was grieved by her pain but more grieved by our refusal to share it with her. Grace is amazing, and I experienced it again and again both as this woman continued to return and as the women around me began to move toward her in fierce gentleness, advocating for her heart, her marriage, her family, and her God. One thing we all did right that day in the face of a tragedy presented was move toward her physically. Every woman close to her scooted in like she was a magnet. Hands reached out. Arms surrounded. Faces softened. Perhaps it was that movement which enabled her to keep coming back and find a refuge and strength in this little straggling company. Our physical embrace represented what our minds and mouths were not yet capable of doing. She felt that. The miracles continued as we slowly grew as women. We grew to become women who were slower to speak, quicker to question, and less afraid to enter into the sorrow without any band-aids in hand. We discovered the balm of love, the presence of the Holy Spirit in hearts willing to risk silence, and the strength of hope born and carried in others. Oh, to continue to grow. Oh, to risk silence. Oh, to love.
Stasi Eldredge
Boldly
I’m not going to throw away my scale today but I am going to ask my husband to hide it. A number has ruled my life since a fateful day in the 1st grade. The school nurse had lined up all the students to record our weights. There was no privacy screen, no separate room. One by one each child stepped up onto the scale. The nurse adjusted the weights and then told the number to her assistant who was recording the judgment. Err number. And not in a hushed voice either. My number? 66. It is the first time I remember feeling humiliation over my body. Shame rose to color my face as I felt the number measure my value. I remember other days, other numbers. 187. 165. 154. All with horror. More numbers. 142. 135. 128. Soaring on the wings of starved affirmation. More numbers. 195. 172. 212. 186. 235. 242. 265. 202. 184. 177. Ridiculous. I don’t need the scale to tell me anything today. I know that the number it would reveal might make me cry. It’s a strange thing to feel your body grow. Again. I thought I was done! I’m not. God’s invitation to me today is to boldly hand over the scale and to set my eyes only on him as the source of my value. To embrace that what I really want is to rest in his love, to care for myself as he longs for me to and to surrender the power of the number to the power of his grace. I want to be strong. I want to pursue Jesus. I want my clothes to fit. I want to be free of shame more than I am today. I want to offer mercy. I want to fill myself up on the love of God and feast on the joy I find in his fierce, strong, eternal faithfulness. Come here, Jesus. Redeem me here. Come for the little first grader, the desperate middle school teenager, the ashamed high schooler and the woman searching for love, connection and goodness in the pantry. I need you. Losing the scale may not be a great decision for me. I’ll find out. But it may be the best thing I’ve done in quite a while. I’m inviting him to come for me. Want to join me in inviting him to come where you need him most to come for you?
Stasi Eldredge